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Jacob Wrisley, 42, a former part-time police officer in Bernardston and Buckland, pleaded guilty to six counts of possession of child pornography and single counts of posing a child in a state of nudity and videotaping sexual or intimate parts of a child without her knowledge, the Northwestern District Attorney Anne Yereniuk said on Wednesday, Feb. 7.
A judge sentenced him to four to five years in prison with five years of probation to follow. Prosecutors argued for a much harsher penalty of 10 to 12 years behind bars with multiple stipulations upon his release, the district attorney's office said.
State police arrested Wrisley in 2021 after receiving a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Officers searched his devices and found a "secret vault cell phone applications labeled with graphic, degrading names" that contained tens of thousands of images and videos of child sexual abuse material, the prosecutor said.
There were also photos of children playing in Franklin County taken without their knowledge.
Wrisley was put on probation and then fired from his position as a police officer in Buckland and Bernardston after he was charged.
The parents of the 8-year-old girl he filmed in the nude without her knowledge told the court in an impact statement that the incident had caused them to lose faith in law enforcement and trust in others.
Wrisley will have to participate in sex offender evaluation and treatment when he's released from prison, have no contact with his victims, have no unsupervised contact with children under 18, stay away from playgrounds and anywhere children congregate, register as a sex offender, wear a GPS monitoring bracelet, allow searches of his devices, and refrain from downloading secret recording applications, the prosecutor said.
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