From The AP: This is an undated photo, supplied by the Milford Police Department, of Thomas Bavedas,38, of Milford, Conn., is accused of possessing more than 63,000 pictures and videos of child porn, including some photos he allegedly took himself. The Bridgeport elementary school teacher who resigned amid drug and sexual assault charges earlier this year was charged Thursday, July 17, 2008 in a child pornography case.(AP Photo/Milford Police)
Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline said this morning that child pornography charges would be filed today against a 56-year-old Olathe man arrested by Lenexa police after he videotaped girls at the city’s July 4 parade.
An off-duty Lenexa officer attending the parade with his family called in police after seeing the videotaping. Police found child pornography at the suspect’s residence.
The man will be charged with four counts of the sexual exploitation of children related to the pornography, Kline said, which included computer images.
A couple of days ago, we had a story about Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner agreeing to block access to some Internet channels known to distribute child pornography. What we didn't know then: The deal calls for the ISPs to block all or most of Usenet, a series on online discussion groups -- most of which DON'T traffic in kiddie porn.
Tony's Kansas City worries that it could be the sign of worse to come:
Ultimately, Usenet is useless and only a few bickering nerds will miss it . . . But then again that sounds a lot like the blogosphere and just another reminder that freedom of expression or the right to keep and bear arms aren't as secure as many people would like to think as long as timid telcoms and reactionary politicos are in power.
Or block as much as they can. I don't think that Time Warner, Verizon and Sprint are doing this simply because they want to be good guys, though. Snip from the Times:
The agreements resulted from an eight-month investigation and sting operation in which undercover agents from Mr. Cuomo’s office, posing as subscribers, complained to Internet providers that they were allowing child pornography to proliferate online, despite customer service agreements that discouraged such activity.
Verizon, for example, warns its users that they risk losing their service if they transmit or disseminate sexually exploitative images of children.
After the companies ignored the investigators’ complaints, the attorney general’s office surfaced, threatening charges of fraud and deceptive business practices. The companies agreed to cooperate and began weeks of negotiations.
From U.S. Attorney Eric Melgren's Office:
Photos of a dozen child abuse victims previously identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children were found on the computer of an Overland Park man who pleaded guilty Monday to child pornography charges.
Brian D. Harris, 41, Overland Park, Kan., pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of child pornography.
“Mr. Harris had a collection of child pornography with images from all over the world,” said U.S. Attorney. “Through the Internet, images of cruel and criminal treatment of children are being circulated among collectors in every corner of the globe.”
Hat Tip: Many thanks, Jim!
I know, it seems like kind of a no-brainer, but some folks argued against the law because they thought it was too broad. They worried it could be used to criminalize movies like "Titanic," which has adult actors portraying underage sex. Snip:
But Justice Antonin Scalia, in his opinion for the court, said the law does not cover movie sex. There is no "possibility that virtual child pornography or sex between youthful-looking adult actors might be covered by the term 'simulated sexual intercourse,'" Scalia said.
Then he smacked the attorney on the back of the head for wasting his time ...
In San Francisco, a radio-show host named Bernie Ward has pleaded guilty to a kiddie-porn charge. Would you like to hear what his original defense was?
The defense lawyer previously said Ward was looking at the child pornography for research on a book on hypocrisy. The defense had filed a motion asking Walker to allow Ward to argue that his actions were protected by the First Amendment.
Hat Tip: Many thanks, Blarney
Over the past few years, the FBI has made fighting online kiddie porn one of its top priorities and dedicated more agents to tracking down the people who trade these images online. The number of cases has skyrocketed, too, from a few hundred to 2,400 last year.
But it's not enough because so many other cases are slipping through the cracks, FBI Director Robert Mueller says. He says that's why the U.S. should require Internet service providers to retain user records for longer periods of time. (Two years, according CNET.)
Not-So-Fun Fact: Experts estimate the kiddie-porn business is a $20 billion-per-year operation, ABC News reports.
Law-enforcement experts say it's because the government hasn't put enough money into child-porn investigations, even though more states have Internet-crime task forces and the FBI has made fighting child porn a top priority. Sen. Joe Biden wants to spend $1 billion over eight years to increase money for these task forces.
Snip from the Visalia Times-Delta:
So she called her supervisor, Judi Hill, the library services specialist, whose office is in Visalia.
"I told her I was shocked because I have boys that age, and he might as well have had my youngest one up on that screen," Biesterfeld said. "I told her I was sick to my stomach and angry."
She said Hill told her to hand the man a note telling him to stop immediately and that he would be banned from the library if he did it again. The man was deaf, Biesterfeld said.
