Joseph Murphy Given Probation For Child Porn Possession

A Mills man will avoid prison time, after admitting that he had photos of children that he shouldn't have had.

Joseph Murphy was given a two and one-half to four and one-half years suspended prison sentence, with 10 years of probation, after he pleaded guilty to one charge of possession of child pornography.

Investigators with the Wyoming Division Of Criminal Investigation, say they were alerted of the situation in December 2014, when they were contacted by the Mills Police Department, because Murphy wanted to turn himself in.

Murphy's room-mate had found the images stored on a thumb drive, and copied them to give to law enforcement.

When Murphy found out what had happened, he destroyed the thumb drive.

He admitted that he downloaded the images while living in New York about two years ago, and got the images when he heard that a website was being shut down for having child porn, and he decided to look out of curiosity.

Murphy told investigators that he was curious, because he had been raised in a family of pedophiles and had been sexually abused as a child, but the images did nothing for him.

Investigators then later found more than 4,000 images.

Murphy has taken a psycho-sexual evaluation, and evaluators rated him as low risk.