Staff photo /Chris McBride Harold Bennett appears next to attorney Gary R. Rich in the courtroom of Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Andrew D. Logan, where he was sentenced Tuesday to five years of probation for viewing child porn.

WARREN — A 72-year-old Weathersfield man will be placed on five years of high-risk probation that will begin with house arrest for viewing child porn.

Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Andrew D. Logan handed down the sentence after taking into consideration the declining health of Harold Bennett, who regularly appeared in court in a wheelchair and carrying an oxygen tank.

Bennett, a disabled veteran, will be placed on 180 days of house arrest with electronic monitoring and is only permitted to have medical visits. He also will be labeled a tier 2 sex offender that requires him to register for 25 years. Bennett will not be permitted to have internet access or have contact with minor girls.

Logan also ruled that Bennett will have to continue receiving mental health counseling with the Veterans Administration.

Bennett was originally indicted by a Trumbull County grand jury on more than a dozen child porn charges. Several counts were nullified by the state as part of a plea agreement.

Bennett pleaded guilty in December to five counts of second-degree pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor and two counts of the same charge in the fourth-degree.

Prosecutors say police received a tip from the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force regarding Bennett having viewed images of newborns and children as young as 3 months old engaged in forced sexual acts.

The indictment says the offenses were committed from around the time of January 2019 to June 2023.

Assistant Prosecutor Gabe Wildman in previous hearings said, “I’ve been doing these cases for almost 15 years. I’ve never seen a defendant with such an interest in 1-year-olds, 2-year-olds and newborns as the indictment expresses in this case — just the nature of and the ages of the children.”

cmcbride@tribtoday.com