Former East Bridgewater coach to serve 30 days on child porn charge
The former assistant East Bridgewater High School basketball coach will spend a month in jail after pleading guilty to child pornography charges.
Shawn C. Fedele, an assistant girls basketball coach last year at East Bridgewater High School, pleaded guilty this week in Brockton Superior Court to charges of possession of and disseminating child pornography.
Judge Carol Ball ordered Fedele to serve 30 days of a one-year sentence at the county jail on one count of possession of child pornography. The remaining sentence was suspended.
Fedele, represented by attorney Allan Tufankjian, was also given five years probation on charges of dissemination of child pornography.
The sentence drew criticism from the leader of a group advocating tighter sex offender laws.
“It is a slap on the wrist,” said Laurie Myers, president of Community Voices. “Too many people claim possession of child pornography is a victimless crime. When they are downloading these pictures, these are real kids being abused, there are real kids in those photos these guys are looking at.”
Fedele, who has also worked at his family’s candy store in Pembroke, was indicted last year on nine counts of child pornography and distribution of child pornography.
Fedele served as an assistant girls basketball coach until the end of February 2008. He was not reappointed to the job.
The investigation was launched after the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children notified state police it had received a tip that someone in the area was downloading child pornography.
One of those photos involved in that initial tip depicted a young girl, age 12 to 14, nude on a bed in a sexually explicit pose, according to court records.
A second photo showed two naked prepubescent girls sitting on a coffee table, according to paperwork filed in court
State Trooper Frank Driscoll, as part of the investigation, tracked down the identity of the e-mail account holder and then obtained a search warrant for Fedele’s home and computers
Police seized computers from the home and later examined the hard drives. A search of one hard drive revealed about 34 images of suspected child pornography, according to the court papers.
