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Highlands Today

Internet child porn is a pervasive problem

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By GARY PINNELL

Highlands Today

Published: November 1, 2009

SEBRING - At the Highlands County Sheriff's Office, an investigator occasionally goes into Internet chat rooms and poses as a teenage girl.

"Within 30 to 60 seconds, they're getting hits," said Lt. John Chess, a detective who works with the children's protection unit. Child porn collectors and men are so compelled by their addiction and their sickness, they can't resist the bait. They send messages and photos of their body parts to - as it turns out - the sheriff's office.

"It's absolutely amazing," said Chess, a veteran with 34 years on the job.

In June, a Polk County task force, which includes Highlands County deputies, arrested 45 men and boys from all walks of life. Some of those charged with downloading child pornography were also from Highlands County, said Chess.

Child porn has grown so pervasive on the Internet, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd told the Associated Press, that police agencies all over the country, using file-tracking technology, could easily spend every day finding and arresting offenders.

"Today, it's truly like shooting fish in a barrel," said Judd, who has directed four child pornography roundups since 2006, resulting in at least 176 arrests in Polk County.

Polk isn't the child porn capital, Judd just dedicates more resources to arresting child-porn collectors than most sheriffs or police chiefs.

"This is a bigger problem than anyone knows," Chess said. "They can come from any walk of life. They're not just low-lifes. Their goal to get to a place where they're around kids."

Among the 45 arrested in Polk were a 50-year-old car salesman, a 62-year-old retired teacher, a 34-year-old pilot, a 43-year-old truck driver and a 22-year-old Sea World employee. Three were high school students. Some had long criminal records. Others had none.

When detectives and technicians monitor the chat room, Chess said, they get information from the computers of the porn addicts who swap information and photos.

"It's an address," Chess said. And law enforcement officers can track that address to a particular computer or a house with an Internet connection.

"People start to talk in a chat room," Chess said. "They're very open about their exploits. It's not that hard. And that's the scary part."

Growing numbers

Florida ranks fourth in the nation in volume of child pornography, according to the Federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Gov. Charlie Crist established the state's Child Predator/CyberCrime Unit in 2005 when he was attorney general; the unit now has 30 members and five offices statewide, including in Tampa.

Highlands County averages a child-porn arrest every month or two, Chess said. He has no doubt that more could be arrested, but the department doesn't have the manpower of Polk County, which assigns four full-time detectives and three full-time forensic specialists to the Computer Crimes Unit.

One deputy's full-time job is to stay in constant contact with about 130 sexual offenders, literally going from home to home to monitor which cars they're driving or whom they are seeing. If an offender matches the description from another law enforcement agency, the Highlands deputy calls.

"They're highly mobile," Chess said. Some sexual offenders are constantly looking for their next victim.

When Highlands deputies get information from the Internet, a tip from a disgusted wife, or a call from an alarmed parent protecting his or her children, deputies go out to the suspect's house, seize all computers, and send the hard drive to the Polk County task force or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

The bottom line is that child pornography on the Internet is a growing problem.

"Either it's getting worse, or we're getting better at finding them," Chess said.

A conviction for possession of child pornography in Florida draws up to five years in prison for each picture or video, plus a lifelong requirement to register as a sex offender.

Child Pornography

•40 percent of arrested child porn possessors were sexually victimized as children.

•One in five girls and one in 10 boys is sexually victimized.

•Between 100,000 and 300,000 American youths are at risk for commercial sexual exploitation.

•83 percent of arrestees for child pornography crimes in 2000 and 2001 had images involving children aged 6 to 12; 39 percent had photos of children 3 to 5; and 19 percent had pictures of infants and toddlers.

•The fastest-growing demand in commercial Web sites depicts sex or sadism with children and adults or animals.

•In 2004, Internet Watch Foundation found 3,433 child abuse domains; in 2006 there were 10,656. In 2008-09, the number has decreased.

•File-sharing program Gnutella has 116,000 daily child pornography requests.

•54 percent of child porn domains are housed in the U.S.

•20 percent of Internet porn involves children.

•20,000 child pornography images are posted weekly on the Internet.

•The child pornography industry is estimated at $3 billion a year.

Source: www.enough.org

Highlands Today reporter Gary Pinnell can be reached at 863-386-5828 or gpinnell@highlandstoday.com

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