NASHUA, N.H. (AP) — A New Hampshire pastor was arrested Tuesday on a charge of possession of child sexual assault images.
Stephen Bates, 46, the pastor of the Bible Baptist Church in Nashua, was arrested after the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at the church parsonage and found two flash drives containing “numerous” child pornography images, police said.
Bates’ bail was set at $3,000. It wasn’t immediately known if he had a lawyer. Phone and email messages were left for him.
Nashua police said in a news release that an investigation involving the church began in 2016. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children sent police a tip indicating that child pornography had been accessed by an electronic device using an IP address associated with the church. More tips were received in 2017, and all were investigated, but the results were insufficient to support any criminal charges.
Police said a suspect in Denver in 2019 shared child pornography with an “unknown individual” through social media, and that the IP address used by that person was associated with the church.
A child pornography investigation in Tallahassee, Florida, in 2020, and an investigation into the sexual exploitation of a child in Blaine, Washington, in 2021, also involved accounts associated with the church, police said.
This article originally appeared here.