A Westbrook man will serve six months in jail after pleading guilty in Cumberland County Superior Court Tuesday to felony child pornography charges.

Gary T. Foley, 51, of 128 Brown St., pleaded guilty to multiple counts of possession of child pornography, and was sentenced to four years in jail, with all but six months suspended.

Foley also will have to serve two years of probation after his release from Cumberland County Jail, according to Westbrook Detective Sgt. Steve Lyons, who added that the probation will include conditions. If Foley does not meet those conditions, he will have to serve the remaining three-and-a-half years of his sentence.

“This is a message to all those who engage in this filthy and disgusting act of possession of child pornography,” Lyons said. “It won’t be tolerated in Westbrook.”

The Westbrook Police Department and the Maine Computer Crimes Task Force arrested Foley last April after an investigation that began the previous February with seizure of evidence from Foley’s home and initial interviews.

Foley was charged with 25 felony counts of possession of child pornography, each count a Class C felony that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

According to an affidavit by Lyons, Maine State Police notified Westbrook police in February that a woman had reported receiving child pornography from Foley, who was her landlord at the time. The woman had asked Foley, who was a friend, for a blank CD to copy music. She found what appeared to be child pornography on the CD.

Upon viewing the CD, Lyons determined it contained young girls under the age of 14 engaged in sexually explicit acts with adult men. The following day, Lyons and former Westbrook Detective Tim Gardner went to Foley’s home, read him his Miranda rights, and asked to search his home.

While searching Foley’s home, the detectives found numerous photographs of children engaged in sexual acts, which Foley said were photographs he printed from the Internet of children he believed to be under the age of 10.

The detectives also found headshots of the young daughter of Foley’s friend and tenant whom he had given the CD. During police interviews, Foley said he had fantasized about having sex with the child, but had never touched her indecently, according to police.

Foley was considered a friend of the family, according to police. The girl often spent time with Foley, swimming in his pool and hot tub and sitting with him.

The apartment also contained a picture of the child’s friend, whom Foley had met. Foley told police he stole the pictures of the two girls from his tenant’s apartment when she wasn’t there and made copies of them. He said he took them because he found the girls attractive.

According to Lyons, Foley said he had been sexually abused when he was a child and kept a diary of his life and his sexual activities. He told police a man on his paper route molested him three or four times when he was 14 years old. He said the man offered him money to have sex with him.

Foley told police he had been viewing child pornography for only a matter of weeks. He said he has a split personality, and it was his split personality, a woman named Lisa Foley, who had been in possession of the child pornography. He said he realized he had a problem, but had never sexually abused anyone.

Following a search of Foley’s home, police seized several computers, which were examined in February and March 2006 by the Maine Computer Crimes Task Force.

An investigation revealed “hundreds of pictures and videos of child pornography,” said Lyons in an interview last April. “I viewed upward of 50 or more of these pictures and videos of children I believe to be under the age of 12 engaged in sexual acts or displaying their genitals. Some of these videos are of children being sexually assaulted.”

John Paul DeGrinney, a Portland lawyer, represented Foley.

Lyons said Tuesday that anyone with information about a sex offender in Westbrook should contact him at 854-2531, extension 414.

Gary T. Foley

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