Protecting the Most Vulnerable, by Paul Cherry, Montreal Gazette, March 20, 2009

Protecting the Most Vulnerable

By Paul Cherry
Montreal Gazette
March 20, 2009

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Protecting+most+vulnerable/1411560/story.html

Det.-Lt.Guy Bianchi considers it the most rewarding work of his career.

The head of the Montreal police Child Sexual Exploitation Unit is convinced his current post is what being a cop is all about.

"I have worked on homicides and sexual assaults. In those I've always come in after the fact. We always say, I wish we could prevent something from being done. This is probably one of the reasons why we put so much effort and dedication in what we do," Bianchi said in a recent interview with The Gazette.

Primarily, the unit investigates two types of crime: child pornography and child prostitution.

The genesis of the unit came in 2002 when the Montreal police assembled a group of vice detectives mandated to focus their efforts on juvenile prostitution rings and to a lesser extent child pornography. Investigations were long and costly.

Det.-Lt. Guy Bianchi, head of the Montreal police Child Sexual Exploitation Unit, is convinced that people who view child pornography will eventually act on their fantasies and molest children.
Photo by Allen McInnis

Bianchi took over the squad in 2005 and was asked to determine if having such a dedicated unit was worthwhile. He decided to simplify things and investigate child exploitation crimes based on complaints rather than seek out broad conspiracies.

In 2007, the Montreal police decided to make the unit official, the first of its kind in Canada. Its eight investigators are a sub-unit of the sexual assault squad.

Since 2005, their workload has evolved, now 80 per cent of their cases involve child pornography. Last year, the unit investigated 422 cases of child pornography or child luring, compared to 62 in 2004.

Bianchi says he could easily keep twice the number of detectives busy with work.

"Many people ask me 'well it's child pornography. Why is it so serious?' " he said.

"There are plenty of studies that say there is a direct correlation between people who consume child pornography and sexual assaults," Bianchi said. "There are actually studies that say at least twice in their life, a person who consumes child pornography will do a direct act towards molesting a child."

There are two schools of thought among academics on the issue. One, the cathartic theory, is that the consumption of child pornography satisfies a need in most pedophiles and they won't go further than fantasizing. The other is the above mentioned correlation between consuming child pornography and the likelihood a person will commit a sexual offence on a minor.

Bianchi, a blunt talker, characterizes the first school of thought as "bullshit" and is thoroughly convinced of the latter theory.

"Doing these cases is probably one of the only times where we actually have the possibility of preventing a more serious crime. If you can buy into the notion that a person you are going to investigate is a pedophile and is going to abuse a kid, if we intervene and get him before a kid is abused, maybe, just maybe, we can actually prevent a crime."

One of the most discussed studies on the subject was an analysis done in 2006 by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. It involved 155 men convicted of possession or distribution of Internet child pornography. At the time, the inmates were sentenced only 26 per cent were known to have had a history of sexually abusing children. (A Canadian study of 201 child pornography offenders done in 2005 found 24 per cent had a prior conviction for a sexual offence).

But after undergoing sex offender treatment programs in prison many more men in the U.S. study group admitted to having sexually assaulted minors, bringing the percentage to 85 per cent.

When the study began, authorities knew participants had abused a total of 75 victims. By the end of treatment, however, members of the group had admitted to sex crimes involving 1,777 victims.

The study's author, Andres Hernandez, director of a sex offender treatment program in North Carolina, told a congressional committee in 2006 that the analysis was preliminary and he hoped it would be followed by more scientific studies. He also cautioned his work indicated "these Internet child pornographers are far more dangerous to society than we previously thought."

But Patrice Corriveau, a criminologist at the University of Ottawa and the author of an upcoming book on child pornography, said he knows of no scientific proof that supports the correlation theory.

"It would be extremely difficult to prove in any way because the sample used for these studies are people who have been arrested. There is already a bias," Corriveau said. "If you're a person who consumes child pornography and you've never been arrested and never committed (a sexual assault) no one would ever know. What's important to remember is that behind each photo is a child who has been assaulted."

While the Child Sexual Exploitation Squad's caseload has changed, it still has handled an average of 159 child prostitution cases a year since 2004.

They are difficult investigations, Bianchi said. In 90 per cent of cases victims refuse to testify against their pimp despite having given a statement to police. Bianchi said the unit strives to pursue a case to its end, even if it means having to charge a victim with a crime when they refuse to testify.

"Our belief in that area is a pimp represents a major danger to society. I've never heard of a pimp pimping one girl and then stopping. So in the interest of society we go through with these cases.

"In most of our cases we have to do a juggling act to bring our witnesses (to court) and force them to testify."

It recent years, Montreal street gangs have become much more involved in child prostitution. Bianchi said the unit has seen cases where victims as young as 12 are intimidated into selling their bodies, some have had guns put to their heads.

Michel Dorais, a professor at Université Laval and co-author, with Corriveau, of Gangs and Girls, a book about street gang involvement in child prostitution, said the notion of organized crime being linked to prostitution is nothing new.

"What is new is that street gangs are a new form of organized crime and operate in a different way," Dorais said. "Some of the more traditional organized crime groups are reticent to prostitute minors. In certain Mafia groups family and children are still very important and they won't touch children. With street gangs these values do not exist. If there is money to be made, even if it is with children, it poses no problem. It's a new era."

An entire chapter of Gangs and Girls is devoted to the very problem Bianchi faces on a regular basis, where girls used as prostitutes recant or refuse to appear in court.

Part of the research done for the book involved the trials of street gang members and clients arrested in the investigation of the Wolfpack, a Quebec City-based street gang that specialized in child prostitution.

Dorais is critical of a justice system that let girls be intimidated by lawyers who picked apart the slightest flaw in their testimony, like forgetting what day they were with a john.

"In the Wolfpack trials they should have had experts called to establish that victims of prostitution suffer through repeated rapes.

"They are traumatized people in the same way a rape victim is or an incest victim is. This should have been explained to the judges," Dorais said, adding that after giving recent lectures on his book he was approached by judges who agree with him. Dorais said the judges welcomed the idea of a psychiatrist or another expert providing evidence on how a child prostitute will likely have difficulty testifying because of the trauma she suffered.

That would be welcome news to Bianchi.

"It's not very easy to do this work. We deal with (girls) who do not necessarily co-operate with the police," Bianchi said. "On the child pornography side (investigators) are actually followed by a psychologist because our detectives have been identified as being subject to post-traumatic stress disorder.

"My detectives must look at these pictures every time a court date comes up. They relive those images over and over. Over the long term it can be detrimental. So our detectives go through extensive psychological testing before they come in and they are followed up."

It's difficult work, but Bianchi said he often tells his investigators they should be proud of what they do.

"Other police officers tell me they could never do this job," he said. "But I tell them this is probably the most rewarding job I've ever done with the police. I've never had ethical dilemmas that left me wondering - is this guy a bad guy or not? I know that what I'm doing makes society a better place and I know that I am protecting children. If you look at what a cop strives to do, his first mandate is to protect people. What better way to protect society than to protect its children?"

Contact: pcherry@thegazette.canwest.com