Biesterfeld said she also was directed to note the matter on the man's library record.
"And after I do that, Judi, then I need to contact the police, right?" Biesterfeld said she asked.
The answer was no.
Since it was an accident, he doesn't have to go to jail. Also an accident? Registering for the site, "Sunshine Boys" and paying a $35 fee via credit card.
Hat Tip: Many thanks, kmb!
"My thanks to you and all the others that together make this the greatest group of pedos ever to gather in one place." -- James Freeman, an alleged pedophile who was indicted for reportedly taking part in a global child-porn ring.
Hat Tip: Many thanks, kmb!
David B. Shanks lives in Warrensburg, but teaches sixth grade in Holden. He was arrested Thursday after allegedly being caught in an online investigation, KCTV reports.
Hat Tip: Many thanks, KC Savage!
The AP has a nice feature about Jim Murray, the retired police chief of Diamond, Mo. Murray is 69, but when he's online, he poses as a 13-year-old girl as a way to catch predators. He's made 20 arrests since he took on his part-time job in 2002. Most recently, his work led to charges against the mayor of a nearby town.
(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
The New Hampshire Supremes have overturned the conviction of a photographer who superimposed young campers' faces over the bodies of naked women. The court said it wasn't kiddie porn because it didn't include sex acts committed by children. That, and the guy didn't share them with anybody.
That's what some experts argue in this Washington Post article. They say most people who view child pornography don't actually go out and molest a kid.
"Sending people to prison for five or 10 or 15 years for looking at pictures is killing an ant with a sledgehammer," said Peter Greenspun, who defended Charles Rust-Tierney, the former ACLU head sentenced to seven years in prison for downloading hundreds of images. "These people are being put on sex-offender registries, they are being ostracized from the community, for looking at pictures."
The story quotes two different studies. One says one-third of people trafficking in kiddie porn also molest kids -- a different study says 85 percent do. Law-enforcement officials say they're not going after people who accidentally download an image or two -- they're going after folks who build entire libraries of the worst kind of child porn imaginable.
"You can't wrap your brain around what we're talking about here," said Bonnie S. Greenberg, a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland. "We're not talking about a 16-year-old who looks like she could be 19. We're seeing prepubescent children who are being raped, babies, toddlers being tied up."
In Atlanta, the feds accuse a policewoman's husband of possessing child porn -- something that police there suspected years ago, but did nothing to investigate, the feds allege. They also accuse the policewoman of destroying some of the evidence.
The husband's attorney says the age of the females in the photos isn't clear. And he denies the charge about destroying evidence.
Hat Tip: Many thanks, Golfer!
George Reardon was a Connecticut doctor who was suspected -- but never charged -- of taking sexually explicit pictures of young patients. Reardon lost his ability to practice, but the crimes were too old for the statute of limitations. He died in 1998.
But this summer, the new owner of Reardon's house discovered 50,000 slides and more than 100 movies of child pornography. Reardon apparently had a secret room where they kept them, and it was discovered during a renovation project. Most of the porn is from the 60s through the 80s.
Hundreds of young people are in these slides and movies, police believe.
Connecticut police are asking the victims -- after all these years -- to contact them. They think the slides and movies were probably shared with others, and they're hoping to track those people down and hold them accountable.
Hat Tip: Many thanks, Golfer!
File photo of Reardon via The AP.
Defense lawyers are unhappy about one new rule included in the Adam Walsh Act, McClatchy's Washington bureau reports. If the defense and its experts want to examine the pornography, they have to do it at government facilities, sometimes with FBI agents watching.
They used to be able to get copies. Not anymore. The goal is to prevent the porn from being spread around further. Defense attorneys say they need to be able to thoroughly examine the evidence, and this hinders that.
Roger J. Kromko, 63, a retired Missouri Division of Family Services employee, pleaded guilty to a child-porn charge Thursday in Platte County, the prosecutor reports. Investigators say they found child porn on his computer in St. Joseph. They also accused Kromko of promoting child pornography through peer-to-peer networks.
A relative found a box of kiddie porn at the house and called police, Waco authorities said. According to a department spokesman, the minister said he downloaded the material so he could convince a legislator to help shut down those Web sites. "Unless you have a badge, it's illegal to look at child pornography, no matter what your motive," the spokesman said.
A St. Peters man is accused of not only sending sexually explicit photos of a teenage girl over the Internet, but also assuming her online ID after she died. (No word on how the girl died.)
