CAMDEN — By BRADLY GILL
News Editor
A Camden man was sentenced to 10 years in the Arkansas Department of Corrections after entering a plea of no contest to one charge of possession of child pornography.
Harold Merritt, 79, was charged with possession of child pornography, and was issued a $15,000 bond at his first appearance. He was also ordered to have no contact with minors and to be restricted from the internet and forms of social media,
Merritt was originally charged with 38 counts of possession of child pornography, but accepted a plea deal this week.
Court documents also show that Merritt had been a resident of Ouachita County for five months at the time of his arrest in 2017.
An affidavit signed by Camden Police Department Detective Brian Finney states:
“On January 11, 2017, I was assigned a case from the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force. I am an assigned investigator for the Arkansas ICAC task force. The task force provided information in the case history which stated on December 27, 2017, the account name yourharolddmerrittus.tumblr.com downloaded images from the website Tumblr. The account name is associated with Harold Merritt. The IP address was captured by the website. These images were flagged as being child pornography and reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). NCMEC reviewed these files, deemed them to be child pornography and forwarded the case to the ICAC task force for further investigation Reviewing the images included in the case I observed 38 photos of posed pre-pubescent girls. The images depicted these girls in various states of nudity ranging from dressed in undergarments to fully nude with genitals and breasts exposed. Sixteen of the images depicted the breast and/or genitals of a pre-pubescent girl.
“On January 15, 2017, a search warrant was executed at Harold Merritt’s residence. An iPhone and a Toshiba laptop were seized. Merritt provided the password for both items. On the iPhone, photos were located of pre-pubescent females with breasts and genitals exposed. Some of the photos on the iPhone were the same photos found on the Tumblr account yourharolddmerrittus.tumblr.com. No photos constituting child pornography were located on the laptop. However, the internet search history on the laptop showed multiple searches for variations of the phrase ‘pre-teen porn.’
“The photos on the iPhone depicted at least thirteen unique underage girls. Additional images showed girls who appear to be underage.”