Pasco doctor on trial for child porn

TAMPA -- The ex-wife of a Port Richey physician rocked back and forth on the witness stand and sobbed as she recalled the first time she discovered Dr. Richard Carino had viewed child pornography at their home.

"I vomited," Autumn Carino said. "It made me physically ill."

Prosecutors called Autumn Carino as their first witness today following opening statements. Richard Carino (left), 48, is on trial this week, charged with possession and receipt of child pornography over the Internet.

Dr. Carino, a family practice doctor who specialized in pain management, attracted federal law enforcement's attention in 2005 as the subject of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation for illegal dispensing prescription drugs online. When DEA agents searched his Port Richey office in July of that year, his wife told a detective that he had been downloading child pornography at home.

Autumn Carino testified that she didn't realize her husband would get into so much trouble. She said she wanted to get help for him and saw the detective, whom she knew, as being her "hope."

"I didn't want my marriage to end," Autumn Carino said. "I wanted to fix his problem. I just wanted it to go away so that everything would be all right."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Laurel Moore said during opening statements that investigators recovered child pornography from computers at Richard Carino's office and home.

"I regret that you will see some of these images and video during the trial," Moore told jurors.

One of the videos prosecutors intend to show depicts a young girl being raped, Moore said. A detective who investigated that rape will testify at trial and tell about that young girl, said Moore.

Court records revealed that Carino's computers were used to access hundreds of sites for child pornography.

After Autumn Carino discovered her husband was viewing the images in the wee hours of the night around the Fourth of July weekend in 2005, she confronted him and he admitted it, she said. A month later, in August 2005, she found him again viewing child pornography.

That time, the confrontation escalated and she called 911, she said, and Richard Carino was arrested.

Autumn Carino filed for divorce a few weeks later.

Prosecutors say they also intend to call Richard Carino's younger sister, who will testify that he molested her as a child.

Kevin Graham, Times staff writer

[Pasco County Sheriff's Office]