First, there's the good news — child pornography investigators are busier than ever in Utah. Then, there's the bad news — child pornography investigators are busier than ever in Utah.
Officials say they can hardly keep up with the caseload of child pornography cases.
"I could use half a dozen (extra) investigators," Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff said.
The Attorney General's Office is part of the multiagency Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force that investigates child pornography cases in the state. Since its inception in January 2000, the task forcetask force has been very busy.
In 2001, the task force worked 163 child pornography cases — including 45 traveler, 17 producer, 18 seller, and 15 trader cases. The group made 48 arrests and served 169 subpoenas.
So far this year, task force agents have investigated 53 cases and made 14 arrests.
Although the 2002 numbers are lower than last year's, task force director Lt. Ken Hansen offers the following caveat: "Our stats are way down because during the months of January and February we only had one agent online."
The task force normally has five full-time agents on the Internet "flushing out online predators," Hansen said.
It is through this proactive work that agents find adults who target children in chat rooms, as well as those who offer pornographic material for selling or trading online.
Essentially, this year's numbers represent only the three months since the end of the 2002 Winter Olympics, when agents were assigned to other duties. Since then, however, agents have investigated nine "traveler" cases — where adults travel to meet children they met online or send the child an airplane or bus ticket to meet them.
"Since the Olympics, every time we've gone on the Internet we've had an arrest," Shurtleff said.
Utah's task force is one of 30 throughout the United States. It is also one of the busiest.
"Our goal is to remove all child pornography from the Internet," Hansen said. "Now, that's a pretty monumental task, but at least we're trying."
While those involved in prosecuting child pornography may not know exactly what to attribute the increasing caseload to, one thing is clear — many citizens are doing their part to battle the problem.
"I don't know if that's because we're smarter and able to figure these things out better or the public is more willing to report the information," said Marni Montgomery, a Salt Lake County Sheriff's detective with the task force. "The calls are coming in. People are aware and calling in their concerns."
From his home in Manti, Randy Winters is putting together a project that will borrow unused CPU cycles from people's computers to scan the Internet for pornography. Winters' goal is to have 1 million families volunteer their computers to help screen the Internet for pornography.
"If I can get half a million people donating their time, I can scan the content of the Internet in less than a month and a half," Winters said. "Our goal is to create the world's largest blacklist of content."
But as authorities work harder than ever to combat the country's growing child pornography program, they worry a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision could hamper future prosecutions. In April, the high court struck down a congressional ban on virtual child pornography, ruling that the First Amendment protects pornography or other sexual images that only appear to depict real children engaged in sex.
Shurtleff believes the decision has raised the bar too high to prosecute child porn cases.
"Technology has gotten to the point where it's very hard to distinguish now between the real thing and computer-generated images," Shurtleff said. "I'll bet in just about every child porn case that we have we're going to start having them saying, 'Well, that wasn't real porn. That was computer-generated.'
"That's why I say I think it emboldens child pornographers and those who buy the stuff and are involved in child porn," Shurtleff said.
Hansen agrees. As traveler and manufacturing cases continue to increase, he believes the number of possession and trading cases may decline.
"With the new Supreme Court ruling, we may see a drop in the number of arrests and prosecutions of viewing child pornography unless Congress is able to change that fairly soon," Hansen said.
Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch last week announced new legislation — the "Prosecutorial Remedies and Tools Against the Exploitation of Children Today Act of 2002" — to replace his former ban on child pornography, the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996.
The act aims to plug a perceived loophole that allows child pornographers to escape prosecution by claiming their material involves computer-generated images of children or adults who only appear to be minors.
"While I firmly respect the Supreme Court's role in interpreting the Constitution, the decision left some gaping holes in our nation's ability to prosecute child pornography effectively," Hatch said in announcing the legislation. "We must now act quickly to repair our child pornography laws to provide for effective law enforcement in a manner that accords with the court's ruling."
In working to erase child porn from cyberspace, experts say they are also protecting children from sexual abuse.
"Child pornography is inherently repulsive, but even more damaging are the purposes for which it is routinely used," Hatch said. "Perverts and pedophiles not only use child pornography to whet their sick desires but also to lure our defenseless children into unspeakable acts of sexual exploitation."
Cases involving incidents of sex abuse going hand-in-hand with a person caught with child pornography are also increasing at alarming rates across the state, task force member Montgomery said.
Whenever a bust is made, detectives have the tedious task of going through every picture a suspect possesses. Sometimes they have to look at 10,000 child pornographic images just from one person.
Detectives typically find many of the same pictures. But whenever a new picture is found, investigators try to figure out who the victim is and whether the porn was produced locally.
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