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TRENTON - Attorney General
Paula T. Dow and Criminal Justice Director
Stephen J. Taylor announced that a Cumberland
County man was sentenced to state prison
today for distributing child pornography
on the Internet.
According to Director Taylor,
Charles Corathers, 53, of Vineland, was
sentenced to four years in state prison
by Superior Court Judge Benjamin C. Telsey
in Cumberland County. Corathers pleaded
guilty on May 7 to charges of second-degree
distribution of child pornography and fourth-degree
possession of child pornography. Those charges
were contained in a Dec. 23, 2009 state
grand jury indictment obtained by the Division
of Criminal Justice.
Corathers was ordered to
undergo psychiatric treatment. He will be
required to register as a sex offender under
Megan’s Law and is prohibited from
having any contact with children or using
the Internet for the duration of the sentence.
In pleading guilty, Corathers
admitted that between April and August 2009,
he knowingly used Internet file sharing
software to make multiple files containing
child pornography readily available for
any other user to download from a designated
“shared folder” on his computer.
The Digital Technology Investigation
Unit of the New Jersey State Police conducted
the investigation. It began with a referral
from the Camden County Prosecutor’s
Office, which, during an online operation
in April 2009, discovered videos of child
pornography available for downloading on
Corather’s personal computer. The
State Police subsequently connected to Corather’s
computer using peer-to-peer software and
downloaded additional files of child pornography
from his shared folder. The State Police
executed a search warrant on Aug. 14, 2009
and seized Corather’s computer. An
examination of the computer at the Regional
Computer Forensics Laboratory revealed numerous
files containing child pornography.
Deputy
Attorney General Asha Vaghela took the guilty
plea and represented the Division of Criminal
Justice Major Crimes Bureau at the sentencing.
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