Aurora sex offender charged with possession of child sex abuse materials

An Aurora man has been charged with 15 counts of possession of child sexual abuse material by a prior sex offender, authorities said.

Robert L. Reese, 51, of the 500 block of Hartford Avenue, was arrested Tuesday, Aug. 11.

Authorities say that between March 4 and May 30, he possessed multiple images of child sexual abuse materials depicting people under the age of 13.

During a detention hearing Thursday, Kane County Assistant State’s Attorney Danielle Bechtold said Reese was convicted in 1994 in California of two crimes equivalent to aggravated criminal sexual abuse. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison; she did not know how long he actually served.

Bechtold said the Kane County sheriff’s office received a tip in July from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Synchronoss, a cloud-based storage service for Verizon, had notified NCMEC of suspicious files associated with an account, which authorities traced to Reese, she said.

The Kane County Child Exploitation Unit investigated with help from Aurora police, the Lake County state’s attorney’s office, the Lake County sheriff’s office and the FBI.

Kane County Judge Salvatore LoPiccolo denied Bechtold’s request to detain Reese pretrial.

LoPiccolo ordered Reese to have no unsupervised contact with anyone under 18. The judge also prohibited Reese from using devices with internet access.