This one's from Utah, where a federal judge has convicted the operators of a Web site that showed pictures of young girls wearing revealing clothing and posing suggestively. The children weren't naked, but they were exploited, the judge said. In some cases, the clothes they wore were sold to people who subscribed to the site.
British police have identified more than 700 suspects in a 10-month investigation of an international child-porn ring. (Several countries, including the U.S. and Canada, assisted in the search.) What's more, about 30 abused children have been rescued from exploitative situation.
About 200 of the suspects are from Britain; more than half of those are already being prosecuted.
Hat Tip: Thanks, VB!
The Illinois legislature has passed a bill that would create a database of the state's convicted child pornographers. Specifically, it would track offenders based on their Internet Protocol addresses -- which sounds good, but can probably be beaten a half-dozen ways.
The bill also creates a crime called aggravated child pornography for anyone who makes, owns or distributes kiddie porn involving children under 13.
KSHB had one surprising detail on the retired Independence teacher accused of making kiddie porn. Authorities say a Best Buy technician, who was working on the man's machine, allegedly found the offending material in a file called "Child Porn." (It's not clear if there were any signs or neon lights pointing to the folder.)
A retired teacher from Independence is accused of using a hidden camera in one of his guest rooms to make child porn, U.S. Attorney John Wood's office reports. Boys from the man's neighborhood sometimes slept there, and the camera, hidden in an alarm clock, was motion-activated, authorities say. (The suspect used to teach in the Kansas City school district.)
The man pasted the heads of the congregation's teens onto the bodies of adults having sex -- which is considered child porn.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in St. Louis say they've never seen a bigger haul of child porn -- nearly 100,000 pictures and 5,000 videos. The defendant, a 26-year-old who pleaded guilty, will get four years in porn prison.
Hat Tip: Thanks, Doc
An Oregon man went online and pretended to be a dying teenager as a way to convince a series of girls, ages 12 to 14, to send him naked photos and videos of themselves. He's getting 24 years in prison.
And it gets worse ... He told one of his victims that he'd broken up with another girl (an imaginary one) because of her. And he told her the imaginary girl committed suicide as a result. Which convinced the real girl -- who is 12 -- to try to kill herself. That's when the police got involved.
Hat Tip: Thanks, Doc!
Utah police arrested a man for allegedly printing out copies of child pornography at an all-night copy shop, because he apparently didn't have a computer of his own. Best part? It was at Kinko's.
St. Louis woman, 60, pleads guilty to child pornography. She was the board president for the local chapter of the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The U.S. Attorney's office in St. Louis says they've prosecuted about 100 cases of kiddie porn in the past five years. This is only the second female to be convicted.
Walter Sewell, a former pharmacist from St. Joe, has been sentenced 15 years in prison on child pornography charges. He downloaded thousands of movies and photos at home and work. Some of the kids shown were as young as 2 or 3. (Mark Morris' story is here.)
Sidebar: Prosecutors pushed for a longer sentence because Sewell used Kazaa -- which meant other Kazaa users could download images from his computer. Thus, Sewell wasn't just downloading kiddie porn, he was pushing it, too, the feds said.
An Iowa man has pleaded guilty to child-porn charges and will do 15 to 30 years. But several families are furious that he wasn't prosecuted on molestation charges. Many of the man's photos show him abusing the children -- 23 of them, by one count, all under 12, the families said. They say the plea lets him out of jail too soon.
One more reason to avoid the outdoors ... A California man is accused of owning 750,000 pieces of child pornography. In 2005, some hikers found a partially covered hole, and inside the hole, an ammunition cannister filled with the porn. Authorities found 16 boxes total, buried under ground.
(Hat Tip: Thanks, Doc!)
From U. S. Attorney Bradley J. Schlozman's office:
Jeffery A. Ray, 41, Belton was sentenced to 8 years 1 month without parole for possession of child porn, including a video clip, "Baby J. Mine", showing intercourse between an adult and prepubescent girl.
Juan Gomez-Contreras, 41, a citizen of Mexico residing in Kansas City, has been indicted for illegally reentering the country, illegally having a gun and dealing meth.
Mark B. Davidson, 44, St. Joseph, was sentenced to 21 years 8 months in federal prison without parole for illegal possession of a handgun.
Nine men have been indicted in separate cases for illegal possession of firearms.
Brenda Sue Moyer, 51, Raytown was sentenced to 1 year 6 months for embezzling more than $159,000 from clients of the Armstrong Teasdale law firm, where she was a legal secretary.
Two men deported for violent felonies have been indicted for illegal reentry to the country.
