N. Ind. pastor ordered held in custody child porn charges

FORT WAYNE – A federal magistrate has ordered that a northern Indiana church pastor facing child pornography possession charges be kept in custody until his trial.

Prosecutors said 64-year-old Bernard Squires of rural Columbia City had at least 10,000 pornographic images of children and 5,000 videos depicting child pornography on a computer hard drive.

Squires is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church in Columbia City. He was arrested last week as part of an FBI investigation into child pornography distribution over the Internet.

His wife and five other pastors testified Thursday in support of his release from custody, citing his volunteer work as a Whitley County Sheriff’s Department chaplain and at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Fort Wayne.

The judge, however, ruled that Squires was a flight risk.