Montco pediatrician charged with possessing child porn
A Montgomery County pediatrician has been charged with possessing child porn, authorities said.
David Kennedy, 48, of Personal Care Pediatrics, at 925 Main St. in Pennsburg, was arrested Monday. He was charged with five counts of child pornography and one count of criminal use of a communications facility.
The Montgomery County District Attorney's Office said in a news release that authorities were contacted Monday by a nurse practitioner at the medical practice who had been given an Apple iPhone 7 Plus to handle after-hours calls over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. The nurse found sexually graphic photos on the phone, including some of girls she believed to be under 18, the DA's Office said Wednesday.
Upon going to the medical office, detectives with the DA's Office and the Upper Perkiomen Police Department found that Kennedy, the owner and supervising physician of the practice, had given the nurse the phone.
Kennedy told the detectives that when he bought the phone on Nov. 22 at a Quakertown store, an employee helped him transfer content from his iCloud account to the new phone, according to a police criminal complaint. He said he believed only the contents of his address book were being shared and did not know his photo stream, contained in the iCloud, was also connected to the new phone, the complaint says.
Kennedy admitted in a statement to detectives that he visited websites that contained images of children under 18 who were naked or in sexually suggestive poses, the complaint says. He said he saved these images "based upon a curiosity he had," the complaint says.
The nurse had told detectives she found what she estimated to be hundreds of pornographic images on the phone.
The total number of images deemed to be child porn on the iPhone 7 Plus was five, but authorities said a further forensic examination will be conducted.
The images found were not related to any children that have visited the medical practice, a spokeswoman for the DA's Office said Thursday.
Kennedy also has given detectives permission to view the content of two iPhone 5s phones he had in his pants pockets during the Monday visit by detectives, and those phones will also be reviewed, authorities said.
Kennedy, who lives on the 100 block of West 2nd Street in Pennsburg, is jailed in the Montgomery County Correctional Facility. His bail was set at $250,000 and he faces a Dec. 21 preliminary hearing. It was not immediately clear if he had an attorney.