This is fairly weird: The 60-year-old board president of the St. Louis chapter of a national breast-cancer awareness organization faces up to 10 years in prison for having four child-porn images on her home PC - maybe more - sent by her chat friend in Atlanta who ended up doing 30 years for child exploitation.
Sandra Batte, of Chesterfield, Mo., resigned her voluntary position at Susan G. Komen for the Cure Feb. 6, a spokesman said.
Leawood resident Douglas Welch's business plan: Advertise a 'Hidden Lolitas' Website offering 20,000 pornographic images of girls 2 to 17 years old, all for a subscription price of only $22.95.
Federal judge's plan: 60 months in prison.
News release from U.S. attorney's office
From Daytona Beach:
Update: An 84-year-old woman in Oregon has pleaded guilty for trying to have sex with an 11-year-old boy in her care.
Hat tip to readers Kelly, blondie2hot7!
Mark Anthony Mayfield, 51, of Independence, has pleaded guilty to receiving child porn in the mail, U.S. Attorney Brad Schlozman's office reported. Authorities set up a sting through the mail and, posing as a mail-order company that distributes kiddie porn, asked if he'd be interested buying some. (He was.) Mayfield had worked as a mail handler.
Neal Byron Lenarcic's a stay-at-home dad who lives in Washington State, but he used to teach at Harmony Elementary in Overland Park. He's received 60 days shock time for asking three 8-year-old girls to take nude pictures of each other in a school bathroom back in 2002, using a camera he gave them.
Lenarcic pleaded no-contest; the original plea deal was for 45 days. The judge upped it to 60. Probably didn't help when Lenarcic said it was the girls' idea to take photos.
This is the first time I've ever seen women accused in a child-porn case, and in this one, Pennsylvania authorities say the women were helping a guy. One woman posed the kids for the pictures; the other was their baby-sitter.
(Hat Tip: Blondie)
From the U.S. attorney's press release – Bradley J. Schlozman, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a Cameron, Mo., man pleaded guilty in federal court today to using a minor in his custody to produce child pornography.
William S. Price, 43, of Cameron, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Nanette K. Laughrey this morning to all five counts contained in a June 28, 2006, federal indictment. Price was formerly a nursing supervisor at the Missouri State Veterans Home in Caldwell County, Mo.
“This defendant repeatedly drugged a minor victim, and while she was unconscious, videotaped himself molesting and raping her,” Schlozman said. “Never before have I encountered anything so revoltingly sadistic and morally repugnant. The only way to protect our community from this monster is to lock him up for a very long time.”
WICHITA – Cattleman James R. Danley, 65, Garden City, has been indicted on charges of bank and wire fraud for allegedly lying about his cattle inventory in order to receive a $105,275 bank loan. He faces up to 30 years.
Other indictments: drugs, immigration-related ID theft, return after deportation, gun-possessing felons, child porn and more.
A federal grand jury has issued a five count indictment against 24-year-old Mix 93.3 FM DJ Gregory D. Sage, a DJ at the station until November and now a promotions assistant, charging him with receiving and possessing child porn over the Internet.
Sage, who also operates a business that sells photos of high school athletes from a Web site, made an initial court appearance today on the charges:
The case was investigated by Lee's Summit police.
Possible defenses, from Greg's page on the Mix 93 website:
Are child-porn prosecutions here "vicious, draconian and evil"? Is U.S. Attorney Bradley J. Schlozman a bully in these cases?
Update: Her lawyer now says she was 19. Nevermind.
Reader roadrat left a link in the open thread Wednesday that led to some pictures of Miss Nevada 2007
pulling down her shirt top, kissing another woman, etc. I didn't post it because, well, less is more in this kind of thing.
Now her attorney says she was 17 when those photos were taken. Isn't 18 the minimum age for adult pornography?
(Photo: Non-raunchy picture of now-fired Miss Nevada 2007 Katie Rees, 22)
Hat tip for update to reader Busby's Evil Twin!
A St. Joseph grocery store pharmacist has pleaded guilty to having thousands of child-porn images, some of them of children as young as two or three, depicted in sadomasochistic or violent situations, prosecutors said.
Walter E. Sewell, 41, came up when an FBI agent entered "pedo" in the file-sharing program Kazaa. He faces up to, well, umpteen years in prison, something like 30 plus 15 plus five. News release
A Blue Springs man convicted on child-porn charges got new computers and continued to download and distribute child porn after authorities seized his original PCs, prosecutors said.
George M. Bass, Jr., 59, was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years in federal prison without parole, to be served concurrently with an earlier five-year term for child porn.
