Attleboro man sentenced after child porn conviction

An Attleboro man was sentenced to up to five years in prison for possessing thousands of files of child pornography, prosecutors said.

A jury convicted Mark Nicholson, 62, on Thursday of three counts of possession of child pornography and one count of distribution of material of a child in a state of nudity, the office of Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn said in a press release.

Nicholson was sentenced to four to five years in prison, along with five years of supervised probation, prosecutors said.

In March 2020, Taunton police recovered six files of child pornography that were being shared over a peer-to-peer network, Quinn’s office said.

Police located an involved computer’s IP address, which was traced back to Nicholson, Quinn’s office said.

In August of 2020, police executed a search warrant of Nicholson’s home and confiscated a computer and two hard drives. Police later discovered 8,600 files of child pornography stored on the devices, prosecutors said.

The computer had the username “Mark” and was not password protected. In an interview with police, Nicholson confirmed he was the only person who used the computer, the DA said.

“The defendant has demonstrated that he has a disturbed and disordered mind by disseminating hundreds of nude photos of children. The sentence is warranted,” Quinn said in the release.

Attorneys for Nicholson were not immediately available for comment Sunday night.

Be civil. Be kind.

Read our full community guidelines.

Want to leave a comment?

Create an Account Or sign in to your account

To comment, please create a screen name in your profile

To comment, please verify your email address