Archdiocese has suspended St. Joseph's Catholic Church deacon
A longtime deacon at a Fullerton church was charged Friday
with possessing "numerous files of child pornography," Baltimore
County police said.
William Steven Albaugh, 67, a deacon at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church on Belair Road, was arrested at his Nottingham home at 7:45 a.m. Police had searched Albaugh's
Treadway Court home and said they found images of children on his Verizon Online account
and on thumb drives.
Police do not believe that children at St. Joseph's were victims.
Albaugh declined to comment when reached by phone Friday.
He told police he has viewed child pornography since the 1970s, when he would
go to adult bookstores in Baltimore, according to charging documents. Albaugh
told police he saved the images to his computer but said he would never harm a
child, the documents say.
Police said they recovered numerous files, including graphic images and videos.
According to a statement from the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Albaugh was
ordained in 1996 and assigned to St. Joseph Church . He has been suspended from
the church.
"Neither the parish nor the Archdiocese has received any prior allegations
against Mr. Albaugh, who successfully fulfilled all of the child & youth
protection requirements of the Archdiocese, including a criminal history
screening," the statement said.
The archdiocese is working to inform church members, the statement said, and
encourages anyone to report abuse.
Albaugh previously retired in 2009 from Baltimore County Public Schools, where
he worked for 21 years for the physical facilities office, in a position
supporting the schools and offices with electronic machinery and equipment,
said schools spokesman, Charles Herndon.
Detectives began investigating Albaugh after Verizon Online notified the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that Albaugh, a subscriber,
had stored images of children engaged in sexual acts on the online cloud storage system,
police said.
Police recovered two CPU towers, a laptop computer, multiple storage devices
and an iPad. Albaugh told police that he used the tablet to
view nudist websites that include pictures of children, according to charging
documents.
Detectives located the images on his home computer under the use profile name
"Bill," the document said.
St. Joseph's is scheduled to hold a meeting at the church for parishioners and
school families at 7 p.m. Monday. Officials from the archdiocese will be
present to answer questions, according to the church website.
Albaugh was released on $75,000 bond. The investigation is continuing, police
said.
SCRIPTURES
PROVERBS 22: 6Train up a child in the
way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
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