By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 22, 2006; PW01
When the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children started its CyberTipline in 1998, it received about 4,500 reports that year of children had been victimized by online sexual predators.
Today, it gets about 1,500 reports a week; it received more than 71,000 last year. They include complaints about child pornography and adults using the Internet to entice children for sex. At least 90 percent of the reports involve online activity.
"This is a very big problem," said Michelle Collins, director of the Exploited Child Unit at the Alexandria-based center. "No one wants to be alarmist. But in the area of child porn and child sex abuse, if the public were to truly understand the volume of what we're dealing with, it would be quite a shock."
The federal government has taken notice. In an effort to crack down on the growing sexual exploitation of children through the Internet, the Justice Department recently launched Project Safe Childhood. The national initiative aims to coordinate law enforcement efforts and bring more cases in federal courts, where sentencing provisions are likely to land abusers in jail for longer terms than in the state court systems.
In Alexandria, the U.S. attorney's office is taking the lead in putting Project Safe Childhood into action. Last week, the office coordinated a conference in Richmond at which more than 200 law enforcement officials from throughout Virginia explored ways to better investigate and prosecute online sexual exploitation cases. It was the first of more than 90 similar conferences that will be held by U.S. attorneys' offices nationwide.
"The idea of Project Safe Childhood is for everyone to cooperate and focus their efforts so we're not running off in different directions," said Robert Wiechering, an assistant U.S. attorney in Alexandria. "I won't say it's been haphazard before, but it's really been a sheriff here or a sheriff there. If we pool all our resources and focus on the most dangerous individuals, we will have a real impact on making the Internet safer and children safer."
The dimensions of the problem are staggering, according to federal statistics and law enforcement officials. Since an FBI program called Innocent Images National Initiative began targeting child pornography and child sexual enticement in 1995, arrests have increased by more than 2,000 percent, jumping from 68 in 1996 to 1,649 in 2005.
Justice Department prosecutions of child pornography and child abuse have also skyrocketed in the past decade, going from 344 cases in 1995 to 1,576 last year. In Northern Virginia, cases are on the rise as well, though federal officials could not provide specific numbers.
Law enforcement officials and child advocates blame the technology and anonymity of the Internet.
"What the Internet has done is, it has become the greatest connector of all time," Collins said. "Individuals who previously would not necessarily have shared their proclivity or sexual interest in kids with anyone around them, because of what people would say, these people can now go into their basement, have a soda, open a bag of chips and connect with 1,000 other people who feel the same way."
Before the Internet era, Collins said, people who wanted to see graphic images of children "would have to go into an adult bookstore, wink-wink at the person behind the counter and hope he wouldn't call the cops, or take the chance of ordering something through the mail. Now people can just get online and hide things on their computer. It's really introduced a new type of offender."
The ease of Internet use has changed the nature of child pornography, investigators say. Victims are getting younger, and images online are stunningly graphic.
"It's getting much more egregious," said Gerald Smagala, an assistant U.S. attorney in Alexandria. "We're talking kids as young as 8 months old, lit candles, genital contact, oral this and oral that. There is stuff out there that would bring tears to a lot of people's eyes."
Project Safe Childhood, launched by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales last month, aims to combat that by requiring every U.S. attorney's office to give greater focus to online sexual exploitation cases. Prosecutors will work with the FBI and other federal agencies that investigate child sex abuse cases, such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Postal Inspection Service, and better coordinate efforts with local officials.
Each U.S. attorney's office is expected to set up a working group to investigate and prosecute cases and decide whether to bring them in federal or state court.
In Northern Virginia, the group is expected to include federal prosecutors, commonwealth's attorneys and local law enforcement officials from Alexandria, Arlington and other jurisdictions.
Fairfax County Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Marc J. Birnbaum, who attended the Richmond conference, said he learned that online child abusers often fit a different profile than other criminals.
"It's someone who in many respects can blend into the community and not outwardly appear as dangerous," he said. "These people appear as neighbors. They are often in positions of trust: coaches, teachers."
As for what parents can do to protect their children, Birnbaum's advice was simple: "It is imperative that parents monitor what their children are doing on the Internet. These predators have a real dedication to hunting out and finding children. They don't stop at any sort of boundary.''
