Former sheriff’s officer arrested for child pornography possession

A former deputy for the Dukes County Sheriff’s Department was indicted Monday by a grand jury for possession of child pornography.

Patrick Doran, 29, from Hyannis, who held an entry-level position at the local Island jail in 2023 and 2024, was arrested Monday afternoon after a months-long investigation involving multiple state law enforcement agencies that began in Wisconsin and culminated in Doran’s home state of Massachusetts. 

According to a release from the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s office, in January, the Barnstable Police Department was contacted by the Pleasant Prairie Police Department in Wisconsin regarding a suspect on the Cape who had been soliciting and distributing explicit materials to a 14-year-old girl in Kenosha County, Wis. The D.A.’s office said that the suspect had been posing as a 15-year-old boy. Through a joint investigation, the local district attorney’s office said that law enforcement officers were able to determine that the suspect was Patrick Doran of Hyannis.

According to the D.A.’s office, in February, members of the Barnstable Police Department and U.S. Secret Service New England Cyber Task Force executed a search warrant at Doran’s home in Hyannis. The district attorney said investigators found nearly 1,200 files depicting child sexual abuse.

Doran was then taken into custody. Law enforcement officials also located many of the photographs and materials that had been sent to the 14-year-old girl in Wisconsin on Doran’s phone, the D.A. said in Monday’s statement.

According to sources, Doran was bailed out from a Wisconsin jail by his father, John J. Doran, who had been part of a separate investigation in March. 

During the time of the allegations — from 2023 to 2024 Doran was working as a deputy for the Dukes County Sheriff’s Office. 

“He’s no longer an employee of the Dukes County Sheriff’s Office, and he hasn’t been for several months prior to this indictment,” Sheriff Robert Ogden told The Times. 

Before bailing out his son, John J. Doran was linked in March to a brothel operation that spanned from Cambridge and Watertown to Virginia, where he was allegedly among other high-level executives, elected officials, attorneys, and contractors accused of buying sex for $350 to $600 per hour in high-end luxury apartments. The brothel ring was under the spotlight for its focus on primarily Asian women and the very public, high-end clientele, who all paid a monthly fee to the brothel in addition to the hourly rate. 

The Pleasant Prairie Police Department in Wisconsin and Barnstable Police Department on the Cape, along with the nationwide group called the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, collaborated to bring the case together against the younger Doran. 

At the court Monday, the Cape and Islands District Attorney’s office requested a cash bail of $10,000, which the court reduced to an imposed bail of $5,000. Doran’s next court date is on July 17, for a pretrial hearing.