CANADA
The Catholic Register
BY MICHAEL SWAN, THE CATHOLIC REGISTER
August 13, 2014
Two months after the OPP seized a computer from St. Patrick’s parish in Caledonia, Ont., looking for child porn, police have returned the computer and closed the investigation — no child porn, just annoying pop-up advertising the computer’s firewalls were not equipped to block.
St. Patrick’s pastor Fr. Mario Fernandes lived and ministered under a cloud for two months while the Ontario Provincial Police’s Child Sexual Exploitation Section investigated.
“It was very stressful,” Fernandes told The Catholic Register. “When people label you for no reason when you’re not involved in that sort of thing, and here the whole town is concerned about that.”
But two months is lightning fast when it comes to computer crimes and sexual exploitation, said investigating officer Doug Rees.
“Usually an investigation goes 12 to 18 months,” he said. “Because it’s computers and it’s forensics.”
The OPP went out of its way to let Caledonia residents know they had cleared Fernandes.
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