Theres a dark world out there of children victimized for the sexual pleasure of adults, whether physically or virtually by those who view child pornography.

And while that dark world seems far away from the day-to-day life in a small community, every once in a while a light shines in when a police officer arrests a cyber predator  someone who buys, sells or manufactures the sexually explicit images on the Internet.

Its a different situation than in the past, said Detective Sgt. Eric Halverson of the Astoria Police Department.

Before, we had an officer who worked with a customs agent. They would go out, they would say they wanted to purchase child pornography, they would meet a person who would sell them some child pornography, and it was produced with cameras and film.

Digital photography, email and computers have changed the playing field.

Now, its much easier to produce and its much easier to hide, said Halverson. Youre not meeting people necessarily, face-to-face. Youre anonymous on the Internet, you can trade anonymously with other people through the Internet, if you cover your tracks. So we have to figure out how to uncover those tracks.

Recent arrests have brought the problem into the spotlight.

Michael Wangen, Christopher York, Bert Rydberg, Oran Redfox were all Clatsop County residents (see related story). All were arrested in the last year for child pornography, involving hundreds of images of innocent children abused by parents, relatives or strangers in locations around the world.

But as technology continues to grow and change, the ability to share photos is now instantaneous and seemingly anonymous, making the work of detectives more difficult. And without a computer analysis expert in the county for law enforcement, local agencies have to depend on state resources, like many other communities, making investigations run more slowly.

Expert needed

Chief Deputy District Attorney Ron Brown and Senior Deputy District Attorney Dawn Buzzard, as well as local investigators all agree the community could be well served by an expert. But until that day comes, law enforcement officers spend hours, months and sometimes years to put those responsible for encouraging child sex abuse  the charge for child pornography in the state of Oregon  behind bars.

The problem that I see is that people look at this and they say, Its just an image on a screen. But its not just an image on a screen, its an actual child who is being abused, Halverson said. And its easy to separate it that way and look at it as just an image, but its an actual person who is being abused, who doesnt have the ability to fight back, who doesnt have somebody standing up for them. And its a global problem.

Child pornography were finding on computers comes from the United States, it comes from Canada, it comes from Russia, it comes from all over the world. And the reason that its out there is because people are going and looking at it. If people werent going and looking at it, if people werent interested in it, it wouldnt exist.

Statistics

In Oregon, there are approximately 75 convictions for child pornography every year in State Court, according to the Criminal Justice Commission. Additionally, in Federal Court, there are approximately 20 convictions for child pornography every year in Oregon. 

Those numbers appear to be climbing.

Nationally, the U.S. Attorneys reportedly handled 83 percent more child pornography cases in 2006 than in 1994. State and city law enforcement agencies involved in Internet Crimes Against Children task forces reported a 230 percent increase in the number of documented complaints of online enticement of children from 2004 to 2008.

In Clatsop County, there are an average of six cases per year, Buzzard estimates. Halverson said he currently is working on three cases.

One of the interesting things about these cases is that we dont have anyone actively going out and looking for these cases, Deputy Chief Brad Johnston said. With narcotics, we have officers out looking for drug users. But these are cases that come to us in kind of unique ways. Somebody sees or suspects something, we get a tip. Thats unusual for us because it is one of those things that is not really something we can go out and really investigate.

Mandatory

Halverson said mandatory reporters are one way the police are notified of child pornography cases. By law people who process film or work on computers have to report suspicious images involving children if discovered. There have also been instances where men have attempted to trade child porn for drugs.

Halverson cautions that it isnt always the bushy-haired stranger looking at child porn. Hes had cases where a banker was involved, members of church organizations, and men who didnt fit any stereotypical profiles. The U.S. Department of Justices Bureau of Justice Statistics reports, most suspects charged with sex exploitation were white, male, U.S. citizens, and had attended some college.

Sex exploitation includes child pornography, sex abuse and sex transportation. Sex offenses, they say, are among the fastest growing crimes handled by the federal justice system. Child pornography made up 69 percent of all sex offenses referred to U.S. Attorneys in 2006.

Each case is different, Buzzard agrees.

We have a range of cases. We have cases where people have hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of downloads, Buzzard said. Ive had cases where someone only had 20. … You just dont know sometimes what youre getting into. Or if you find it all.

(She cannot recall any cases where women have been charged with child pornography in Clatsop County.)

New types of cases

Buzzard said there is a new type of case shes seen recently, where teenage boys or young men are pressuring girls to send pictures of themselves exposed, whether in a text or online. Then, the male demands more or threatens to release the first photo and post it on social network sites.

Theres a lot of that kind of stuff happening that wasnt around when I was a teenager, Buzzard said. They send it because they feel pressured or whatever. But the consequences are a real issue that weve talked about. If theyre the same age, were not usually going to prosecute, but police call parents and let them know what is going on. But what happens is guys that are over 18 contacting girls younger than them, and theyre prosecuted. Thats pretty serious.

Halverson said a citizen group years ago, called perverted justice, began communicating online with a man locally who believed he was talking to a 14-year-old girl. That man then began sending photos of his genitalia and the group reported it to police, who investigated, served a search warrant and made a case.

The Oregon Department of Justice has an Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force with investigators who go out and look for the criminals online, or do computer examinations. 

