BEVERLY - Police searched Beverly public library director Thomas Scully’s home just hours after being told that he kept a large box of pornographic materials in his bedroom but found just one empty DVD case, according to newly available court documents.

Scully, 56, is facing charges of disseminating obscene material to a minor during a two-year relationship with a boy Scully approached at the Beverly library. The boy was 15 at the time and had been caught engaging in sexual talk in a computer chat room when Scully invited the boy to his home, police say.

Questioned by police on Thursday night, the boy said Scully kept a large brown box filled with pornographic DVDs stashed next to a dresser in his bedroom. During the boy’s frequent visits, Scully would offer him videos from the box to watch.

But when police got into the home the next morning with their search warrant, they found just one empty DVD case that had apparently once contained a disc called "Young and Innocent," according to court papers.

The police also found a computer-generated map to the boy’s home and seized a computer tower from Scully’s home during their search on Friday morning, hours before Scully was arraigned in Salem District Court. The contents of the computer tower, which contains a hard drive and processor, will be examined.

Beverly police are continuing to investigate and have executed at least one other search warrant, which has not yet been returned to the court.

Police said Scully, Beverly’s library director since 1986, approached the boy back in March of 2003, when the boy was 15 and living in Beverly in the custody of the Department of Social Services.

According to a statement the boy gave police, he said he was spending a lot of time in the library, volunteering and using the Internet on library computers, he said. One day he was in a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" chat room, "cybering," a term used to describe online conversations of a sexual nature.

That day, during Scully’s lunch break, he drove the boy to his house at 10 Walnut Ave. In a second-floor spare bedroom, the boy logged back into the same "Buffy" chat room and spent about a half-hour online before Scully came back into the room and said he had to go back to the library.

It was the first of what the boy told police were "hundreds" of visits to Scully’s home. The boy said that he would use the computer or watch gay pornography DVDs on the television, offering police the titles of two he could recall. Scully would stay in another room, knocking before he entered.

At one point, Scully found another teen at the library visiting chat rooms and introduced the boys to each other and they pursued a relationship. But the other boy said he would not go to Scully’s home, because he thought it was wrong.

Meanwhile, Scully prevailed on the boy to keep quiet about his visits to the home. One day, the boy told police, he approached Scully at his desk and asked him "when I could come over his house again."

Scully, the boy said, "shushed him" and told him that if they were overheard, "no one would understand and he could be fired," according to the statement.

Scully also told the boy that he had been asked to leave his former job at the Peabody Institute Library after telling two boys that it was all right to masturbate.

In court, Scully’s lawyer said that was untrue and that Scully left to take the Beverly job.

The boy’s foster father became concerned after learning that Scully had given the boy cash, mostly in $10 and $20 increments when the boy needed money and $50 for his birthday; that he had set up an account with a music and DVD club; and that he had purchased a cell phone for the boy.

The boy said he used the phone to call Scully for a ride home from his junior prom in Danvers.

When the foster father learned about the phone, on April 3, he went to Scully’s house, gave him the phone and demanded that he have no further contact with the boy. The foster father also called DSS and was advised to contact Beverly police.

The boy’s foster father later learned that while the boy was visiting his birth father in a town nearly an hour away, Scully went out to visit him.

The boy has denied there was any physical relationship between himself and Scully.

Scully is due back in court June 1 for a pretrial conference. If convicted, he faces up to five years in state prison.