A well-liked Michigan orthodontist is being accused of soliciting nude photographs from minors and possessing a “large” collection of child porn.
Fuqay-Varina Police Department initially contacted Dr. Thomas Shannon in 2021 while investigating reports that Shannon had requested sexually explicit photos from a 17-year-old girl via Snapchat. They believed he had begun asking as early as 2019 and requested that she send him photos she might have taken in the eighth or ninth grade. Shannon even offered to pay the young girl.
When confronted at his Shannon Orthodontics office with the evidence, he stated, “If it happened, obviously it’s all there, and I have to ‘fess up to it.” He suggested he wasn’t aware of her age but that many girls shared photos of themselves on the app. To clear his name, Shannon hired a forensic investigator to review his iPhone and iCloud accounts, trying to prove to the police that he didn’t have any child porn. Shannon evidently didn’t do a thorough job of cleaning out his devices because his hired reviewer uncovered a massive amount of images in his data that depicted sexually explicit photos of children, including those under the age of 10 as young as infants. Given the evidence, it appears he attempted to arrange for sex with some of these children.
Shannon was finally arrested Thursday and charged with several felonies, including possession of child pornography, aggravated possession of child sexually abusive material and using a computer to commit a crime. His bond was set at $200,000.
