After 12 hours in the operating room, a Children's Hospital anesthesiologist is arrested on child-porn charges

An anesthesiologist who had just started a fellowship at Children's Hospital on July 1 was arrested at his Fenway apartment Thursday evening on charges he downloaded and shared pornographic photos and videos of children as young as infants over the past few months, according to records unsealed in US District Court in Boston today.

Dr. Christopher Sheerer, 35, a fellow in pediatric cardiac anesthesiology, was ordered held until at least a detention hearing on Tuesday, according to court records.

Homeland Security agents in Baltimore began investigating Sheerer in May, when he was still a pediatric anesthesiology fellow at Johns Hopkins, living in Lancaster, PA, according to an affidavit by an agent on the case.

Sheerer, who himself has a five-year-old daughter with his ex-wife, belonged to an online chat group for "dads, uncles, and babysitters" who traded photos and videos of naked children, according to the affidavit.

After obtaining a search warrant and collecting evidence of his online activities over the past year, three Homeland Security agents were waiting for Sheerer when he arrived at his new Fenway home around 8 p.m. yesterday, wearing blue scrubs and carrying a backpack with the Children's logo on it, the affidavit states.

The agents told him they had search warrants for both him and his property and asked if they could speak to him in his apartment, according to the affidavit.

The doctor, who said he was just getting off 12 hours of surgery, agreed, they went upstairs and he gave them his iPhone 15, on which agents quickly found a logged-in app for the chat group along with images depicting "children ranging in age from infants to pubescent teenagers" in sexual poses and videos showing, among other things, "the sexual abuse of children by adults."

The agent writes Sheerer waived his Miranda rights and agreed to an interview.

When asked about what apps he used, he acknowledged that he had used Chat Application A but said that he hadn't used it in a couple of years. He initially claimed to have used the app to communicate with other doctors, and later indicated that he used it to communicate with people he was dating. SHEERER admitted that Google Account-1 was his, and indicated that he used it to communicate with people he was dating.

SHEERER denied having seen child pornography on the internet, and offered that he had never downloaded and saved it. When confronted with the assertion that there was child pornography on his phone, he told agents that he did not know how it got there.

Agents paused the interview to review evidence located on SHEERER's phone. When they resumed, they reminded SHEERER of his rights pursuant to Miranda and confirmed that he wished to continue speaking with them. They informed him that they had located child pornography in his Chat Application A account on the phone. SHEERER continued to disavow knowledge of how that child pornography got onto his device.

Agents paused the interview a second time and returned with the phone to show SHEERER certain material from Chat Application A. Agents presented him with one chat, which spanned June 11, 2023 through September 2023, in which he was discussing Minor A ["a child known to him," the affidavit states] and distributed to another user pictures and videos of a child believed to be Minor A. SHEERER admitted that one of the videos showed Minor A in the tub, but said that he didn't know who could have gotten the video and sent it out under his account. Agents showed SHEERER another video of a child believed to be Minor A, in which a hand can be seen with a sign with the handwritten name of the Verified Group. Agents showed SHEERER a third image from his Chat Application A account, which showed a child believed to be Minor A squatting naked on the bathroom floor and a hand holding the same note bearing the handwritten name of the Verified Group. SHEERER denied that she was Minor A.

In addition to the iPhone, agents also seized two laptops, an iPad and an Apple Watch, the affidavit states.

Innocent, etc.