TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- A former New Jersey lawmaker who had championed bills aimed at fighting child pornography was indicted Wednesday on child porn charges.

A grand jury indicted Neil Cohen, 57, on four counts that include possessing, reproducing and distributing the illegal images. He also faces an official misconduct charge.

Cohen resigned as state assemblyman in July following allegations that he viewed child porn on his state-issued computer.

If convicted of the most serious counts, Cohen could be sentenced to more than a decade in prison and $150,000 in fines.

"We charge that Mr. Cohen used the computer equipment in his taxpayer-funded legislative office to view child pornography, printing out copies that were accessible to others in the office," said Attorney General Anne Milgram in announcing the indictment Wednesday.

Milgram's office began investigating the Democrat after a staffer reported finding a printout of a nude adolescent girl this summer in Cohen's Union Township office.

After giving up his Assembly seat, Cohen checked himself into a psychiatric hospital. A call to his cell phone was not answered Wednesday, and his lawyer did not return a telephone message.

In 2002, a Cohen-sponsored measure creating a hotline for the public to report computer crimes such as child pornography became law.

He also co-sponsored a law retroactively removing immunity from churches, schools and charities that negligently hired those who sexually abused children.

Cohen is accused of having photographic images of underage girls performing sex acts or simulating sex acts on the computer. Milgram would not specify the number of images found except to say it was "more than one."

Cohen has not been arrested. He will be issued a summons in two to four weeks.

TBO.com - News From AP

Another one for:

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Our nation has not always lived up to its ideals, yet those ideals have never ceased to guide us. They expose our flaws, and lead us to mend them. We are the beneficiaries of the work of the generations before us and it is each generation's responsibility to continue that work. - Laura Bush

Leftists and very small children don't seem to be able to understand that the Government isn't there to "fix" the economy, anymore than a tick is there to fix your dog.~Oftencold

Right up there with the guy who sang "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off (to have a good time) dying because of AIDS...

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"You get the respect that you give" - cnredd

Child pornographers and child molesters are crud.
I really don't have anything against adult pornography. Not my bag, but to each his own on that and marijuana smoking (if it was legal).
But I don't get why anyone would want to look at pictures of a minor who was coerced into posing naked. Weird "O" of the worst genre.
Piece of crappy crud.

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