BANGOR, Maine — A registered sex offender pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to possessing child pornography and using the internet intending to view child pornography, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Ernest Cook, 58, of Bangor was arrested in September nearly two years after a relative told police she found sexually explicit images on his computer.
Cook is a lifetime registrant of the Maine Sex Offender Registry because he was convicted in 1997 of sexually abusing a 3-year-old.
Cook’s computer and flash drive were seized on Dec. 21, 2014, by a detective with the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court. Cook’s relative, who is not named in the document, called police after she discovered what she believed to be child pornography on Cook’s computer when he was staying at her home in Burnham.
The computer and flash drive were turned over Dec. 29, 2014, to the Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit for forensic examination, the complaint said. That examination, completed in July 2016, found more than 750 images of child pornography on the computer’s hard drive and the flash drive. The examiner found that the majority of the files depicted prepubescent girls under the age of 12 being sexually assaulted by adult men.
In explaining why it took so long to get the forensic examination done, Lt. Glenn Lang, head of the Computer Crimes Unit, previously told the BDN that such examinations take time and that homicides and sexual exploitation cases get the highest priority.
Cook was not arrested until after the exam was completed, and he was not suspected of sexual exploitation of children, according to court documents.
“Eighteen months is pretty long, although we have some a fair amount older,” Lang said. “There are currently 479 cases and over 1,600 pieces of evidence in the backlog.”
Cook faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000 on each of the two counts, according to a statement released Friday by U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Delahanty II.