A George Washington University lecturer was arrested after D.C. police found more than 100,000 images of young children on his computer external hard drive, according to federal court documents.
Diego Fasolini, 42, a part-time lecturer in Italian at the school, was charged with two counts of possession of child pornography. He faces between up to 20 years in prison for each charge.
He could not be reached for comment.
University spokesperson Michelle Sherrard said Fasolini was being suspended until further investigation and his classes were being reassigned.
According to an affidavit filed by D.C. police Detective Timothy Palchak, Fasolini was having difficulty with his personal external hard drive, a computer accessory for storing data, and asked an employee at the school’s technology center to back up the data and put it on a new drive. When the worker finished and checked to make sure the backup was complete, he opened a file that contained an image of a young girl being forced to have sex, according to charging documents.
Palchak interviewed Fasolini last week at the George Washington University Police office and the professor told him that he had images of adult pornography and possibly “younger porn,” which he obtained through Google searches over the Internet and from visiting a gay Web site, the affidavit said.
Palchak obtained a search warrant, and in a preliminary investigation found more than 100,000 images, including pictures depicting young children duct-taped and bound. The images were divided in folders labeled separately for boys and girls.
This is not the first time Fasolini has had a run-in with university police.
Ten years ago, as a 32-year-old graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Fasolini was charged with stealing a wallet from the school library and using an automatic teller machine to steal $1,500.
According to published newspaper reports at the time, Fasolini was arrested after digital photos taken from a surveillance video tape were released to the public and were used to helped identify him.
Fasolini pleaded guilty and prosecutors dropped the charges after he successfully completed a program for first-time offenders, according to court records in Wisconsin.