His collection included thousands of images, including those of children under 12 and images of children in bondage.
A 21-year-old Texas man faces at least five years in prison for sending a video of his ex-girlfriend sexually molesting her 2-year-old to a 15-year-old relative of the woman. It's unclear whether the woman faces charges.
Hat tip to reader You're a Mean Drunk R2D2!
Jason Romdall, 27, of Claycomo, received child porn over the Internet in early 2003, federal prosecutors allege. Now, more than three years later, the U.S. Attorney's office has announced he has been indicted on two counts of receiving and possessing child pornography. Court documents don't indicate a reason for the delay.
Interesting missing-persons case out of Skidmore, Missouri: Did 20-year-old Branson Kayne Perry just take off in 2001, or did he fall victim to the cannibalistic child-porn criminal who once bragged about torturing and killing "a blonde-haired boy from Skidmore"?
Reader Linda Stovall, who has taken an interest in missing-persons cases, sent me a link to Branson's page. His mother e-mailed Linda: " I want to scream…..I want to cry……I want to know why and how something like
this can be happening."
"Person of interest" in the case is Jack Wayne Rogers, now serving 360 months for child-porn, in part based on investigators' statements that they found "numerous photographs of Rogers posing with severed male genitals, wearing them on his head, placing them in his mouth and apparently chewing them", along with pictures of little boys in bondage and in sex acts.
Update 11/13/06: "Someone in Skidmore knows something"
A Northland business executive who asked his computer tech to remove pop-up ads and spyware from
his laptop is up on child-porn charges instead after images of nude prepubescent girls engaged in sex acts were found on the computer.
Ronald E. Elmquist, 60, president and CEO of QualServ Corp., a manufacturer and distributor of foodservice equipment, is charged with three counts of possession of child pornography.
A former head football coach at University of St. Mary in
Leavenworth was sentenced Monday to 13 years in federal prison for
trafficking in child pornography.
Scott Frear, 43, who coached his first St. Mary team in 2002 and was the
Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference coach of the year that season, pleaded guilty in June to one count of
trafficking in child pornography.
Frear admitted corresponding in July 2005 with a person
he thought was a 14-year-old boy from New Hampshire. Instead, it was an
undercover police detective.
From the Canadian Free Press:
Captive market: Children as sex slaves
Children are bought, sold, traded and misused in underground child
sex markets daily. Every state in the United States, and every other
nation, contributes in some fashion to the steady flow of children, the
customers and exploiters.
It is estimated that the profits from this vast evil empire, when
properly invested, would draw an interest exceeding US $2 million an
hour. The sexual trafficking in children is not so much an industry but
a global empire.
Hat tip to reader BS Steve!
Faced up to four years in prison
A Connecticut man flagged by his ISP for distributing child porn got a suspended sentence after his lawyer told the judge the man had been attending sex-offender therapy and his doctor said he was unlikely to offend again.
Hat tip to reader rhonda!
Man charged in series of sex assaults
Authorities on Thursday charged a south Kansas City man with sexually assaulting a young relative over a three-year period.
The Jackson County prosecutor’s office charged Stephen B. Brewer, 52, with several sex crimes, including sodomy and rape.
The victim told police that Brewer assaulted her when she was between the fifth and ninth grades. The attacks occurred in Brewer’s home in the 11800 block of Avila Drive.
The documents accuse Brewer, who is a real estate agent and photographer, of taking hundreds of pictures of the victim, including many when she was nude. Police obtained a search warrant this week and searched computers taken from Brewer’s home.
They allegedly found thousands of pictures of naked children. Police also said they found a file with the victim’s name in which Brewer documented detailed information such as her height, her weight and when she started taking birth-control pills.
James Curtis Wilson, 39, of Lee’s Summit, has been charged in a three-count, child-porn-related indictment by a federal grand jury in Kansas City:
SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — Prosecutors and defense attorneys in the John Mark Karr child pornography case are expected back in a Sonoma County courtroom Tuesday, to discuss what evidence should be allowed in the trial.
Defense lawyers, who argue that five misdemeanor charges against Karr should be dropped because prosecutors lost the computer that allegedly held the pornographic images, also seek to block newly discovered computer evidence from being admitted at trial.
Sonoma County authorities said they've found more than 1,000 other child pornography images on diskettes, CDs and a removable disk drive that were seized from Karr's home in 2001 with the computer.
The former teacher was arrested in Thailand after suggesting he killed JonBenet, a 6-year-old beauty queen, in her Boulder, Colo., home in 1996. The Ramsey case quickly collapsed after DNA failed to connect him to the crime.
