Student, 21, charged with possessing child pornography

Jan. 30—LEWISBURG — A 21-year-old Bucknell University sophomore from Maryland allegedly possessed 20 images of child pornography on his Google Drive and cellphone between the dates of March and August, according to state police.

Rai'Joan Markel Carter, 21, of Baltimore, was charged on Tuesday with 20 felony counts of possessing child pornography and one felony count of criminal use of a communication facility. The charges were filed by state Trooper James Ballantyne, of the Bureau of Criminal Investigations's Northeast Computer Crimes Unit, in the Lewisburg office of District Judge Jeffrey Rowe.

Ballantyne, a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce, reported that he received six CyberTip Line reports from Google between Sept. 25 and Nov. 6 for a total of 22 pieces of media that were flagged as potential Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM)/Child Exploitation, also known as child pornography. The upload dates range from March 1 to Aug. 31.

The reports allegedly came from Carter's cellphone and email addresses. In the six cyber tips, there were predominantly two Internet Protocol (IP) addresses present for logins and uploads. A check of these IP addresses found they belonged to T-Mobile and the static IP address of Bucknell University in Lewisburg, police said.

The pictures and videos showed exposed prepubescent girls and prepubescent boys and girls being sexually assaulted by adults, police said.

Ballantyne worked with Bucknell Public Safety to verify that Carter was enrolled at the university in his second year. He had been residing in a single occupancy campus dorm room at Strohecker Farm Lane in East Buffalo Township, commonly referred to as Quest House, since August, police said.

Subpoenas approved by Deputy Attorney General Kristen Kemp were prepared for T-Mobile and Google. Several static IP addresses at Bucknell University were all used to log into Carter's email, police said.

On Jan. 26, a search warrant for Carter's dorm room was approved by Rowe. During the execution of the search warrant, Carter allegedly confirmed his telephone number and ownership of the emails in question, and said no other people had access to or control of his devices, police said.

Carter allegedly said he had seen child pornography online before. He allegedly recalled a specific instance in which he downloaded a link from Twitter and observed it be child pornography, but he said he deleted it, police said.

He also allegedly stated that he "went back to the areas of the internet in which this bad stuff lived." He also allegedly stated that he went to different websites in pursuit of obtaining adult film stars' content for free, police said.

Ballantyne explained to him that the six Cybertips were from materials being saved to his Google Drive. Carter allegedly claimed that he did not save anything to his drive, police said.

Ongoing forensic reviews of Carter's cellular device provided three additional videos of child pornography on his phone, police said.

Police seized a Samsung cellphone, a Lenovo IdeaPad computer, and an Amazon Tablet, according to a search warrant filed at Rowe's office.

Carter was arraigned at 3:15 p.m. Tuesday in front of Rowe and committed to Union County Jail in lieu of 10 percent of $85,000 bail. If Carter posts bail, Rowe prohibited Carter from having any unsupervised contact with minors and restricted him from accessing any pornography on the internet.

Carter is scheduled for a preliminary hearing at 2 p.m. Feb. 15 in front of Rowe.