Ball State resident hall director arrested on child porn charges
MUNCIE, Ind. (WISH) — A residence hall director at Ball State University is facing multiple charges in connection to the possession of child pornography.
Braden Robinson, 24, was taken into custody just after 7 p.m. Monday after officials noticed “suspicious internet activity” coming from Robinson’s room. The university’s IT department was able to connect the activity to Robinson after it was determined that he logged in to the university’s internet portal using his school username and password at the Studebaker East dorm.
Investigators were were able to search Robinson’s internet history and found thousands of pornographic child images and videos. It was revealed that Robinson looked at one site 20 times from August 16 to September 26.
The suspect would later reveal that he intentionally viewed child porn of young girls for three years. He said that he preferred children in the age range of 8-13, but has viewed child porn where victims were as young as 4. Robinson said from August 16 to now that he viewed the images four times a week for an average of 25 to 30 minutes each session.
After being shown some still images from videos found on his computer, Robinson admitted he recognized four of the six that were shown to him where the victims were participating in sexual acts.
Robinson faces five counts of possession of child pornography and is being held in Delaware County Jail on a $25,000 bond.
Ball State released a statement on the arrest:
On October 1, Ball State University Police arrested Braden Robinson, a residence hall director, for alleged possession of child pornography. Mr. Robinson has been employed at Ball State since July 2018.
The University goes the extra mile to monitor illegal or inappropriate activity on Ball State’s network. We employ several layers of information security designed to protect university systems and data against outside attack. In this case, one of our defensive systems identified numerous attempted connections to a remote site, flagged as hosting potentially illegal content. Because our systems detected potentially illegal activity, the matter was referred to law enforcement.
In terms of Mr. Robinson’s employment status …this case will go through the proper university procedures in terms of the status of his future employment. Mr. Robinson has been suspended.
Robinson has been a an employee with Ball State since July 2018. He has been suspended pending the investigation.