Federally Funded Task Forces Make Online Crimes Against Children Top Priority

By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair

 

There has been a recent rash of media reports about local residents getting arrested or sentenced for possession of child pornography. For example, on March 13, 2009, the Houston Chronicle carried a report about a Houston attorney being given a six and one-half year sentence by U.S. District Court Judge Sim Lake. Williamson possessed 84 child pornography images on his computer. After he completes his prison sentence, the suspended attorney will be under “supervised release” for the rest of his life, must register as a sex offender, and attend a sex offender treatment program.

 

The following day the Chronicle carried a story about a 24-year-old Somerset, Kentucky man being charged with promotion of child pornography, online solicitation of a minor and sexual performance of a child. He was indicted for persuading an 11-year-old Humble girl to send him nude photographs of herself while the two played video games online with their PlayStation 3 consoles last December.

 

“This is another venue these guys are getting to use now that hasn’t been seen before,” Sgt. Gary Spurger, a Harris County Precinct 4 deputy constable, told the Chronicle. “They’re on PlayStation or Xbox playing online games.”

 

A March 19, 2009 Chronicle article featured the arrest of a former member of Bikers Against Child Abuse, a child abuse prevention organization. He was also arrested for possession of child pornography. And that same day the Chronicle carried yet another story about the federal child pornography indictment of a convicted sex offender already serving time in a state prison for a 1996 possession of child pornography conviction. This man had been given a state probation but had it revoked after he failed to register as a sex offender. The current federal indictment charged Hale with possessing child pornography while he was on state probation.

Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies have established a number of task forces to aggressively seek out those who traffic in child porn. For example, in July 2003 the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) set up “Operation Predator” that targets a wide range of people: child sex tourists and travel facilitators, those who traffic in minors and human smugglers, and illegal immigrants convicted of sex offenses involving children. Through January 2008, Operation Predator had resulted in 10,700 arrests—9,000 of which involved non-citizen sex offenders whose arrests made them deportable from the U.S. Six thousand of those arrested were actually deported.

 

“The international criminal network that produces and distributes child pornography attacks the very fabric of our communities by exploiting the most vulnerable members of society, the children,” said John P. Kelleghan, Special Agent in Charge of the ICE Office of Investigations in Philadelphia. “This is not a victimless crime and ICE will work tirelessly to target and arrest those who enable this international exploitation by purchasing child pornography.”

 

ICE states unequivocally that it considers the protection of children one of its highest law enforcement responsibilities. “Working with the U.S. Attorney’s office and other Delaware law enforcement agencies,” said William M. Lowder, Resident Agent in Charge of ICE Office of Investigation in Delaware, “ICE will continue to aggressively pursue these violators. People who receive and possess child pornography should not be surprised when ICE knocks on the door with a warrant.”

 

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has worked with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies across the country to identify 1,247 children depicted in sexually explicit images through December 2007. These are the images that continuously show up in investigations like those under Operation Predator.

 

In yet another multi-law enforcement agency operation called “The Innocence Lost Initiative,” federal prosecutors in the fiscal year of 2007 [Oct. 2006 to September 2007] brought charges in 2,118 cases involving child pornography, coercion and enticement offenses against 2,218 defendants. These arrests represented a 27.8 percent increase over fiscal year 2006. Altogether, from the creation of the operation in 2005, federal prosecutors through the end of September 2007 had brought charges in 3,775 child exploitation cases. Of these, 3,125 defendants were convicted with 3,015 of them being sent to prison. 56 percent of those sent to prison received a sentence of greater than five years.

 

And figures from the federally funded Internet Crimes Against Children (“ICAC”) Task Forces among federal, state and local authorities reveal that there were 12,080 documented complaints for the manufacture, distribution, and possession of child pornography in 2007. Task Force law enforcement authorities in these cases made 2,365 arrests for cyber enticement,

 

obscenity, and child pornography offenses during 2007. These arrests resulted in 902 guilty pleas and another 191 trials.

These kinds of cases are particularly difficult to defend. Most of the arrests involve people who would seem the most unlikely to participate in this criminal activity. And it’s a crime that not only has devastating legal consequences but insidious social implications as well: lifetime supervised release, registration as a sex offender, prohibitions from being near or around children, long term enrollment in sex offender treatment programs, loss of jobs or careers, divorce, economic ruin, and a total collapse of support from family and friends.

 

The defense attorney representing one of these cases must be prepared to help his client work through these troubling emotional and psychological issues. The defense of these cases demands an enormous amount of time, investigation, and preparation. They also require lawyers who understand the technological and psychological aspects of these crimes. The client has no incentives to plead guilty, particularly because of the lifetime sex offender registration, so the defense attorney must understand at the outset that he or she will in all likelihood be facing a difficult trial—and they will be dealing with an emotionally distraught client.

 

The John T. Floyd Law Firm has experience handling these cases. We are committed from beginning to end to represent our client, no matter the charge, with one basic objective in mind: produce the best possible result for our client.

 

By: Houston Criminal Defense Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair