Calls, notes in child-porn case

Years before federal authorities arrested his neighbors on child-pornography charges, a Collingdale man said, he repeatedly called police to report having heard children screaming in the night in the rowhouse next door.

Ken Christian said he dialed 911 many times over the last four years and spoke with the local police chief more than once, saying he was concerned for the children's safety. The police, he said, urged him to keep a log recording his concerns.

That log, which Christian provided to The Inquirer, recounts numerous unheeded warnings about John Jackey Worman, who was arrested Thursday on sexual-abuse and pornography charges.

Delaware County District Attorney G. Michael Green said yesterday that his office was investigating Christian's complaints to police and reviewing his handwritten log as well as reports of the Collingdale Police Department. Green declined to comment further.

Worman, 39, was charged with sexually assaulting eight children over a decade - including one child who was 3 months old - and videotaping himself engaged in sex acts with his victims. The abuse allegedly took place at his home in Collingdale and at a former residence in Colwyn.

Two Delaware County women, Concetta Jackson and Dorothy Prawdzik, were charged with helping him secretly tape sexually explicit images of children. Authorities said the women had an intimate relationship with Worman.

U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan described the child abuse as horrific. Investigators who searched the Colwyn house said they recovered more than one million images from Worman's computer, including thousands of videos of him assaulting children.

An investigation into whether Worman distributed any of those images is continuing, authorities said.

To Christian, the children's plaintive screams over the years were a clear sign that something was amiss in the house on Westmont Avenue, where as many as a dozen children at a time stayed.

His complaints dated to 2003, said Christian, 56, a former SEPTA bus driver and onetime casino worker. Once, he said, he called police to report that someone was "screaming bloody murder." Another time, he said, he told them, "It sounds like someone is hurting someone."

"I mean, the walls here are, like, paper thin," he wrote in his log. "You can hear things that you would not hear in a normal and responsible family and household, especially early in the morning. It's enough to make you sick and mad because it's so disturbing."

Christian said in an interview yesterday that officers responded to his calls, but sometimes left when no one answered the door at the house next door. Twice, he said, he met with Police Chief John Hewlings to relay his concern that Worman was hurting the children, perhaps sexually.

"You would never see adults go over there," he said. "Him and the kids, that's all he associated with - little girls."

He said Hewlings seemed concerned, but appeared to take no action.

Hewlings did not return phone calls yesterday. Calls to the police department yesterday were not returned.

Christian said he also complained to the Delaware County Housing Authority, which provided a housing subsidy to Jackson, who also lived in the Collingdale house where authorities say some of the abuse took place.

In letters to the Housing Authority and in phone calls to Jackson's caseworker, Christian said he reported that he suspected that Worman was sexually abusing children in the house.

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