COLUMBUS, Ohio – Federal prosecutors have accused the director of a pediatric cancer radiation unit at Ohio State University of downloading sexually explicit child pornography videos and photos.
A criminal complaint filed Wednesday in federal court in Columbus charges Dr. Christopher Pelloski,39, of Upper Arlington, with a single count of receiving child pornography. The crime is punishable by a sentence of five to 20 years in a federal prison, Franklin County Sheriff Zach Scott said.
Pelloski was ordered to avoid unsupervised contact with children and to be subject to electronic monitoring by federal Magistrate Judge Norah McCann King Wednesday.
The complaint says Pelloski acknowledged to a member of a Franklin County special investigations unit that he used his home desktop computer and a laptop belonging to Ohio State to download child pornography.
Pelloski is director of the Pediatric Radiation Oncology Program at Ohio State’s James Cancer Hospital, which also receives referrals from Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus.
He resigned his position with the Medical Center yesterday.
Pelloski’s attorney Stephen Palmer said he was still gathering information and could not comment.
According to court documents, members of the Franklin County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force executed a search warrant on Pelloski’s home on July 16 and seized a computer with child pornography.
A task force detective who began the investigation into Pelloski’s alleged activities in October, claims in a court document that he “observed images that appeared to depict minor family members of the Pellsoski family in a state of undress.”
Pelloski also admitted that he had used a laptop computer belonging to OSU to download child pornography and that computer was seized by authorities in Colorado, where Pelloski had the computer at the time, the complaint said.
Forensic examination of the computers turned up 25 images of child pornography and more than 100 link files, according to the complaint.