Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

AUGUSTA

Doctor faces porn charges

By Mechele Cooper mcooper@centralmaine.com
Staff Writer

AUGUSTA -- A doctor who practices medicine in Augusta was arrested Tuesday and charged with five counts of possession of sexually explicit materials of children younger than 12.

Maine State Police arrested David York, 59, at his home at 212 Congress Circle in Topsham about 5 p.m. Tuesday with assistance from Topsham police.

York -- a general practitioner with Concentra Medical Centers -- was taken to the Two Bridges Regional Jail in Wiscasset and released Tuesday night on $2,500 cash bail.

Maine State Police Chief Col. Patrick Fleming said two computers were seized from York's house by the state computer crimes unit Tuesday morning. A preliminary examination resulted in "hundreds of images and videos of child pornography," Fleming said.

Fleming said there's no indication any of the images are of Maine children, but the computers are still being examined.

He said most of the images are from file sharing with other personal computers around the country, also known as a peer-to-peer network. People can connect their personal computers through this network and download each other's files, he said.

York was licensed to practice medicine in Maine in 2008 and lists his address with the state's Board of Licensure as Charlotte, N.C.

Concentra Medical Centers is a national health care company with offices in Augusta, Lewiston and elswehere. York treated patients in Augusta and Lewiston.

John Delorimier, spokesman for Concentra, said the company terminated York on Wednesday. He said York had been with the company one year.

"It's tragic and disturbing," Delorimier said in a telephone interview. "We found out late yesterday and immediately suspended the doctor from services at Concentra."

Delorimier said York had very little, if any, contact with children on the job. He said Concentra specializes in occupational medicine, so nine out of 10 patients treated there would be adults.

"If you got hurt on the job, you would go to one of our centers," he said. "We see very few pediatrics. The only time we would see pediatrics is for urgent-care services and we don't even promote that in Maine. Our centers are predominately occupational health."

In a statement, Concentra officials said, "first and foremost, our primary concern is to our patients and clients."

"We continue to go to great lengths in our hiring processes in order to staff our medical centers with professional and upstanding colleagues," the statement said.

Fleming said the case came to the attention of the computer crimes unit in November 2009 as part of a backlog being worked on by two new investigators.

In a peer-to-peer network, "you basically avoid the pay sites for music and porn and transfer files right between personal computers," Fleming said. "It's a fairly new technology. It's something we haven't really been able to concentrate on until we got these two new investigators."

An arrest warrant was obtained Tuesday afternoon from West Bath District Court by Maine State Police Special Agent Michael McFadden -- one of two new investigators who joined the computer crimes unit last month.

"Now that we've got these two new special investigators, we're tracking down these people," Fleming said. "We actually have people out there to do the legwork, so now it's more proactive. It's a pretty significant problem that we've known about but didn't have the resources to follow. We have a backlog that we're vigorously working on now."

Mechele Cooper -- 623-3811, ext. 408

mcooper@centralmaine.com