Internet is predators' playground

7-30-2009 National:

Sgt. Scott Christensen knew in the mid-1990s that sexual exploitation of children on the Internet was going to grow into a huge problem.

But he never imagined that it would evolve into what it is today: parents exploiting their own children to manufacture child pornography, preteens sending naked pictures of themselves to strangers they meet in chat rooms, and police officers and teachers getting busted for soliciting sex from a child online.

“Over time, it has grown exponentially, and law enforcement hasn't been able to keep up,” Christensen said. “I thought that sometime we would be able to get a handle on it, but as technology moves, the predators move right with it.”

Christensen, 47, who retired Friday from the Nebraska State Patrol, created the state's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. It has put hundreds of online sexual predators behind bars since its start in April 2000.

The Nebraska State Patrol was among the first 20 law enforcement agencies in the country to respond to online enticement and child pornography cases, using a federal grant.

The task force of two men — Christensen as the coordinator and Lt. Scott Kracl as a full-time investigator — wasn't enough to tackle the problem.

“We were busy from the time we started,” Christensen said. “We were seeing a huge demand. We had cases outside the metro area, and it was logistically impossible for the two of us to keep up with it.”

Christensen trained state troopers across the state and eventually reached out to local law enforcement agencies to help with the online investigations.

In Nebraska, more than 95 percent of those arrested on suspicion of online sex crimes since 2000 have been convicted, Christensen said.

“These cases are so strong as far as the evidence against the defendants that the majority of them will plead out,” he said.

Gene Klein, executive director of Project Harmony, an Omaha child advocacy center, said the state's task force and its affiliates have been vital in protecting children online.

“We need to quadruple this program,” Klein said. “It's making a difference.”

As the number of kids online continued to increase since 2000, so did the demand for investigators to regulate and monitor social networks and chat rooms, Christensen said.

“The predators are going to where our kids are,” he said. “It's not so much the playground anymore, it's the Internet.”

According to the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, the percentage of U.S. youths ages 12 to 17 who use the Internet increased from 73 percent in 2000 to 93 percent in 2006.

That jump was one reason Nebraska's task force in 2004 began training officers from La Vista, Lincoln and Norfolk in online investigations.

“The more officers doing online child exploitation cases, the more arrests that are going to be made,” Christensen said. “Business is booming.”

The State Patrol task force now has 14 employees plus 23 affiliates, including police departments in Bellevue, Papillion and Omaha.

Nationally, there are 59 task forces representing more than 2,000 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.

Through June of this year, Nebraska agencies made 38 arrests of people suspected of sexual solicitation of a child or child pornography offenses. The total for all of 2008 was 28. In 2007, it was 21.

The number of arrests doesn't begin to address the magnitude of the problem that's out there, Christensen said.

In a 2000 study, 76 percent of participating offenders convicted of possessing child porn or soliciting children online for sex admitted that they had molested significant numbers of children without being caught.

In fact, the study — conducted by Andres E. Hernandez, a psychologist and former director of the Sexual Offender Treatment Program for the Federal Bureau of Prisons — indicated that those offenders committed offenses that involved sexual contact at a much higher rate (30.5 victims per offender) than offenders convicted of sexual assaults that didn't involve the Internet (9.6 victims).

“There are a ton of people out doing it that have not crossed law enforcement or law enforcement hasn't had time to get to them,” he said. “Unfortunately, we are not going to get every one out there.”

Klein of Project Harmony said it's unfortunate that there aren't enough resources and investigators to constantly regulate what's happening online.

Chief Deputy Sarpy County Attorney Tricia Freeman agreed: “I think we are just scratching the surface.”

Although she commended law enforcement for its efforts, Freeman said: “What the police are doing can't take the place of the responsibility of parents being proactive and knowing what their kids are doing online.”

Klein said the Internet's impact on children is just becoming evident.

“Teenagers know more about accessing the Internet than their parents do,” he said. “The exchange of child pornography and the direct solicitation of children for sex are at levels far beyond what we could imagine.” ..Source.. by Leia Baez-Mendoza, WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER