Police Allege Concord Man Visited Russian Website for Child Porn Pictures

An investigation into took about two years but would not have happened had a young girl not accused the man of sexual assault, according to court documents.

In an affidavit filed with the of Concord, the case against was built after his wife allegedly discovered photos that she believed were child pornography in his home office in May 2010. She reportedly collected the images and turned them over to elders at the River of Grace Church where they both attended services.

A detective stated in a report that the photos were allegedly burned prior to the police finding out about them.

The became involved in the case due to “mandatory reporting requirements” and Bourne allegedly admitted to possessing the images when confronted but denied sexual contact with children.

“Bourne said he had a problem, but he did not know what to do about it,” according to the affidavit.

The images were reportedly of girls in their early teens.

Bourne’s computer was seized by police and a forensic analysis reportedly revealed that he had surfed the web and allegedly viewed “multiple images depicting children engaged in sexual activity.” The affidavit reported that Bourne had not downloaded or saved the images to his computer hard drive and no victims were located, so no criminal charges were filed.

A year later, the police were contacted by the and informed that an 11-year-old girl had alleged that Bourne touched her sexually both under and over her clothing during the last two years. The girl and her mother alleged that the offenses occurred at Bourne’s home and the girl’s home in Contoocook.

On May 6, 2011, Bourne was arrested and charged with sexual assault.

A search warrant was issued for his home and vehicle and during the investigation, police allegedly found “numerous images of preteen and teenage girls” on the dashboard of Bourne’s vehicle. The photos allegedly depicted Bourne hugging and posing with the girls who were dressed in bathing suits at beaches or lakes. A computer was also seized from Bourne.

During the course of the next 11 months, the police initiated an examination of the computer in an effort to find child pornography or evidence of child sexual exploitation.

According to detectives, the examination allegedly revealed that the person who was using the “Steve” user account on the computer was nearly entirely linking to sites with child pornography references.

“Hundreds of web browsing hits were recovered that contained descriptions of the web site’s content,” the affidavit stated, adding that the URLs contained references to pornography and underage children, including the ages of the children contained in the sites.

On two dates in May before his arrest on the assault charges, police allege that Bourne viewed images from a site that contained sexual stories about children and a child pornography site in Russia. Police allege that Bourne used keywords to find specific illegal content on both of the sites.

Numerous images of child pornography were allegedly located in the temporary Internet files of the computer, including full size images that were flagged because the user of the computer had deliberately clicked on the thumbnail of the photo to access the larger files, according to the affidavit.

“Both sites clearly and openly identify their content to the viewer,” the detective wrote in the affidavit, adding that the Russian site “even has a warning of sexually explicit material.”

Based on the evidence gathered, eight felony charges of possession of child sexual abuse images were filed against Bourne and he was arrested on June 21.