Investigations of Child Pornography in the United States

Robert Hugh Farley, M.S.
Consultant to the VIRTUS® Programs

From 1988 to 1992 the producers of child pornography in the United States found that as a result of aggressive law enforcement, the commercial production and distribution of child sexual abuse images became more difficult, expensive, and very risky. Additionally the reproduction of the child abuse images by child molesters became equally difficult and expensive. Even “The Chicago Outfit” that controlled most of the adult book stores in the United States bowed out of distributing child pornography by finding more customers and a lesser amount of law enforcement scrutiny in selling the other legal varieties of commercial pornography.

By 1992, the commercial trafficking of child pornography within the United States had been almost completely eradicated through a series of proactive, undercover campaigns that were waged across the United States by law enforcement. One of the most aggressive “full-time” law enforcement units in that campaign was the Federal Child Exploitation Strike Force which was based in Chicago, Illinois.

The Chicago Federal Child Exploitation Strike Force, created in 1988 and disbanded in 1998, was composed of a detective from the Cook County Sheriff’s Police Department, two youth officers from the Chicago Police Department, one sergeant and an agent from the Illinois State Police, a special agent from the FBI and two United States postal inspectors. In addition to locating and arresting child molesters, part of the mission of the Chicago Strike Force was to crush the producers of child pornography who were using the U.S. Mail to distribute pornographic images of children. As hundreds of the Strike Force’s child pornography investigations crossed state lines, all of the non-federal strike force members were deputized as Deputy United States Marshals so that the investigators could follow the case beyond the Illinoisborders and arrest the offenders. During the ten years it was in existence the members of the Chicago Strike Force were involved in the rescue of abused children and the arrest of hundreds of child molesters and child pornographers across the United States.

The Internet

Because of the increased efforts of Chicago Strike Force and other specialized law enforcement units in the United States, the purchasing and even the surreptitious trading of child abuse images by child molesters now became extremely dangerous for the offender. Child molesters during this time found that the anonymous distribution or receipt of the child abuse images through the U.S. Postal Service or any delivery service was nearly impossible.

That changed in 1997 with the increase of Internet usage. The Internet allowed pornographic still images and movies of children to be reproduced and disseminated to tens of thousands of molesters and individuals with just the click of a button. The distribution and receipt of the images could now be done almost anonymously. As a result, child pornography quickly became readily available through virtually every Internet technology available such as: web sites, email, ICQ/ instant messaging, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), newsgroups/bulletin boards, and peer-to-peer (P2P).

The technological ease, lack of expense, and anonymity in obtaining and distributing child pornography has resulted in an explosion in the availability, accessibility, and volume of child pornography. Even worse, with the use of flatbed scanners and the introduction of inexpensive digital cameras and digital video the production and reproduction of child abuse images has now become simple, inexpensive, and a booming business.

Enforcement

Anticipating the sudden increase of child molesters who would use the Internet to exploit images of children, in July, 1997 the Cook County Sheriff’s Police Department in Chicago created the Child Exploitation Unit. This unit was the first full time police unit in the world that went online in an undercover capacity looking for child sexual predators. As with the Chicago Strike Force, the detectives of the Sheriff’s Police, Child Exploitation Unit were all deputized as Deputy United States Marshals, under an agreement with the U.S. Postal Inspectors and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Because of this they could follow the case beyond the Illinois borders, arrest the offenders, and successfully prosecute them in federal court. The Sheriff’s Police, Child Exploitation Unit today still maintains a 100 percent conviction rate.

From 1997 to 2003 the Sheriff’s Police, Child Exploitation Unit saw that the number of child abuse images being seized was increasing dramatically each year. Where a child molester arrested in 1997 might have possessed a three and a half inch disc full of child abuse images, the molesters in 2003 were found to possess as many as 60,000 child abuse images on their computer hard drives. Additionally, the victims in the child abuse images were becoming younger and younger and the sexual and physical acts perpetrated on these tiny victims were becoming more egregious.

In 2002 the hardened members of the Sheriff’s Police, Child Exploitation Unit executed a federal search warrant on a residence in the western suburbs of Chicago and rescued a one year old baby girl. The investigation revealed that the baby, at four and a half months of age, had been repeatedly victimized by the baby’s natural father when he photographed himself sexually abusing the baby. The father then traded and distributed the child abuse images of the baby to other molesters worldwide on the Internet. At the time of his arrest the father possessed approximately 8,000 images on his computer of unidentified babies, toddlers, and prepubescent children being sexually abused.

Nationally, the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, D.C. began working aggressively with the 93 United States Attorneys Offices, located around the country, to combat child pornography and child exploitation. In addition the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) of the Department of Justice funded the creation of Internet Crimes against Children (ICAC) Task Forces in local jurisdictions all over the country. Today there are 39 task forces comprised of more than 175 law enforcement agencies.

In order to make the reporting of child exploitation allegations easier, Congress mandated that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) create the CyberTipline. The CyberTipline, based in Alexandria ,VA is the reporting mechanism either by telephone or online for anyone in the United States to report cases of child sexual exploitation including child pornography, online enticement of children for sex acts, molestation of children outside the family, sex tourism of children, child victims of prostitution, and unsolicited obscene material sent to a child. Reports may be made 24-hours per day, 7-days per week online at www.cybertipline.com or by calling 1-800-843-5678.

More recently the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and the federally funded local Internet Crimes against Children (ICAC) Task Forces have announced a national law enforcement initiative aimed at combating the growing volume of child pornography distributed through peer-to-peer (P2P) file trafficking computer networks.

The joint operation, which began in the fall of 2003, resulted in the execution of hundreds of searches nationwide, and the identification of thousands of suspect computers that were used to access the child pornography. The FBI, ICE, and the ICACs have opened more than 1,000 domestic investigations into the distribution and possession of child pornography and have conducted more than a thousand searches.

Hundreds of individuals have been arrested and charged as a result of this law enforcement effort. Those charged were arrested not only on offenses related to the possession and distribution of child pornography, but also the sexual abuse of children. Further, the investigations have identified several individuals who have previously been convicted of sex offenses and several registered child sex offenders.

Today

Despite the best efforts of law enforcement, the manufacture and distribution of child abuse images by child molesters has expanded even more today, in part due to the availability and the use of the cell phone still and video cameras.

Over the years, law enforcement has frequently found that child molesters are always on the cutting edge of technology by using it for the sexual exploitation of children. It is frightening to speculate the type of technology child molesters will use next.

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