Photo: Courtesy https://scholar.google.com Suspect: Matthew Ferris Peterson
Written By Robert L. McCullough
October 3, 2022 – Santa Barbara County, Ca. Perhaps calling into question once again the value of a college education in today’s employment marketplace, the arrest of 41-year-old Carpinteria resident UCSB Researcher Charged with Possession of Child Porn Matthew Ferris Peterson—a recognized “Google Scholar” –certainly won’t help the reputation of academic staff and administrators who call the University of California at Santa Barbara home.
Suspect: Matthew Ferris Peterson
According to Santa Barbara County Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Karapetian, Peterson—a researcher in UCSB’s Vision and Image Understanding Lab—was “the subject of an investigation” by the UC Police Department and the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department that led to the service of a search warrant on June 29, 2022.
The product of that search included evidence of “child sexual abuse material” on his university- issued on-campus work computer and resulted in his arrest at that time, with his bail amount set at $50,000. The university’s media relations manager Kiki Reyes commented that “there is no indication at this time that the alleged behavior under investigation had any connection to the research” in which Peterson was involved.
Deputy D.A. Karapetian indicated that her office intends to prosecute Peterson with additional evidence of “prior acts of sexual offenses.”
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