A Clinton resident is accused of possessing images of children as young as 2 years old being raped, according to court documents.

Christopher A. Knowles, 27, appeared in Island County Superior Court June 26.

Judge Vickie Churchill found probable cause existed to believe he committed nine counts of possession of depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct in the first degree.

She set his bail at $25,000. Knowles bailed out of jail last Monday.

On June 30, prosecutors charged Knowles with four counts of possession of depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

If convicted of the charges, Knowles could face up to eight and a half years in prison under the standard sentencing range.

In March, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a report from Dropbox Inc., which runs an online file storage service, that an account holder uploaded child pornography.

The company compares uploaded files to known algorithms of child porn.

An examiner at the center was able to geo-locate the IP address to Clinton and, therefore, the Island County Sheriff’s Office was alerted.

A detective reviewed the videos and found that 180 met the criteria as child pornography, according to his report on the investigation.

The children in the videos were between the ages of 2 and 13 and were being raped by adult men in most of the videos, he wrote.

The detective obtained search warrants that led to Knowles.

In addition, a search warrant for Dropbox yielded hundreds more videos of child porn, as well as images of Knowles co-mingled with the illegal pornographic files, the report states.