Dear John:

Welcome to the Church. I praise God that you will be entering the Church next Easter.

You can certainly talk to a priest about any of your sins, but you will not be able to formally receive the Sacrament of Confession until just before Easter. You will at that time be given the opportunity for First Confession before receiving the Sacrament of Confirmation (I presume you have already been validly baptized in some non-Catholic ecclesial community).

When you go to the Sacrament of Confession, confess every serious sin in your life that you can remember. Since this will be your first Confession, it will be a Life Review. Do not leave anything out. When the priest absolves you, you will be squeaky clean and in a State of Grace. This absolution also forgives sin that you have honestly forgotten. ALL SIN is forgivable. Do not be embarrassed to confess anything.

As for reporting the child pornography, I do not think that is needed as the FBI has a very active task force and knows about most all sources of this material.

As to you coming across this material, the thing is that it you saw it on your screen, a copy of that child pornography is on your hard drive, even if you never deliberately downloaded it. It will be in your Temporary Internet Files folder. Deleting the contents of that folder or any file on your hard drive does not actually erase the file (more on that below).

If you came across a site that contained child pornography, it is possible for the FBI to come knocking on your door even 4-5 years later.

I believe you when you say that this was unintentional. The problem is that it does not matter that you did not intend to come across the child pornography. Legal principle includes the concept of mens rea (criminal intent). That means that a prosecutor needs to prove a person had the "intent" to commit the crime. Legislatures, however, when writing laws, may suspend mens rea for certain crimes. Child Pornography is one of those crimes that mens rea has been suspended.

This means that your intent does not matter. The mere fact of knowingly possessing the child pornography is enough to be prosecuted. You knowingly saw the material on your computer. That is all that is needed. (by the way, most states define a child, for the purposes of the definition of child pornography, as anyone under the age of 18. I girl, for example, can be 17 years and 11 months hold when the picture was taken and that will be considered child pornography under the law.

Now, any prosecutor who doesn't have his head up where the sun does not shine will not prosecute over what is called a "cache" case, that is material that is only in the Temporary Internet Files. It is the actual downloading and collecting that prosecutors usually target. But, there is no guarantee of this. Any prosecutor who wants to manipulate his political points with the public may prosecute even on the most flimsy of cases.

As mentioned, when you delete a file, it is not actually deleted and police computer forensics can recover most of the deleted material. Thus, you need to clean your computer so that no deleted file can be recovered.

What you need to do is:

   1. Never access a pornography site again
   2. Search your computer for any pornographic image files and delete them, using the search function and searching for *.gif, *.jpg, *.bmp; *.mov; *.wmv; *.mp4; and other picture or video files that might apply
   3. Empty your Recycle Bin
   4. Get the program Ace Utilities (if you have Windows machine)
   5. With Ace Utilities, go to the Erase History section
   6. Select all options offered
   7. Click on START CLEANING
   8. When that finishes, click on CLEAN SYSTEM REGISTRY
   9. Choose all options in that section
  10. Click on the Scan button. When the scan is finished, click on Remove All.
  11. Then go to the PROTECT section
  12. Click on WIPE DELETED FILE DATA
  13. Choose the option "Eliminate all traces of files left on selected drive". If you have more than one hard drive, you will need to do this for each drive.
  14. Click on NEXT
  15. A Help File will pop-up. You can cancel that window.
  16. Click on NEXT again
  17. Then click on WIPE OPTIONS
  18. Choose all options available except the "Enable Shortcut (.link) context menu)
  19. Set the Wipe methods to both GUTMANN from the drop down boxes
  20. Click on OK
  21. Click on START

This process can take up to 12-18 or more depending on the size of your hard drive. You will need to do this with your C drive, and also with your Data drive if you have one (such as Drive D) where your documents are stored.

During this wipe process do not use your computer, and disconnect it from the Internet. If you have any programs that run automatically, such as virus checkers, turn them off.

Following these directions will completely clean your computer of all traces of this material. Of course, this will not mean much if you go browsing to porno sites again.

Everyone needs to beware! Any porno site may have illegal pornography on it without you knowing about it, plus virus and other malicious programs can be loaded onto your computer from these sites.

Even if you have no intention of looking for or downloading illegal pornography, that will not matter. If there is some reason for the police to search your computer and they find any remnants of illegal pornography, you can be prosecuted and perhaps go to prison for up to 10 years per picture (theoretically).

Bottomline: Avoid Internet pornography at all costs.

By the way: Every single time anyone goes to a website, their IP address is recorded by the system (the webmaster doesn't have to do anything, it is automatic). With a court order, the police can use that IP address to track you down. And if a person buys a membership in any porno site, that information is readily and easily available to police.

Let this be a lesson to you. We will pray that you will not indulge in pornography again. And we also pray that all will go well during RCIA and you will enter next Easter the Catholic Church, the Church that Jesus personally founded. Praise God!

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary