By Robert Travis Scott
The Times-Picayune
November 16, 2009
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2009/11/post_78.html
Although he has arrested more than 400 people in connection with child-sex crimes in Louisiana, veteran investigator Toby Aguillard is still flabbergasted by the behaviors he finds in these criminals.
There was the Hammond man he helped convict for possession of about 7,700 images and videos depicting sexual victimization of children. While recovering evidence from the home, Aguillard found several novels with themes of juvenile abduction and rape, clips from teen magazines and pictures of the young pop star Miley Cyrus tucked into portfolios of sexually graphic material. There also were extensive research materials on the JonBenet Ramsey case and an exotic knife collection, including a glove with hidden razor blades.
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| A suspect in a child pornography case is put into the back of a State Police squad car during a raid in Baton Rouge. Photo by Louisiana State Police |
The man talked so openly about his desires that his co-workers knew he was sexually attracted to pre-teens, and he admitted he fantasized about abducting and raping a little girl, said Aguillard, a detective with the Tangipahoa Sheriff's Office and former chief of Louisiana's task force on crimes against children.
"Even though the guy says he never touched any children, you just can't help but think, this is a dangerous person," Aguillard said. "I believe we got to him before he got the opportunity."
Federal and Louisiana law enforcement officials estimate that one-third or more of individuals prosecuted on charges of possession and distribution of child pornography also have molested children.
Of the 2,713 child pornography trafficking suspects arrested since 1997 by U.S. postal inspectors, 36 percent were confirmed to be child molesters, and the operations rescued 1,185 children from further sexual exploitation.
"It's dangerous to say, well, anybody who has child porn on their computer is definitely going to be a child molester. That's not true," said John Simoneaux, a Pineville counseling psychologist for child sex offenders. "Most people who work with sex offenders will tell you that the vast majority of them have been involved with pornography and the access to and interest in pornography does seem to be a gateway kind of activity. But whether or not that's the causative factor — for people committing contact offenses — I don't think we know that yet."
The key research problems are that child molesters often do not admit their crimes and the great majority of molested children do not come forward.
From looking to touching
A groundbreaking study by Michael Bourke and Andres Hernandez with the Federal Bureau of Prisons examined 155 prison inmates convicted of possession or distribution of child pornography. At the time of imprisonment, 40 had known histories of sexually abusing a child with bodily contact and 75 of their victims had been identified.
After subsequent counseling and examination, in which the prisoners were allowed to identify their crimes against children without offering incriminating details, 131 of the prisoners admitted they had molested at least one child and the victim count rose to 1,777.
Click to download graphic PDF file Chad Gremillion, the chief child-exploitation detective for State Police, is one of several Louisiana investigators who can recount disturbing interviews with men who have been arrested for collecting sexually explicit images of children.
"I interviewed a man, and I asked him ... how he got started in this, and he told me 'curiosity.' And through his curiosity he said it led to a level of wanting, and through his level of wanting he became interested in molesting his own daughters," Gremillion said. "And as I was interviewing, he actually was using his hands to describe how he was going to molest his own 2-year-old daughter."
Many consumers of sexually explicit material involving children seek further hard-core levels of the material, eventually tipping their desires from fantasy into reality, Gremillion said.
"Hopefully, we're able to get to them at the curiosity level, which in essence stops them from molesting a child," he said.
No single stereotype
According to federal court reports for cases in 2006, 97 percent of child sex exploitation defendants were males, but otherwise the profile of an offender is hard to stereotype.
"It's people you pretty much interact with every day — working-class people who have jobs and families," said Detective Rob McGraw with the Kenner Police Department, which has conducted several child sex investigations.
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| Forensic examiner Duane Vince with the state attorney general's office sorts through some of the cell phones that have been confiscated as evidence during child pornography raids. Suspects frequently use their cell phones in the uploading and downloading of sexually explicit images and Vince is able to retrieve that information. Photo by G. Andrew Boyd |
The report said the median age was 39 and offenders were distributed through all age, race and income categories. Nearly 52 percent had gone to college and only 14 percent failed to graduate from high school. About four out of five had no prior felony conviction.
Among collectors of sexually explicit images of children who are caught, 59 percent are married and 41 percent have children, according to the Innocent Justice Foundation, a private California group.
"A father figure in the home is the No. 1 offender we deal with," said Stacie LeBlanc, executive director of the New Orleans Children's Advocacy Center, which assists children and prosecutors in abuse cases.
A Texas mother of two, Darlene Ellison suffered a devastating revelation five years ago when FBI agents arrested her ex-husband on charges of seeking sex with pre-teen boys. Since then she has tried to turn that shattering experience into lessons for the public about criminal pedophiles.
