Dracut Man Arraigned on Child Pornography Charge

DRACUT – Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and Dracut Chief of Police Peter Bartlett have announced that Michael Murphy, 58, of Dracut, was arraigned yesterday in Lowell District Court and charged with one count of possession of child pornography.

Judge Stacey Fortes set bail at $1,000 cash and ordered the defendant to have no unsupervised contact with children under the age of 18, to not work or volunteer with children under the age of 18, to not possess computers or computer devices and to wear a GPS monitoring bracelet. The next scheduled hearing in this case is a pretrial hearing on May 25, 2018.

On March 21, 2018, Dracut Police acted on a tip from the Massachusetts State Police Computer Crimes Unit that child pornography had been traced to a subscriber, believed to be the defendant, in Dracut who was allegedly accessing child pornography from his home. On April 2, Dracut Police executed a search warrant on the defendant’s electronic devices which allegedly resulted in Dracut Police locating multiple images of child pornography. The defendant was arrested on April 2 and subsequently arraigned.

This charge is an allegation and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. 

The prosecutor assigned to this case is Assistant District Attorney Rachel Perlman.