San Angelo Man Admits to Possessing 12,000 Photos and Videos of Child Porn

Up to 8,000 images and 4,000 videos of underage children performing sexual acts were found on a computer used by a 24-year-old San Angelo man yesterday, who admitted to investigators that he was trading the pornographic material like it was baseball cards.

According to a complaint written by sheriff’s investigator Andrew Alwine, the investigation into Robert Mark Haugland II began with the Attorney General’s Office and was referred to the local sheriff’s department on April 22.

Little over three weeks after taking over the two open child pornography investigations, Alwine met with Haugland and his two roommates at their residence in the 1900 block of A&M Ave. on Thursday, where the detective obtained a Dell Inspiron laptop and a cell phone Haugland had been using to collect the pornography.

The complaint states that the devices actually belonged to his roommates, who gave the detective permission to seize the items and search them for evidence of child porn. Haugland, who was also present when the devices were seized, offered Alwine a confession and directed him to where on the computer’s storage banks he would find the video and image files.

Once at the sheriff’s office, Haugland told Alwine that he had been using the video and pictures of children under the age of 15 in trade for images of kids age 15 engaged in sexual acts.

Haugland said he used the application Kik, the file-sharing program DropBox and imgsrch.ru to acquire and share the videos and images, the complaint states. He also admitted to having obtained and shared child pornographic photos and videos as recently as May 12.

Haugland was arrested after his admissions and was booked into the county jail for possession with intent to promote child pornography, a second-degree felony. He is being held in lieu of a $35,000 surety bond.