Crime & Safety

Bus Driver At Lakelands Park MS Charged With Child Pornography

The Germantown resident worked several routes.

A Montgomery County Public School bus driver was arrested in February and charged with child pornography as the culmination of a year-long investigation by Montgomery County Police.

Charles Holton Acker IV, 33, who lived in the 11000 block of Grassy Knoll Terrace in Germantown, was arrested on Feb. 10 and charged with one count each of promoting or distributing child pornography and possessing child pornography, County Police officials said.

Online court record indicate he was released the same day on $80,000 bond. His address is now listed as 8415 Foresight Lane in Walkersville, MD.

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He is due in court April 15 for a hearning.

MCPS Spokesman Dana Tofig confirmed that Acker was a bus driver for the school system, and drove a route for Lakelands Park Middle School, Quince Orchard High School and Brown Station Elemenaty School.

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"Police have given no information that suggests the employee's conduct involved MCPS students in any way," Tofig told Patch in an email.

Acker could serve up to 15 years in prison and receive up to $27,500 in fines for the offenses.

Richard P. Arnold, Acker's Greenbelt attorney, had no comment on the case.

On Feb. 9 of last year PO3 H.S. Ryan began an undercover child pornography investigation by logging in to the Gnutella Internet file-sharing network, according to Court charging documents.

She identified a user who had been downloading and shring child pornography by the IP address.

There were 83 files being shared by the user at that address, the charging documents say.

"All of the files had names indicative of containing child pornography," the document says.

Officer Ryan used the Maxmind IP Database to track the IP address to Germantown, and she contacted Verizon to obtain the subscriber's information after getting a court order, the charging documents say.

The subscriber was Roberta Rule, Acker's mother, the documents say.

On April 2 last year, Officer Ryan and members of the Pedophile Section searched Acker's house, the documents say. He admitted at the time to knowing about Limewire and fire sharing sites.

Acker's laptop was seized and an extensive forensic analysis was conducted, which found 75 videos and 10 images of child pornography, the documents say, as well as "several images of child erotica.

One video in particular (title being withheld), is "a known child pornography video identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and is highly traded among pedophiles," the documents says.

Lucille Baur, a spokeswoman for County police, said year between when Acker's computer was confiscated and when he was arrested was because there are not many people on the Police force who know how to do a forensic analysis of a computer.

Acker was fired from MCPS within days of his arrest.


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