Aug. 1—He received the five-year prison sentence, which is the mandatory minimum for first-degree child pornography possession, from Judge Maureen M. Keegan on July 18. Under the sentence, Harkness will be on probation for 20 years after he is released from prison, with the possibility of up to 15 more years behind bars if he violates release conditions, the records show.
Harkness was convicted in 2013 of two counts of risk of injury to a child under a provision dealing with indecent intimate contact, according to an affidavit by Plymouth Police Sgt. Cesar Beiros. One count involved a 5-year-old Thomaston girl and the other involved an 11-year-old Litchfield girl.
Harkness served a five-year prison sentence, was released in April 2018, and began serving 10 years of probation, according to Beiros.
One of the conditions of his probation was that he take lie-detector tests. On Dec. 3, 2021, a test concluded that he had been untruthful in answering questions, including one about whether he had viewed any nude image of a minor in the previous year, according to the sergeant.
During a subsequent unannounced home visit by two probation officers, Harkness admitted that he had an unapproved electronic device and turned over a smartphone, the sergeant reported.
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Subsequent forensic reports concluded that a flash memory card submitted for analysis contained 14 still images and 31 videos “which appear to be pornographic/sexually stimulating in nature,” Beiros wrote.
The report also found that the card contained 5,553 still pictures and 171 videos classified as “child exploitation/age indetermined” and a total of 866 videos of children, according to the sergeant.
He added that a review by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found that the files on the card appear to include 48 still pictures and 15 videos of child victims who have been identified by law enforcement authorities.
The forensic report described pictures and videos that the sergeant called “highly disturbing, sexually graphic, and sexually explicit.”
He added that there is one video that appears to be homemade, showing a man identified by a probation officer as Harkness hiding a camera in a pile of clothes. The video shows “a juvenile female” using the bathroom and ends with Harkness retrieving the camera shortly after the girl leaves the bathroom, the sergeant reported.
Harkness has been in jail since Jan. 4, 2022, when he was arrested on probation violation charges in the risk of injury cases and held on $200,000 bond, records show. Although he was not arrested on the new criminal charges until Nov. 3, 2022, it appears that he will receive credit for all his time in jail because online state Department of Correction records list his “maximum release date” as Jan. 4, 2027, five years after he was jailed.