"If anyone is looking for a red flag, that one red flag that says, that guy or girl sitting next to me is a pedophile, they will never find it unless they catch them in the act," Ellison said during a recent visit to New Orleans. "Because he slept in my bed, he volunteered at our school, he was part of the church ... and there was nothing that said, 'Ah ha, he is a child predator.'"
When a child is sexually abused, 40 percent of the time the offender is a parent, relative or partner of the guardian, according to a report released in June by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that examined more than 2,000 cases of victimization. Another 28 percent of the time the perpetrator is a neighbor, family friend, coach or baby-sitter.
Offenders enticed a youth online in 14 percent of the cases and the offender was a stranger to the child in only 3 percent of the cases, the report said.
Suspects nabbed at home, at work
Police in Louisiana still pursue undercover operations to catch offenders who are seeking to lure youths online or seeking an illicit rendezvous, the so-called "travelers" who show up at an arranged site expecting to find a willing young teen for sex but instead are greeted by police with handcuffs.
But the bulk of police and federal investigations statewide are now centered on finding and capturing offenders in their home or business. Of the 113 child exploitation investigations begun with Louisiana State Police assistance in the first seven months of this year, only 12 were based on cases of travelers or enticement and nearly all the rest dealt with possession and trading of child pornography.
The increase is due in large part to new technology that assists detectives in finding computers that are trading images online. More than 5,600 such traders in Louisiana were detected by the surveillance methods in a recent month. Investigators pursue only a small fraction of that number because of limits on time and resources.
When officers crack down on collectors of child pornography and pedophile suspects, they frequently encounter a mental and physical environment filled with noxious habits and alarming predilections toward abuse.
Upon serving a warrant, agents commonly find hundreds or thousands of illegal images stored on computers, DVDs, camera memory cards, X-Box gaming systems and photo albums.
For example, in June, Michael Wright of New Orleans pleaded guilty at age 53 to child pornography offenses in federal court after federal agents found two computers and 353 discs containing about 30,000 photos and videos of sexual victimization of children.
The severity of the images is in many cases more alarming than the abundance. Videos of adults forcing children into oral, vaginal and anal sex, despite the screaming protests of the victims, are common. Most disturbing is the trend toward the use of younger children.
"The victims in child pornography are as young as we've ever seen them," said Jan Mann, first assistant U.S. attorney in the New Orleans regional district.
Internet feeds community of poison
The Internet era has opened new doors to collectors of sexually graphic images of children. Many who once felt odd or isolated because of their sexual proclivity have been able to find a community of people with like desires. A collector can feel encouraged and emboldened by the contacts.
"He's no longer a weird outcast in his own eyes," said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "He discovered there are thousands of others like him."
Images can be downloaded from Web sites or traded through digital file sharing programs such as LimeWire, BearShare and KaZaa, much as music fans share songs online by their favorite bands. Some of these so-called peer-to-peer sharing systems are run by companies that are assisting law enforcement efforts. LimeWire spokeswoman Linda Lipman said the software firm has filters to help users screen objectionable material and is a participant in an anti-child pornography effort called P2P Patrol overseen by the Distributed Computer Industry Association.
Still, child pornography collectors the world over are opening their files to others, and the contraband traffic is intense.
"What is clearly evident, there becomes a continued quest to look for new images," Allen said. "What happens over time, it becomes a kind of addiction."
The more popular videos are often produced with sequels, such as the "Vicky Series" or "Baby J Series" found in recent raids in New Orleans, with several episodes of the same child victim.
"You'll notice that the child pornographers are out for series of images, and the more popular ones, they trade them like baseball cards," said Corey Bourgeois, lab supervisor for the Louisiana Department of Justice High Technology Crime Unit. "It's just an underground world, and basically it's a tight-knit group."
The trading activity drives demand for new material, creating incentives for more video production and therefore more child victims.
Counseling the offenders
Counselors and law enforcement agents have seen firsthand how offenders have difficulty breaking their addiction.
In post-prison counseling for offenders, the objective is get them to realize they could become repeat offenders and to avoid tempting situations, Simoneaux said.
"We don't know when someone reaches the point where they will never offend again, so the goal is always for people to continue to acknowledge that they have the potential to do this again," Simoneaux said.
Jason Appeldorn of Gray was convicted in 2005 for possession of child pornography. He was out on probation earlier this year when he used his cell phone to send sexually explicit images of children, confirmed when probation officers confiscated his mobile memory card.
Appeldorn admitted he had an attraction to images of young children and "was somewhat relieved that U.S. Probation showed up at his residence because he felt that the situation would have only gotten worse if he had not been stopped," court documents say. In July, at age 33, he pleaded guilty to the new charges.
Read the complete series on the crackdown on child pornography.
Robert Travis Scott can be reached at rscott@timespicayune.com or 225.342.4197.
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