A Valencia man has been arrested on suspicion of distributing child pornography and of possessing sadomasochistic child porn images, accused of having in his possession more than 500 photographs and video child porn images.
Austen Timothy Calams, 35, was arrested Thursday by deputies of the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station after a warrant was issued by a task force set up to investigate child pornography.
“We have a lot of cases of child porn and a lot of cases in Santa Clarita,” Lt. Kent Wegener, of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
Thursday’s arrest comes on the heels of an arrest just over a week ago in which 35-year-old Donald Anthony Little was charged with possessing child porn.
The case against Calams began with a “cyber tip,” Wegener explained for The Signal Monday.
“This came to us as a cyber tip to the Human Trafficking Bureau which also houses the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force,” he said.
“According to the tip, an individual uploaded what looked like a child porn image to Skype.”
The case was turned over to the Task Force’s “high tech forensics” detectives, he said, who traced the upload to a house in Valencia.
A warrant to search the suspect’s home – a block away from Rio Norte Junior High School – was carried out after “the suspect implicated himself in possessing and distributing child porn,” Wegener said.
Detectives seized handheld “devices” from the suspect’s home on which they found at least 500 still photographs and videos of child porn.
A criminal complaint case was filed with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office on June 13, specifically naming two charges against Calams including: distributing child pornography and of possessing sadomasochistic child porn images.
Once the charges were filed, detectives received a note from the suspect’s lawyer that he would turn himself in to the local sheriff’s station on June 15.
Calams was released from custody after posting bail which was set at $80,000.
Calams is scheduled to appear in court July 7 at the Foltz Criminal Justice Center in downtown Los Angeles.
The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force has pursued 335 cases of child porn so far this year, Wegener said.
The task force works closely with the LASD’s Human Trafficking Bureau.
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