Harvard Medical School pediatrics doctor charged with child pornography

Thursday, September 20, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: pediatric doctor, child pornography, Harvard Medical School

(NaturalNews) Federal authorities have arrested Dr. Richard Keller, a 56-year-old pediatric endocrinologist at Boston Children's Hospital and pediatrics instructor at Harvard Medical School, on allegations that Keller "knowingly received films depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct." According to CBS Boston, federal prosecutors have accused Keller of purchasing as many as 100 DVDs, and possessing hundreds of photographs, of the illicit material.

In an official complaint filed by the federal government in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, Keller is accused of purchasing nearly $3,000 worth of films containing child pornography from an unnamed company with a shipping facility in New York State. Foreign law enforcement (FLE) officials allegedly first learned about the distribution company, having executed a search warrant back in 2011 where they seized hundreds of DVD movies, photo DVDs, computers, and business records, including customer order histories.

In the process of identifying customers that had purchased the illegal material, domestic federal authorities were alerted to Keller's personal purchase history, which showed 19 different transactions that had taken place between July 2009 and January 2011. And several of these purchases were delivered to Phillips Academy, an independent boarding high school in Andover, Mass., where Keller had served as Medical Director of Student Health Services for 19 years.

You can view the complete filing here: http://cbsboston.files.wordpress.com

"I think it's an abomination," said Phillips Academy junior Sean Maloney to CBS Boston reporters concerning the allegations against Keller. "It should get checked to make sure nothing like that happens again."

According to reports, Keller is set to be arraigned at U.S. District Court in South Boston, where he could face up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for his alleged crimes. If convicted of these charges, Keller could also face a lifetime of supervised release after completing his jail term, which would be a minimum of five years.

In the meantime, Keller has been put on administrative leave from Boston Children's Hospital pending results of the investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office. The hospital has also released a statement claiming that it never received any complaints or concerns by patients or their family members about the quality of care administered by Keller during his time there.

"It's unsettling. If I look at that house it will always come to my mind," said Mary Carbone, a neighbor whose house is within eye shot of Keller's now empty house. "It's a sickness. Something has to be wrong with the mental capacity of the person doing this."

Sources for this article include:

http://boston.cbslocal.com

http://www.boston.com