20.1 Window to the World

As obvious as it may seem, it is important to stress that sexual abuse and illegal pornography existed long before the Internet. Joseph Henry's congressional testimony is a clear reminder of this fact and that networks of child abusers exist independent of the Internet. In his testimony, he describes his actions and how he established communication with other offenders (initially through a paper publication called Better Life) who gave him access to child victims.

By the time I was 24, I had molested 14 young girls and had been arrested twice and sent to State [sic] hospitals, one for 18 months. I used all the normal techniques used by pedophiles. I bribed my victims; I pleaded with them, but I also showed them affection and attention they thought they were not getting anywhere else. Almost without exception, every child I molested was lonely and longing for attention. For example, I would take my victims to movies and to amusement parks. When I babysat them, I would let them stay up past their bedtime if they let me fondle them. One little 8-year-old girl I was babysitting came over to my house one day soaking wet from a rainstorm. I told her I'd pay her $1 if she would stay undressed for an hour. This incident opened the door for 3 years of molestation. I used these kinds of tricks on children all the time. Their desire to be loved, their trust of adults, their normal sexual playfulness and their inquisitive minds made them perfect victims. I never saw any outward emotional damage in one of my victims until 1971 when I was 36 and the manager of a nudist park in New Jersey. I was able to see many children nude and grew particularly attracted to a 9-year-old named Kathy. I once bought her five Christmas presents. She was the first little girl I ever forced myself upon and the first whose molestation was not premeditated. I actually saw the trauma and the terror on her face after I had molested her...

Around 1974, when I was beginning to hang around 42nd Street porno shops in New York City, I got my first exposure to commercial child pornography. I got to be friends with one of the porn shop owners and one day he showed me a magazine that just arrived called Nudist Moppets. There were paperback books with stories of child sex, adult/child sex. The films in the peep shows were of men with girls, boys with girls and a few that looked like families together in sexual activity. Eventually, I put together a photographic collection of 500 pages of children in sexually explicit poses. Before long, films started coming in and I bought a film projector. I started reading some of the pornographic tabloids called Screw, Finger and Love, which were filled with all types of sex stories, ads and listings for pen pals. At least one of the issues was devoted to a pedophilic theme. In one issue of Finger, there was an ad about organizations that were devoted to sexual intimacy between children and adults. I wrote to three of them - Better Life, the Guyon Society and the Childhood Sensuality Circle. Better Life and the Childhood Sensuality Circle responded, so I sent in the membership fee to join them. (Henry 1985)

In a study of 49 child pornographers and 13 men convicted of traveling interstate to have sex with a minor (a.k.a. travelers) in federal prison, 76 percent of the subjects admitted to having committed contact sex offenses that were not detected by the criminal justice system (Hernandez 2000). According to the study, these offenders had molested a combined total of 1,433 victims without ever having been detected. The study also indicated that, "these offenders target children in Cyberspace in a similar manner as offenders who prey on children in their neighborhood or nearby park. They seek vulnerable children, gradually groom them, and eventually contact them to perpetrate sexual abuse." According to a 2001 survey "Reality of Female Victims of Violence in South Chungcheong Province," of the 50 sexual assault cases in South Korea that were reviewed, nine incidents involved victims raped by people they met on the Internet (Soh-jung 2001). Although the sample size in this survey was not large enough to draw firm conclusions, it is worth noting that the majority of the assaults did not involve the Internet and were committed by individuals who knew the victims (e.g. neighbor, co-worker, colleague, relative). The Internet is a window into such activities in the physical world, and although the Internet can facilitate these crimes and even cause some offenders to act out their fantasies, blaming the Internet will not address the root problems. On the contrary, restricting the Internet to hide these problems will eliminate a unique opportunity to observe and address these criminal activities.

Grooming refers to the ways that a sexual offender gains control over victims, exploiting their weaknesses to gain trust or instill fear. Grooming usually involves exploiting a victim's needs such as loneliness, self-esteem, sexual curiosity/ inexperience, or lack of money and taking advantage of this vulnerability to develop a bond. Offenders use this control or bond to sexually manipulate victims and discourage them from exposing the offender to authorities.

