Henderson man arrested on child pornography charges

A Henderson man has been charged with repeatedly downloading and distributing child pornography.

An arrest report for Edward Wayne Bloom, 54, indicates that a Henderson police officer was contacted in April 2019 by Facebook regarding individuals sharing videos of child pornography through the Messenger app.

The officer — who works with two task forces aimed at preventing crimes against children — was told that an individual had uploaded videos through the app on nine occasions, with the videos depicting children engaged in sex acts. The two parties exchanging the messages were traced to Henderson and the Philippines.

Facebook provided Bloom’s name, phone number and IP address to law enforcement from one of the accounts, according to the report, and police tracked the communications to a mobile device belonging to Bloom.

Bloom listed as an address a Henderson church “frequented by transient subjects for their meals and which is also used as an address for their identification purposes,” the report states.

In September, authorities with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force received 27 more reports of possession and distribution of child pornography, coming from Facebook and Google, that were linked to Bloom, police said in the arrest report.

“Upon visual review of the files, I determined that Bloom had distributed a total of 54 video files and three image files depicting child pornography, either via direct upload or sharing illicit material, on 27 separate occasions, using Facebook Messenger,” an officer wrote.

On Oct. 22, police located Bloom on the 200 block of West Basic Road in Henderson.

“I informed him that I needed to speak to him regarding an internet crime related matter,” the officer wrote. “Without being asked a specific question, Bloom stated that he was receiving pornography via the internet and that he wanted to stop. He stated he did not want to get into detail of what since we were on ‘church property.’ ”

He also told police “he was unsuccessfully ‘trying to stop,’ but kept receiving (the materials) from other people,” according to the arrest report.

Bloom was arrested by police. He was charged in Henderson Justice Court and eventually released.

In March, police received more reports from Facebook of more communications depicting child pornography that were eventually traced to Bloom’s phone, according to the report.

On April 30, police tracked Bloom to a home in the 1700 block of Athol Avenue in Henderson. When contacted, he told officers “he was sorry for ‘doing it again’ and that he will be looking for a new phone without Internet access,” police said.

He was arrested again. He now faces multiple felonies of possession and distribution of pornography of a person under the age of 16. Bail is set at $190,000.

Contact Glenn Puit by email at gpuit@reviewjournal.com. Follow @GlennatRJ on Twitter.