The Montgomery County Courthouse. (Credit: MediaNews Group)
Lawrence Francis Cole also faces a 15-year requirement to report his address to state police
An Upper Salford man has avoided jail time and instead has been sentenced to probation and sex offender supervision for possessing child pornography on his cellphone.
Lawrence Francis Cole, 34, of the 1700 block of Hendricks Road, was given seven years’ probation following a guilty plea of possessing child pornography by Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Thomas C. Branca, per court documents.
Records also require Cole to register as a sex offender for 15 years with the Pennsylvania State Police.
According to The Reporter, Cole’s attorney, Matthew Wilkov, argued his client’s cooperation with authorities, his guilty plea, his remorse, his good employment history, and his candidacy for rehabilitation as reason for a probationary sentence and not jail.
Wilkov told Branca his client would be better in therapy than jail, per the report.
Per the report, Cole shared and uploaded child pornography of female children between six and 12 engaged in sexual acts with adult males on Snapchat, which, in turn, filed a report with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, on Dec. 16, 2021.
The user email and internet address were traced to Cole, police said. A search warrant on Jan. 20, 2023, resulted in Cole admitting that he viewed and saved child pornography on his cellphone, per the report.
“Cole related that he’s not proud of himself for looking at the files and not sure why he does it,” police wrote in the complaint.
Per the report, Cole told police he would use search engines that took him to Russian sites where he would view and download the files.
A memory card on Cole’s phone had 16 images and one video of child pornography, per the complaint.
All suspects and defendants are innocent until proven guilty. This story was compiled using public court records.
