Sex Offender Charged in Child Porn Case

A registered sex offender who served a four-year prison sentence for distributing child pornography was arrested this week on suspicion of telling an undercover detective online that he would pay for sex with a 10-year-old girl.

Steve R. Houck, 52, of Fairfax has been jailed since he was arrested Tuesday on federal charges of attempting to arrange sexual activity with a minor online and distributing child pornography. He appeared yesterday in U.S. District Court in Washington, where he waived a hearing to determine whether he should remain in custody while the case moves forward.

On June 12, Houck, using the screen name "dad here," contacted an undercover D.C. police detective who was monitoring an Internet chat room that featured discussions about incest, charging documents say. The detective, Timothy Palchak, is a member of the department's Internet Crimes Against Children task force.

Palchak, posing as a pedophile, and Houck swapped stories in the chat room about being "active" with young girls before moving their discussion to Yahoo Messenger, charging papers say. Houck has two adult daughters but no children younger than 18.

Houck subsequently contacted the detective several times, sent him two photos of a nude girl appearing to be 11 or 12, and tried to arrange a meeting at a D.C. hotel for sex with the 10-year-old daughter of a prostitute the detective claimed to know, charging papers say.

The Yahoo public profile for "dad here" identified the chatter as Rick Martin, a 48-year-old married man who lives in the same Zip code as Houck and works in the same technology field, the documents say. The profile had an e-mail account that contains the same four digits that were in the e-mail address Houck used when he was arrested in 1999 on charges of distributing child pornography to an array of people, including a Northern Virginia pediatrician. He was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to four years in prison.

Authorities said they traced the Internet communications to two computers at the Reston computer technology company where Houck works and one associated with one of Houck's daughters. At least three more communications were connected to unsecured wireless networks within 500 feet of the address Houck reported as his residence as a sex offender, authorities said.