Brittany Horn

The News Journal

A New Castle County police officer regularly logged onto a public internet chat room to view and exchange child pornography of girls 6 to 10 years old, according to court records obtained Tuesday by The News Journal.

Master Cpl. Robert Vasecka, 45, of Newark, was charged Monday with 25 counts of dealing in child pornography following an investigation by the Delaware Child Predator Task Force that began in May, court documents say.

Investigators say Vasecka uploaded a suspected image of child pornography to a public internet chat room on May 25, which prompted the chat room to capture the IP information associated with the user. The image was of a naked girl who appeared to be 6 to 8 years old, according to court documents.

In August, the chat room again reported a second upload of suspected child pornography by the same user, prompting task force investigators to obtain subscriber information for the account that uploaded the photos, court records say. The user was listed as Vasecka, a county police officer.

He was arrested Monday by police and interviewed about the photos, during which court records say Vasecka admitted to uploading and viewing child pornography. He told police "he knew this was wrong but he had an addiction," according to court documents.

Vasecka went on to tell police that he used his cellphone or computer to access the chat room and specifically looked for chat rooms that were labeled for child pornography, court records say.

"Vasecka said he would sometimes enter private rooms to exchange child pornography with subjects," according to court documents.

"He stated he would delete all the images after he was done because he knew he could obtain more child pornography images whenever he wanted them," according to his police interview.

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Following his arrest, investigators retrieved the cellphone Vasecka used to view the images from his police vehicle parked at county headquarters, according to court documents. On his phone, at least 25 images of child pornography were found, court papers say, depicting girls about 6 to 8 years old. The cellphone also had the internet chat room and Vasecka's nickname in its files, according to the documents.

Vasecka has been placed on paid administrative leave from the county Police Department pending the results of an internal investigation, according to a statement from the New Castle County Police Department.

He was held at Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna on $500,000 secured bail.

Contact Brittany Horn at (302) 324-2771 or bhorn@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter at @brittanyhorn.