Technology

Halverson has served at the Astoria Police Department since he started as a cadet in 1993. His days are full of investigating all types of crimes. Child pornography cases are time consuming, in part because of the tech challenges. Not only do search warrants take hours, sometimes totaling 25 pages just to seize the computers, DVDs and other media materials, but to then sort through them.

Johnston, the deputy chief, said before the technological age, a search warrant on someones home took a couple of hours at most.

A case that Eric is working on right now, we had one of our employees sitting for a complete workday just going through CDs that were seized at a search warrant involving child pornography, Johnston said. And it was completely fruitless. He found all kinds of pirated software, but he found no child pornography. But you have to go through each and every one of those CDs.?And the CDs were a small portion of that search warrant. Eric spent eight hours processing hard drives down at the Department of Justice because we seized 23 hard drives in that case and several computers.

Because there is not a computer analyst in the county for law enforcement purposes, those computers are processed elsewhere. It took 11 months for one computer to be forensically analyzed, Johnston said. And that expands as the ability to store larger amounts of files goes up.

One thumb drive that was seized could store more than 200 gigabytes, Halverson said. Theyre easy to store, they are easy to hide, they are easy to transfer and they are easy to overlook, he said.

Cellphones and external hard drives are also ways of storing illegal materials.

The law

Owning photos of naked children is not illegal. Distributing them, although it can in certain circumstances be disturbing, is not illegal, either. A child in a bathtub, for instances, is not against the law.

And it shouldnt be. I have photos of my daughter in the bathtub or running through the sprinkler, Buzzard said. We have a Warrenton case right now, that were probably not going to prosecute. There are a lot of photos of adult porn and then a photo of a naked kid. And you know in (that persons) mind, its sexual for him. But a picture of a kid just standing there naked isnt illegal. It feels wrong, but its not illegal.

But when the photo is of a child in a sexual position, or is determined to be lewd, then police get involved. A photo of a child with his or her legs open, or touching themselves, for example, are red flags, police said. Halverson said that the majority of child pornography cases are prepubescent children, some as small as infants being abused in sexual ways.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports 76 percent of the identified children in child pornography are prepubescent, 10 percent of those were infants or toddlers.

You know it when you see it, Buzzard said. And they are hard to see. There are photos of children being penetrated. Its horrible. Theyre the cant get it out of your mind images.

Link to sexual abuse

Buzzard cannot recall a case in her career locally of someone producing child pornography. But she knows the likelihood is high. Statistically, child sex abuse and child pornography go hand in hand. While children seen in local cases of child pornography are generally thought to be from eastern Europe, there are children locally who could be victims.

Buzzard attends training on the subject and said she has learned that the odds are really high of people in possession of child pornography also having hands-on touching of a child.

 We just really havent always found that connection. But now police are really looking for that, she said. Police were really worried because (Wangen) was in contact with children and what we know now about people who are obsessed with child porn, thats where their sexual interests lay, so they are going to work hard to touch a kid. So (police) were trying to contact the kids (Wangen) had contact with and make sure they were not sexually exploited by him.

Nobody said they were.

Halverson said he cannot recall any local cases in which local children were in the images in child pornography cases. But there are plenty of local children who are sexually abused.

Buzzard said she hopes people will become more comfortable talking about abuse. It is especially hard to get kids to come forward, she said. Theyll often come forward as adults, but it is too late to prosecute if the statute of limitations has expired.

I wouldnt say that every person who looks at child pornography is going out and offending, but the other problem there is that theyre looking at it, theyre becoming stimulated by it, and the concern is that they may act upon it, Halverson said.

The Harned case

One instance of that the Astoria Police Department remembers well. The murder of 7-year-old Ashley Carlson in 1999 stung the whole community. Three officers on staff had children the same age.

It was an example of someone acting out on it, Johnston said of child pornography.

Johnston said the murderer, Patrick Harned, 16, had been molested by a 44-year-old sex offender, William Carl Welsh. Harned had been groomed by Welsh and exposed to pornographic images. Welsh had served 10 years in prison for sodomy and sex abuse charges, accused of molesting young boys, ages 8 to 16, for three decades. Harned was living with Welsh at the time he murdered Carlson, strangling her with a belt after attempting to sexually assault her. She was buried beneath the floorboards of the teens bedroom.

He was sentenced to life in prison.

Welsh was sentenced soon afterward to seven years in prison for first-degree sodomy, first-degree sex abuse and displaying child sexual conduct. He was released in 2007. He then fled to South America where he was captured in 2009 by the U.S. Marshals Oregon Fugitive Task Force. He is currently in federal prison.

Help needed

So while police work to catch those responsible for producing, watching and distributing the materials of child pornography, they are asking for the communitys help in tracking down the often tech-savvy perpetrators.

Warrenton Police Chief Mathew Workman said thats the key.

The Internet and technology has exponentially expanded this problem making it easy to distribute and share items as well as connecting these disgusting people on a global scale, Workman said. Technology has also made it extremely difficult for law enforcement to track the criminals and to find the evidence. There are apps to help the criminals conceal their files and storage devices like Micro Flash Cards that are smaller than a dime.

Regardless of these obstacles, law enforcement is committed to pursuing these criminals and protecting our vulnerable children. If you find child pornography or suspect someone is viewing, distributing or manufacturing it, please call your local law enforcement so we can look into it.

Child pornography is often a precursor for child sexual assault or other crimes against children.