Whether sex offenders simply use cyberspace to lure victims into physical world meetings or make more use of this new venue to fulfill their needs, incriminating digital evidence is left behind. There is an over-abundance of cases demonstrating these two modes of operation: using the Internet to lure victims and using the Internet to further crimes committed in the physical world. Convicted killer John E. Robinson contacted some victims through the Internet, sexually assaulting some and killing others (Rizzo 2001). In 2000, Lawrence Stackhouse found 15-year-old Diana Strickland's online profile, contacted her using the Internet, and then groomed her until she and a girlfriend agreed to travel to his home in Pennsylvania, where he exploited them sexually for 4 days until the girlfriend called the police (Psychiatric News 2000). A teacher named Frank Bauer used the Internet to trick a 15-year-old male student at the school into thinking Bauer was a woman, then blackmailing him into making a pornographic video of himself (Chen 2000).

In 2001, James Warren kidnapped a 15-year-old girl he befriended on the Internet and held her captive for a week in Long Island where he sexually abused her. In the same case, Beth Loschin pled guilty to sexual abuse and sodomy and another man, Michael Montez, pled guilty to raping the teen while she was in Long Island (Associated Press 2002). In 2000, Adam Valleau admitted to persuading a 12-year-old to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purposes of producing a visual depiction of the conduct. Valleau photographed the minor with a digital camera as the child engaged in sexually explicit conduct at Valleau's direction. The defendant then posted those images of the child on the Internet where they could be viewed by others. In an interview with Baltimore County Police detectives in May of 2002, Valleau admitted to sexually abusing two boys (USDOJ 2002b). One of the largest child exploitation investigations to date began with two members of the Orchid Club who distributed digital recordings of their offenses to cohorts on the Internet.

CASE EXAMPLE (CALIFORNIA 1996):

A woman contacted the local police and reported that her 6-year-old daughter had been molested during a slumber party by Ronald Riva, the father of the host. Additionally, a 10-year-old girl at the party reported that Riva and his friend, Melton Myers, used a computer to record her as she posed for them. Riva and Myers led investigators into an international ring of child abusers and pornographers that convened in an Internet chat room called the Orchid Club. Sixteen men from Finland, Canada, Australia, and the United States were charged. One log of an Orchid Club chat session indicated that Riva and Myers were describing their actions to other members of the club as they abused the 10-year-old girl. Their investigation into the Orchid Club led law enforcement to a larger group of child pornographers and pedophiles called the Wonderland Club. After more than two years of following leads, police in 14 countries arrested over 200 members of Wonderland, in the largest coordinated effort to crack down on child exploitation and abuse to date. Evidence gathered during this latest effort suggests that there are members of the Wonderland Club in more than 40 countries, so the investigation is by no means over. (Shannon 1998)

By recording offenders' activities in more detail, computers and networks can provide a window into their world, giving us a clearer view of how sex offenders operate. For instance, when dealing with sex offenses that do not involve the Internet, it can be very difficult to determine if stalking occurred prior to the crime. In the United Kingdom, Patrick Green stalked a girl on the Internet for several months, obtained her private e-mail address, and lured her into a meeting after posing as a 15-year-old boy. Green met the girl in his car and took her to his flat where he began a series of indecent assaults (McAuliffe 2000). Other investigations have revealed grooming behavior of online sex offenders who target children, showing it is no different on the Internet than in person. Some offenders gain a victim's trust by alternately playing the role of seducer and caring parental figure, sending child pornography to break down sexual inhibitions, and giving gifts in exchange for sex. These insights into sex offender behavior have enabled investigators to find offenders on the Internet, locate other victims targeted by an offender, discover evidence that might otherwise have been overlooked, and warn parents of potential victims to be alert to unexpected packages and telephone calls for their children from adults.