GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – A 17-year-old Denmark High School student has been charged with ten counts of possessing child pornography.
Ten days short of his 18th birthday, Brandon Zittlow was taken to jail, accused of trading child porn on his cell phone.
Beau Liegeois is an assistant district attorney for Brown County.
“The allegations are the defendant was not only viewing child pornography, but also was distributing it to others”
According to a criminal complaint, the Brown County Sheriff’s Department was warned last month of suspicious video uploads to a Dropbox account linked to Zittlow’s email. Dropbox is an online file-sharing service.
On Wednesday, sheriff’s deputies pulled Zittlow out of class at Denmark High School to question him.
The complaint shows Zittlow admitted to using an online messaging application and Dropbox to trade child porn images and videos.
Zittlow told investigators ‘he last chatted in November and that the youngest age that he’s seen of child porgnography was 10 years old.’
When questioned why he looks at child porn, Zittlow told investigators ‘he has an obsession with it.’
Zittlow also said ‘he no longer views child pornography because he has a girlfriend and that he feels guilty.’
The complaint also shows after being told he was likely going to jail, Zittlow said, “I didn’t think it was illegal for me to have possession of it since I thought when you were 18 it was illegal is what I got from it but the possession of it from when I was younger under the age of 18 I thought it was legal.”
Investigators say a search of Zittlow’s cell phone found 10 child porn videos. Half of them were of girls under the age of 12.
In court, Liegeois recommended Zittlow be issued a $15,000 cash bond.
“We normally ask for a $25,000 cash bond on these types of cases”
The state says it considered Zittlow’s age and clean record in the lower bond request.
William Fitzgerald, Zittlow’s public defender, asked for an even lower cash bond of $5,000, which the court commissioner agreed to.
A condition of Zittlow’s bond is he cannot use any device that can access the internet.
