A Ridgewood husband and wife last week were arraigned on charges of possessing numerous files of children, some as young as 3, depicted in a sexual manner or performing sexual acts, according to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.
The images and videos, Brown said, were allegedly downloaded off the Internet by the husband using a peer-to-peer network.
George Slavescu, 49, and Ioana Pricope-Slavescu, 35, were both arraigned last Friday. George Slavescu has been charged in a criminal complaint with 19 counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child and 19 counts of possessing a sexual performance by a child. He remained on Rikers Island Wednesday on $30,000 bail.
Ioana Pricope-Slavescu has been charged in a separate criminal complaint with 15 counts of possessing a sexual performance by a child. She remained locked up Wednesday on $10,000 bail.
According to Brown, Slavescu allegedly made statements to detectives that he had been downloading videos of child pornography for the past few years using peer-to-peer networks and that he had more than a thousand files of child pornography, some depicting children as young as 3 years old, and that he would masturbate to the videos. Pricope-Slavescu also allegedly stated that her husband connected the computer tower in their living room to the television and they would watch child pornography together.
“The Internet has replaced the proverbial back alley as the place where purveyors of child pornography gather to share their vile and disturbing videos and photographs of young children being sexually abused,” Brown said. “It is important for the public to remember that the images and videos being exchanged are, for all intents and purposes, photos and footage of crime scenes as they depict real children being cruelly victimized both physically and emotionally and who will have to carry the painful memory of that which occurred to them for the rest of their lives.”
If convicted, Slavescu faces up to seven years in prison, and his wife faces up to four years.
