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Physician accused of possessing child porn

Police say Dr. David York of Topsham had explicit images and videos on his home computers.

- MECHELE COOPER

David A. York

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A doctor who lives in Topsham has been charged with possessing sexually explicit materials involving children younger than 12.

Maine State Police arrested David York, 59, at his home at 212 Congress Circle about 5 p.m. Tuesday. York, a general practitioner with Concentra Medical Centers, was taken to the Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset and released Tuesday night on $2,500 cash bail.

State police Col. Patrick Fleming said two computers were seized from York's house Tuesday morning by the state computer crimes unit. A preliminary examination revealed "hundreds of images and videos of child pornography," Fleming said.

He said there is no indication that any of the images show Maine children, but the computers are still being examined.

York was licensed to practice medicine in Maine in 2008 and lists his address with the state's Board of Licensure as Charlotte, N.C.

Concentra Medical Centers is a national health care company with five locations in Maine. York treated patients in Augusta and Lewiston.

John Delorimier, spokesman for Concentra, said the company fired York on Wednesday. He said York had been with the company for one year.

"It's tragic and disturbing," Delorimier said in a telephone interview. "We found out late yesterday and immediately suspended the doctor from services at Concentra."

Delorimier said York had very little, if any, contact with children on the job. He said Concentra specializes in occupational medicine, so nine out of every 10 patients would be adults.

"If you got hurt on the job, you would go to one of our centers," he said. "We see very few pediatrics. The only time we would see pediatrics is for urgent-care services, and we don't even promote that in Maine."

Fleming said the case came to the attention of the state computer crimes unit in November as part of a backlog being worked on by two new investigators.

He said most of the images are from file sharing with other personal computer users around the country, known as a peer-to-peer network.

In a peer-to-peer network, "you basically avoid the pay sites for music and porn and transfer files right between personal computers," Fleming said. "It's a fairly new technology. It's something we haven't really been able to concentrate on until we got these two new investigators."

An arrest warrant was obtained Tuesday afternoon by Special Agent Michael McFadden, one of the two investigators who joined the computer crimes unit last month.

York faces five counts of possession of sexually explicit materials showing children younger than 12.

"Now that we've got these two new special investigators, we're tracking down these people," Fleming said. "We actually have people out there to do the legwork, so now it's more proactive. It's a pretty significant problem that we've known about but didn't have the resources to follow."