Porn charges dropped against foster dad

Daily Journal Staff report

A judge dismissed four of five child pornography charges against a San Mateo man accused of molesting the 9-year-old foster child he was in the process of adopting but the English software engineer still faces multiple counts of lewd behavior.

Tarquin Craig Thomas, 44, was expected to begin jury trial today on the remaining counts but the date was vacated after the prosecution altered the offense dates on the criminal complaint. Thomas now returns to court May 4 to set an entirely new date.

Judge Susan Etezadi vacated the trial to get the defense time to review the new information. The change also followed a hearing at which she agreed to dismiss the four pornography charges. A change in law only allows defendants to be charged once for child pornography rather than one count for each image.

Thomas’ trial has been postponed a dozen times since his arrest more than four years ago after prosecutors alleged he sexually and physically abused an Oregon foster child he was adopting.

After the boy returned to Oregon, Thomas allegedly kept tabs on him through a global tracking device hidden in a framed print of them together and contacted the boy’s biological mother with hopes of retrieving the boy and returning to the United Kingdom, according to the prosecution. After his arrest, a woman cleaning his home found a computer disk allegedly containing images of three boys who had a mentoring relationship with Thomas and some of the images involved contact with an animal.