UNITED STATES
Philadelphia Daily News
BY JASON NARK, Daily News Staff Writer narkj@phillynews.com, 215-854-5916
POSTED: June 19, 2014
SOMETIMES THEY turn on the television in the office, to scramble the sound of babies screaming.
They’ll jump up from their computers and suggest a coffee break, hoping sunlight and some conversation will fade the images they’ve just seen.
Some go running, letting rage push their pace, tears and sweat mixing over the miles.
No matter what they do to decompress, the investigators, lawyers and forensic analysts who handle child-pornography cases say they can’t outrun the first image they saw on the job, let alone the thousands of other horrors their eyes and ears have witnessed.
“When you choose to do this job, you are going into that world and it is permanently traumatic to your psyche in a way that can’t be reversed,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Morgan, who has handled hundreds of cases involving child pornography, recently said at her Center City office.
“It’s the darkest underside of humanity, and that’s what we have to deal with every day. Once you do it, there’s no turning back. There’s no taking it away.”
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