Niles Man Charged Over Child Porn Admits Grooming 15-Year-Old Girl: Prosecutors

SKOKIE, IL — Authorities are working to identify a teenage girl who was groomed via a messaging app by a Niles man arrested this week on a child pornography charge.

Mark Kuehn, 41, of the 6900 block of Rosemary Lane, was arrested Wednesday in the 7100 block of Touhy Avenue and charged with possession of child pornography following an investigation that began earlier this year, according to Cook County prosecutors and sheriff's police.

Prosecutors said the Verizon cloud service provider Synchronoss Technologies has since January submitted more than 30 reports about Kuehn to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, providing his name and phone number as the company alerted authorities that he had uploaded more than 100 files containing depictions of the sexual abuse of children.

Investigators with the Cook County Sheriff's Police Special Victims Unit confirmed the reports and got a warrant for Kuehn's account, which contained more images of child sexual abuse, as well as images of him, Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Jenna Reinhardt said Friday at Keuhn's initial court appearance in Skokie.

Detectives got a warrant for Kuehn's phone, which he was carrying at the time of his arrest, Reinhardt said. They found several images depicting the sexual abuse of prepubescent children, she said.

According to a statement from the sheriff's office, a forensic analysis of Kuehn's phone turned up "nearly two dozen pornographic images of children," some as young as 5 years old.

Kuehn waived his constitutional right against self-incrimination and explained to investigators the website and search terms that he would use to find images of child sexual abuse, according to the prosecutor.

During questioning, Kuehn admitted that he had viewed several explicit images that were found on his phone and confirmed to detectives that knew they depicted children under the age of 13, Reinhardt told the judge.

"[Kuehn] did more than possess child pornography, he also groomed a child through the chat messaging platform called Chat-Avenue," Reinhardt said. "[Kuehn ] admitted that he knew the child was 15-year-old when they were first chatting with each other in 2019, [Kuehn] slowly coerced his victim to send him images of child pornography."

According to the prosecutor, Keuhn said that, at first, he would chat with the girl about her life, but "the chats turned sexual," and they exchanged partially nude photos.

Keuhn was ordered held at Cook County Jail unless he can come up with the $30,000 cash portion of his bail prior to his next court appearance, a bond review hearing set for Wednesday.

No information about efforts to identify the girl who prosecutors said Keuhn admitted to grooming was available Friday from a spokesperson for the Cook County sheriff's police.