Belleville ‘Child Erotica’ Charges May Be 1st In NJ: Prosecutor

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — They call it “child erotica.” And even though its subjects may be clothed or partially clothed, some authorities in Essex County claim that it’s just a way of finding a loophole to sexually exploit children.

On Thursday, the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office announced that it charged a Belleville man with “possession of child erotica,” the first case in the county and possibly the first in New Jersey.

While searching the home of Anthony Domenick, 25, of Belleville, on Wednesday, police allegedly found multiple child erotica images. If convicted, Domenick may face up to 10 years in jail on all counts, prosecutors said.

Authorities didn’t elaborate on the nature of the images or how many were found.

Officers with the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office Special Victims Unit, New Jersey State Police, Belleville Police Department and Homeland Security Investigations participated in the execution of the search warrant.

According to a statement from Acting Essex County Prosecutor Robert Laurino, since 2013, there have been “significant revisions and updates” to New Jersey’s laws to help combat the sexual exploitation of children.

In 2013, those changes included replacing the term “child pornography” with “item depicting the sexual abuse or exploitation of a child” to more accurately reflect the true nature of the images, Laurino said.

New Jersey’s newly expanded law saw additional changes that kicked in Feb. 1, including the criminalization of “child erotica.” Laurino said the move will help to eliminate a gap in the previous law which “did not adequately cover certain images including those of children who may be partially clothed, but where the clear intent of the photo is to concentrate prurient interest on the child, or for sexual gratification.”

However, if other national cases are any indication, the prosecution of alleged possessors of child erotica may not be a cut-and-dry effort.

In November, a federal judge dismissed charges against a California doctor that kicked off when Best Buy technicians found an alleged child pornography image on his computer. That image reportedly depicted an underage girl on her knees on a bed wearing a choker-type collar.

“While the image may have been ‘distasteful and disturbing,’ the judge determined it was not child pornography but instead child erotica, ‘the viewing of which is not unlawful,’” The Orange County Register reported.

In 2013, a longtime Florida church teacher was accused of using a school computer to look at websites that featured “young girls posing provocatively in underwear and bathing suits,” the Sun Sentinel reported. Police declined to pursue charges against the teacher because the material didn’t show “nudity or sexual activity.”

A defense attorney told the publication that even though he believes that child erotica sites are morally inappropriate, it would be difficult to legislate against pictures of children in which there is no explicit sexual content.

"How many parents take pictures of their kids in the bathtub?" he asked. "A good amount of parents would be sex offenders if this was illegal."

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