World class fertilizer expert and Florida university executive faces child porn charges
Seven child pornography photos, one with a girl between 2 and 4 years old, uploaded to a search engine’s photo section tracked back to the home of a Florida Polytechnic University, investigators claim.
Based on that track back, Polk County Sheriff’s Office arrested 61-year-old Dr. Brian Birky Thursday on nine counts of child pornography possession, one count for each child in the seven photos. Birky posted $9,000 bond Friday.
Birky’s title is executive director for public and environmental health research at the Florida Industrial and Phosphate Research Institute (FIPR), which is part of Florida Polytechnic University. Birky’s Florida Poly faculty page and his FIPR profile pages had been scrubbed by Sunday. A cached version of the FIPR page says he acquired his bachelor’s (Zoology), Master’s and Ph.D. (Health Physics) degrees at the University of Florida, where he later taught.
He’s associated with a number of professional and research organizations such as The Fertilizer Institute, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Florida Chapter of the Health Physics Society and the Radiation Task Force of the International Fertilizer Industry Association.
Until Feb. 28, Polk County Sheriff’s Office didn’t know Birky from fertilizer. But, according to the probable cause affidavit, that’s the day detectives went over seven CyberTipline reports that said seven photos had been uploaded to BingImage. The first photo featured the girls gauged at 2 to 4 years old. The rest had girls between 8 and 11 years old. Only one wore clothes and she was posed so that her genitals were exposed.
The IP address came from Frontier Communications. After getting a subpoena, Frontier Communications said the customer was the Birky household.
When PCSO came Thursday morning at 7:13 a.m. with a search warrant, the affidavit says, Birky and wife Malysavanh Birky were interviewed separately.
The affidavit says Malysavanh Birky said she’s never seen child pornography. And, she said, while they throw parties now and then and will give their WiFi password to guests, there hadn’t been any parties since Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. She didn’t remember anyone being at their place when the photos were uploaded.
As for Brian Birky, the affidavit says he has two work laptops and one desktop computer at his home, as well as an iPhone.
“At first, Birky stated he does not view or look at pornography online, but then stated he “browses,”” the affidavit said. “He uses the search engine, Bing. When confronted about seeing child pornography online, Brian Birky responsed that he has seen “everything” on the Internet.”
When told what was in the CyberTipline report, the affidavit said, “Birky stated he no longer wished to talk to detectives.”
This story was originally published March 10, 2019 at 7:31 PM.
