BELCHERTOWN — A Belchertown man has been arrested and charged with possessing child pornography after he allegedly attempted to entice a boy via Facebook Messenger.

Douglas Wallace, 28, of 145 River St., pleaded not guilty in Eastern Hampshire District Court Friday to charges of possession of child pornography and posing a child in the nude, according to Belchertown Police.

Bail was set at $2,500 with conditions that he have no unsupervised contact with people under 18 and no contact with the alleged victim or witnesses, according to the Northwestern district attorney's office.

“A lot of people think these are victimless crimes because it’s just a photo of a kid somewhere in the U.S., but all of these photographs are real children and they are somebody’s children,” said Belchertown Detective John Raymer Jr.

Police began investigating Wallace in March after he allegedly was “attempting to entice a child over Facebook Messenger to send unclothed pictures of himself” to Wallace,  police said in a news release.

On March 29, police seized several electronic devices from Wallace’s home and found “numerous images of child pornography” on his cellphone, police said.

Raymer said the case was brought to the attention of Belchertown Police by the North Brookfield Police Department after the child’s father reported the incident.

A total of five items were seized by police, including three cellphones, a computer and a leather case with DVDs, Raymer said.

“So far, all of the photographs we’ve located were on his iPhone6,” Raymer said.

When the warrant was served in March, Raymer said Wallace came in to give a voluntary statement to police. Upon his arrest Thursday, Raymer said Wallace did not speak with police.

Further charges may be filed based on review of the 51,000 photos on the computer police seized, according to Raymer.

The photos would be submitted to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for identification purposes, Raymer said.

“We investigate these kind of cases to the utmost professionalism and take it very seriously,” Raymer said.

Belchertown Police was assisted by the Massachusetts State Police Detective Unit, the Northwestern District Anti-Crime Task Force and the Northwestern district attorney’s office child abuse unit.

Wallace is due back in court on May 26. 

Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.

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