Anthony Gentile, 57, told Judge Gary L. Sharpe of the United States District Court on Monday that he was “of course terrified of prison,” prior to being sentenced to five years on child pornography charges.

Gentile had pleaded guilty in June to these charges, after police in 2014 seized from his Guilderland home hard drives containing thousands of graphic pornographic images and videos of children as young as 2.

Through his attorney, Trevor Hannigan, Gentile had asked the judge to consider house arrest.

Gentile spoke in court, saying that he was “truly and sincerely sorry” for his actions and regretted them deeply. He said  he was anxious to try to rebuild the life “turned upside-down by my own doing.”

Sharpe sentenced Gentile to the mandatory minimum — set by the United States Congress, Sharpe pointed out in court — of five years on the count of receipt of child pornography, but exercised his discretion on the other two counts, sentencing Gentile to five years on each count, with all of the sentences to be served concurrently. He will then have 10 years of supervised release.

Gentile had been “fully forthcoming” about his 15 years of use of child pornography, Sharpe said in court; he admitted responsibility and had not engaged in any criminal behavior since his arrest. Sharpe said he had also taken into account the length of time that had passed since Gentile’s arrest.

Gentile lived at 6019 Baneberry Drive and was a project manager in computer systems at General Electric, where he had worked for 18 years, when he was arrested in September 2014 on six counts of promoting a sexual performance of a child, a felony, Lieutenant Robert Winn of the Colonie Police Department told The Enterprise earlier. According to Winn, police found no indication that local children were harmed; the child pornography appeared to be made commercially, much of it in eastern Europe or Asia.

According to the plea agreement reached in June, Gentile “knowingly received and distributed” sexually explicit images and videos of children; the youngest specifically mentioned in the agreement look to be about 2 years old, the agreement says. Police seized from him hard drives containing thousands of images and videos.

Sharpe told Gentile in the courtroom Monday, “I don’t understand these crimes, and I’m not going to lecture you on the harm you’ve done to the children in the photos. They didn’t volunteer to be in those photos,” he said, adding that the pornographic photos of children are made “only because there are people out there like you” who will pay for pornographic materials involving children, providing a financial incentive for their production.

Gentile was ordered to pay restitution of $22,000, to be divided among five victims who have been identified as the subjects of some of the pornographic images in his possession and to register as a sex offender.

Assistant United States Attorney Michael Barnett told The Enterprise on Monday that the victims are not necessarily from upstate New York, but are people who have been abused and who, “through their attorneys, have requested restitution in cases like these.”

Sharpe explained that he thought that Gentile had been “fully disclosing and honest” with the forensic psychiatrist who had interviewed him for his pre-sentencing report. Sharpe said that these reports often seem to be made on the basis of “less-than-full disclosure,” implying that the conclusions of this report might be more trustworthy than those of many other reports.

Sharpe took into account, he said, Gentile’s behavior since his arrest — with no new instances of criminal behavior — and his likelihood of recidivism.

The length of time between Gentile’s arrest in September 2014 and the criminal complaint brought against him in February 2016 was due to the need, Barnett told The Enterprise on Monday, to review all of the materials seized from Gentile to see if he was involved in abusing any children or producing any child pornography. “He was not,” Barnett said.

The likelihood of Gentile committing similar crimes again was called “remote” by Richard B. Krueger, M.D., who wrote in his pre-sentencing report in June that readily acknowledges his masturbatory interest in images of females ranging in age from prepubescent through pubescent and post-pubescent, but that there is “no indication that he has ever actually tried to sexually abuse or actually sexually abused a minor.” The report continues, “Indeed, he has a very constricted history of sexual partners and most of his behavior has involved viewing of pornography only and not attempts to have actual sexual interactions with another person.”

Krueger wrote that Gentile reported being in sex-offender-specific therapy for a year and that he believed that Gentile had “learned from his involvement with the legal system.”

Krueger wrote, “Oftentimes the intervention of the legal system in the form of an arrest is ‘curative’ inasmuch as it presents such an aversive condition that individuals learn from it and are able to control their behavior. It is my opinion that this is the case with Mr. Gentile.”

At the end of the proceeding, Gentile stood as two marshals approached him. At their request, Gentile pulled off his belt and then his necktie. He took all of the change from his pockets, as well as several prescription medications. He hurriedly rubbed a chapstick across his lips several times, after being told he needed to hand it over.

He would be in the courthouse for a couple of hours and would get new prescriptions as soon as he arrived where he would be going, he was told. Did he need any of the pills right away? he was asked.

He didn’t need to take them until the afternoon, Gentile told the marshals.

“You’ll be OK,” one of them said.