Chapter 20: Sex Offenders on the Internet

Overview

Eoghan Casey, Monique Ferraro, and Michael McGrath

The ability of criminals to acquire victims, gather information, lurk in cyberspace, protect or alter their identity, and communicate with other offenders makes the Internet an attractive setting for these individuals. However, at times the lack of technological sophistication displayed by offenders is surprising. Some offenders apparently are not aware that it is quite easy to locate them and make very little effort to conceal basic information on the Internet. Offenders who do not initially hide their identity may do so only after they realize they are at risk. Thus, it may be possible to use the Internet's archiving capabilities to find information on an individual before their covering behavior commenced.

The Internet is attractive to sex offenders for a number of reasons. In addition to giving criminals greater access to victims, extending their reach from a limited geographical area to victims all around the world, the Internet contains a significant amount of information about potential victims. Online dating sites (e.g. personals.yahoo.com) provide the most obvious example of the kinds of personal information that individuals disclose on the Internet including photographs, their age, and geographic region. Although these dating sites were created for a legitimate purpose, they provide a target rich environment that offenders have not overlooked. In 2002, Japan's National Police Agency reported a dramatic increase in the number of crimes, including murder and rape, linked to Internet dating sites and that, in almost all cases, Internet-enabled mobile phones were used to access the dating sites (The Age 2002). Offenders also use dating sites to seek out other similar minded individuals to validate their interests, and to gain access to more victims and child pornography.

CASE EXAMPLE (MARYLAND 1999):

Responding to complaints regarding a user "Michelle985," on Matchmaker.com who was soliciting people to have sex with "Michelle" and a female child, the Maryland State Police traded e-mails with "Michelle985" who requested in one of the e-mails, "send some pics to show you are not a cop." The police traced the "Michelle985" profile to Robert Wyatt in Abingdon, Maryland. On May 11, 1999, a search warrant was executed at Wyatt's home and the police seized Wyatt's computer. A subsequent forensic analysis of the computer revealed over 100 color still images and three movie files of explicit child pornography. Included among the images were several photos of a little girl who had been brutally raped by her father in Texas. To prove to the jury that the little girl depicted in the images was in fact a real minor child and not just a computer rendered image, the government called a Texas State Ranger who testified that in connection with an investigation he conducted in 2000, he had met and identified the little girl depicted in the images (USDOJ 2002a).

Even people who use the Internet for purposes other than meeting a partner unintentionally disclose personal information that a malicious individual can use against them. A simple Web page containing a woman's name, address, interests and photograph is all that is needed to target a victim. Sex offenders target children in online chat rooms that are supposedly devoted to youngsters. The Internet enables sexual offenders to commit a crime without ever physically assaulting a victim.

CASE EXAMPLE (BURNEY 1997):

A 47-year-old Ohio man posing as a 15-year-old communicated through computer messages with a 14-year-old girl and was able to convince her to send him sexually explicit photographs and videotapes of herself performing sexual acts. The cyber relationship went on for 18 months, since the girl was 12. The offender pled guilty to one charge of inducing a minor to produce child pornography.

Children are not the only victims of sexual assault involving the Internet. In England, Christopher Graham Elliott was sentenced to 7 years in prison for raping and inflicting actual bodily harm on a woman he met online (Pendlebury 2001). Another man who met female university students online, apparently through "collegeclub.com," fled after being arrested for sexually assaulting one woman. Although men commit the majority of sex offenses involving the Internet, women also exploit children they meet online. In 1997, a woman in South Portland admitted to having sex with a 14-year-old boy she met in an online chat room (States News Service 1998). Also in 1997, a 40-year-old woman met a 15-year-old boy from Minnesota on the Internet and lured him to North Carolina for sex (States News Service 1999). In 1998, a 30-year-old Pittsburgh woman arranged to meet and have sex with a 15-year-old boy she met in an Internet chat room (The Baltimore Sun 1998).

As detailed in Chapter 18, the Internet has sophisticated search tools and many newsgroups and chat rooms organized by topic, providing an abundance of hunting grounds. Once an offender has selected a target, he/she can monitor potential or existing victims on several levels, ranging from participating in a discussion forum and becoming familiar with the other participants, to searching the Internet for related information about an individual, to accessing a potential victim's personal computer to gain additional information. Furthermore, by giving offenders access to victims over an extended period of time (rather than just during a brief physical encounter) the Internet allows offenders to groom victims, developing sufficient trust to engage in cybersex or even meet in the physical world.

Another appealing feature of the Internet is the perceived anonymity and safety it provides, allowing offenders to alter or conceal their identity. Age, gender, and physical appearance are all malleable on the Internet enabling offenders to further their own fantasies and portray themselves in a way that will interest their chosen victim. Some offenders present themselves as young boys to make themselves less threatening to a child selected as a victim. Other offenders masquerade by providing a photograph of a more attractive male to draw potential female victims. The ability to conceal identifying information can also be used to avoid apprehension.

Another benefit of the Internet to the offender is the peer support it provides. Some groups of offenders use the Internet to communicate, exchange advice and sometimes trophies of their exploits. In Japan, Akihiko Kamimura was sentenced to 12 years in prison for using the Internet to recruit four other men to form a rape gang that sexually assaulted five women. Kamimura, who was confined to a wheelchair, received help from one of the other men in raping two of the five women (Guardian Unlimited 2001). In 2001, Joe Clemens admitted to soliciting people in a Yahoo! chat room to harm his wife. According to his message, Clemens wanted his wife "kidnapped, gang-raped, tortured, and humiliated" and that he was serious about this request and only wanted serious inquiries (Ananova 2001).

The impact of these peer support groups can be profound, "normalizing" abnormal desires, enabling offenders to view their behavior as socially acceptable and possibly lowering their inhibitions to act on impulses that would otherwise remain fantasy. Additionally, these types of support groups can give offenders access to child pornography, children, and technical knowledge that would otherwise be beyond their reach.

This chapter discusses related legal and corporate issues and provides insight into sex offenders on the Internet. An overview of investigating this type of crime is provided to help digital investigators and digital evidence examiners integrate the techniques presented throughout this book and apply them in their work. Generalizations regarding investigations are of limited use since each case is unique, requiring an individual approach and often presenting distinct challenges. The same behavior can mean different things in different cases - one offender might bring a victim to his home because he feels safer there than in a hotel room, whereas another offender might prefer a hotel room but cannot afford the expense. Conversely, one offender may bring victims to a hotel because they feel more anonymous and less exposed than they would in their home, whereas another offender may use a hotel because his spouse and children are at home.

Therefore, it is more useful to examine features of individual cases and attempt to draw useful lessons from them. A number of case examples are presented in this chapter in an effort to highlight important issues. Ultimately, investigators and examiners must depart from the finite knowledge in this book and creatively apply what they have learned to new situations in the cases they encounter. With this in mind, sections in earlier chapters are referenced to encourage the reader to revisit the concepts and envision how they can be applied to new cases.