Defense questions seizure of evidence in Butler County child porn case of 101 counts

The attorney for a Madison Twp. man facing 101 felony counts involving child pornography is challenging the legality of 11 search warrants served in the investigation.

Trevor Fraley, 24, of Dickey Road, was indicted in November on multiple counts each of pandering sexually oriented matter involving a child and illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material or performance.

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Fraley has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Judge Michael Oster Jr. continued the case until April 8 for a hearing on the motion.

Fraley is free on $500,000 bond and is fitted with a GPS monitor.

As part of bond, Oster also ordered Fraley to have no contact with any children, including his own, to have no internet access and to report twice per week to pretrial services.

Last Monday, attorney Chris Pagan filed a motion to suppress evidence taken for a Crawford Street home, cell phone, computers and other electronic devices.

Pagan argued some of the search warrants were not properly signed by the magistrate and relied on an uncorroborated statement from a woman with a drug addiction and a case through Butler County Children Services.

“(The woman) told agents that Fraley resided at (the Crawford Street residence) and she identified her child as present in pornographic images presented on Fraley’s Google account. There is no corroboration of (the woman’s) statement and she is not identified in the affidavit as reliable,” Pagan wrote in the motion.

Further, the affidavit fails to provide information, known to county agents, that (the woman) had a drug addiction that caused (childrens services) to remove the children from her custody and that her motive to shift blame potentially undermined her reliability.”

A suppression hearing is scheduled for April 8.

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A computer believed to belong to Fraley contained “a very large amount of child pornography — over 1,200 videos depicting children engaged in sexual activity, much of which has been duplicated by defendant’s backing up the videos from his phone to his computer. The most recent unidentified backup occurred on Oct. 29,” Assistant Butler County Prosecutor Kelly Heile said in court documents.

The motion also says some of the images allegedly traced to Fraley’s digital payment service include sex acts involving toddler-aged children. One of the images may have been taken at a previous residence shared by a witness and Fraley, according to Heile.

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