A Jackson Township man will be under the government's watch for eight years after he pleaded guilty Oct. 29 to downloading child pornography, distributing the material online and criminal use of a communication facility.

Anthony A. Palladino, 58, was sentenced to seven years of intermediate punishment, which allows flexibility on how a sentence is meted out.

In Palladino's case, the first three months of his sentence will be served in county jail. The rest of his sentence will have a house arrest component and will be similar to probation.

As part of his punishment, Palladino will be a state-registered sex offender for 25 years.

When Palladino was charged in 2017, he faced 52 felony charges related to child pornography.

Police reports state that the investigation goes back to January 2015 when a computer was discovered sharing child pornography on a BitTorrent file-sharing network.

Palladino reported that he frequently views and then deletes the child pornography files, the police report states.

“Palladino admitted that he stores the files in the 'download' folder or moves the files to a second hard drive in the computer,” according to the report. He told police he views child pornography “a few times a month.”

A hard-drive was recovered containing at least 14 videos and 600 images depicting child pornography and sexual abuse of children, police said.