PENNSYLVANIA
Chadds Ford Live
Posted by Kathleen Brady Shea on October 24th, 2014
*** STORY UPDATED at 4:10 p.m. ***
A Catholic priest assigned to Saints Simon and Jude Parish in Westtown Township was charged on Thursday, Oct. 23, with multiple felony counts of sexual abuse of children for possessing and disseminating child pornography.
Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan announced the prosecution of Rev. Mark Haynes, 55, in an Oct. 24 press release. Hogan said Haynes, who was ordained in 1985, has served as Parochial Vicar at Saints Simon and Jude since Sept. 3, 2013.
The investigation began when Chester County Detective Joe Walton, the lead investigator in the case, received. information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). Walton learned that an Instagram account, a social media site that allows users to publish and share photographs, was disseminating images that included child pornography, the release said.
Walton traced the user name on the account — Katie — to an email account registered to the church. Initially suspecting that the account might belong to a student at the parish school, Walton interviewed the pastor at Saints Simon and Jude, who identified the user as Haynes, who resides at the parish rectory.
During a follow-up portion of the investigation, Walton also discovered that Haynes had received and posted a multitude of other images of child pornography and that he had been exchanging lewd emails with a still-to-be-identified 14-year-old girl. Haynes had been posing as a 16-year-old girl in those exchanges, the release said.
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