A Monroe County man charged with 200 counts of child pornography has had his charges bound over to county court.

Owen McCaffrey, 62, of Effort, was scheduled to have a preliminary hearing Feb. 26 before District Judge Colleen Mancuso of Brodheadsville.However, McCaffrey waived his right to the hearing, and will appear for a hearing before the Monroe County Court of Common Pleas.McCaffrey has been charged with one count each of sexual abuse of children, dissemination of child pornography; sexual abuse of children, child pornography; and criminal use of communication facility.He remains free in lieu of $50,000 bail.According to an affidavit of probable cause filed by Detective Brian Webbe of the Detective Unit of the Monroe County Office of the District Attorney:On Oct. 30, Webbe was conducting an online Internet investigation to identify people possessing and sharing child pornography using the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing network.The BitTorrent network is an open source peer-to-peer file sharing network that permits users to share files directly from one another's computers through the use of publicly available software.At 12:45 a.m., Webbe made a direct connection to a suspect computer and downloaded 957 image files of child pornography which were present on that computer and actively being shared.Of those, 446 depicted children 13 years of age or younger, while the remaining 511 files depicted children 14 or older.At 8:50 a.m. Jan. 7, a search warrant was served on the premises in Chestnuthill Township.Officers were met by McCaffrey at the front door, who said he lives alone and no one else was there.An Acer model E15-511 laptop was located in a small room that appeared to be used as an office.Attached to the computer was a Western Digital 2 TB portable hard drive.A search on the computer revealed the presence of a BitTorrent network client known as "qBitTorrent," which is the same nameused by the suspect computer.Webbe also located numerous photographs and videos of scantily clan young female children in sexually suggestive poses.Post-Miranda, McCaffrey admitted to having downloaded child pornography numerous times using the BitTorrent network between 2007 and several weeks before his arrest.McCaffrey said he would download child pornography using qBitTorrent, and then delete the files of child pornography after viewing them.He would then download additional files of child pornography, sometimes the same files that he had previously downloaded.