Child Porn Charges at Florida Day-Care : Investigation: Parents identify nude photos of 14 children who attended center.

Fourteen children have been identified by their parents in nude photographs seized from the home of a day-care center owner charged with possession of child pornography, police said today.

John Shaver, 56, was charged with five counts of possessing child pornography after the photographs and magazines were found at his home. Police said they are considering additional charges.

Broward County officials on Thursday shut down Shaver’s Rainbow Learning Center, contending he “lacked good moral character.”

Fourteen children who attended the day-care center were identified by some of the 140 parents who went to the Police Department Thursday night and sorted through 200 to 300 pictures taken from Shaver’s home.

Only the faces of the children were shown to the parents. The children were pictured naked finger-painting and playing in swimming pools. No sexual situations were depicted, police said.

A weeping Marla Echevarria, whose daughter was not among those in the pictures, expressed relief but concern for other parents who saw their children in the photographs.

“The pictures were horrifying,” she said. “I saw parents hysterical in there.”

While Shaver admitted owning the pictures police confiscated, he said he doesn’t consider simple possession as pornography.

“The way I understand child pornography is to tell kids to take off their clothes and photograph them in the nude. I didn’t do it,” he said. “It’s probably done . . . but I am not that way.

“It didn’t cause harm to anyone,” he said. “A lot of people have secret vices.”

Shaver opened the day-care center in 1985. Thirty preschool children attended the center, and about 200 have attended since it opened.

When he applied for his license, Shaver said he wasn’t asked whether he ever operated a day-care center and did not volunteer such information.

In 1984 in Hawaii, Shaver pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of operating a day-care center without a license. The plea came a year after the state of Hawaii revoked his license amid allegations that he fondled several young girls at his center.

He was never criminally charged, and Shaver denies any wrongdoing.