MA Psychology Board Suspends License of Mark Ternullo Following Child Porn Arrest

February 28, 2022

State officials have suspended the license of a child and family psychologist arrested recently after construction workers stumbled on a cache of what is believed to be child pornography in a secret room inside his Danvers apartment.

Mark Ternullo, 68, remains held at the Middleton Jail infirmary, apparently unable to post the $10,000 bail set by a judge last Thursday.

On Friday, the state Division of Occupational Licensure summarily suspended his license to work as a psychologist in Massachusetts.

Ternullo had been a licensed psychologist since 2000; his license had been set to expire in June. He has also worked in multiple schools in the North of Boston region, including in Gloucester and Methuen, where he was terminated for not having a current school psychologist license back in 2012.

On Feb. 9, Danvers police got a call from the owner of 4 Butler Ave., where Ternullo had been a tenant for 23 years. The owner, who along with another person bought the property last year, had hired contractors to renovate the bathroom.

While workers were ripping out a bathtub and wall due to past water damage, they found a hidden room, accessible only from a small door. A worker looked inside the room and saw a photo that appeared to have been created by someone, superimposing an image of a naked child in a sexual pose onto a naked image of an older man who, the landlord confirmed, looked like Ternullo.

The landlord called police, who got a search warrant and found nearly 1,000 similar images in that secret room as well as Ternullo’s bedroom.

The discovery renewed calls from Gov. Charlie Baker to amend the state’s bail statutes to allow for detention without bail in cases like Ternullo’s, as well as other crimes involving children in which there’s no allegation of force.

It is not known where or when the images of the children, who under the law are victims of child sexual abuse, were created and whether Ternullo had a role in that. An investigation is ongoing.

Baker has repeatedly tried to get such a bill passed, starting after an earlier Essex County case in which the state’s highest court concluded in 2019 that a 43-year-old man who took a teenage girl to an Amesbury hotel for sex could not be denied bail because there was no allegation of force.

Source: Julie Manganis, “State suspends license of psychologist charged with possession of child porn,” Haverhill Gazette, Feb. 24, 2022, URL: https://www.hgazette.com/news/local_news/state-suspends-license-of-psychologist-charged-with-possession-of-child-porn/article_d22b3a54-2c95-5d4f-b39e-c0cb57a6a271.html