Minnesota ICAC - Getting tough on child porn
By Dan Browning, Star Tribune, 03/03/07
Prosecuting child porn cases is a top priority for Minnesota's new U.S. attorney, who helped draft a no-holds-barred U.S. Department of Justice enforcement initiative a year ago. Child pornography isn't just dirty pictures, she says.
Bruce Betcher says he began searching the Web for sexually explicit photos of children in 2003, a predilection that led him to photograph two relatives -- both under 12 -- and three of their best friends in lascivious poses. When he appears in federal court in Minneapolis on Tuesday, Betcher, a 53-year-old Burnsville property appraiser, could be sentenced to up to life in prison -- a longer term than if he had been convicted of first- or second-degree murder.
Extraordinary prison sentences for first-time offenders and a willingness of prosecutors to throw the book at them are evidence of an expanding crackdown by the federal government on anyone caught producing, possessing or distributing child pornography. Mandatory minimum sentences have been lengthened twice in the past three years, and a year ago the Department of Justice launched Project Safe Childhood, a no-holds-barred enforcement initiative that has made prosecution of child porn a top priority.
Rachel Paulose, the new U.S. attorney for Minnesota, helped draft that initiative and promised vigorous enforcement of existing laws. A review of Minnesota cases brought by the government in the past year shows that it isn't prosecuting people who accidentally tripped across a photo or two. The cases thus far range from an international Internet consultant snared at the airport with child sex photos on his laptop to the father of three young girls who recorded himself raping and sodomizing them.
One man prosecuted in Minneapolis recently had more than 350,000 images of pornography, some of which included sexual penetration of toddlers. In another case, a Richfield man who worked as a pharmacy assistant sent child porn to an undercover agent and said he could drug young girls so they wouldn't remember being assaulted and photographed.
Though many of the cases were already underway when Paulose took office in February 2006, she's promising to bring more. Several recent search warrants indicate that she means it. "You will, over time, see an increase," Paulose said.
Betcher's lawyer, Thomas Shiah, and other defense attorneys worry the federal sentencing guidelines are too harsh, particularly for first-time offenders like Betcher. "You can do much more heinous crimes and do less time," Shiah said. But in Betcher's case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald urged the judge to follow the sentencing recommendation of life in prison. "The lives of five little girls and their families were irreparably damaged by this man and his deviant behavior," she said in a memo filed Friday.
Paulose, too, is unsympathetic to any pleas for mercy. "To be blunt, no sentence would ever be long enough for a person who takes the innocence of a child," she said. Righteous sentences" The government has been tightening the noose on child porn for years. Congress enacted the first law dealing specifically with child pornography in 1978. Ten years later, it made it illegal to use a computer to create or promote it.
The PROTECT Act, passed in 2003, set stiff mandatory minimum sentences. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, enacted last summer, stiffened sentences even more and, among other things, established the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender public website.
Inexpensive digital cameras and the Internet have made it easier than ever for people to create, distribute and acquire child pornography, but they have also made it easier for investigators to track their footprints.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has more agents working on child porn than any other program in its Cyber Division. Since 1996, the Innocent Images National Initiative to target child porn on the Internet has resulted in 5,752 criminal cases. The Department of Justice began funding regional Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces in 1998 to help state and local law enforcement agencies investigate online child exploitation. In January 2006, the Justice Department awarded $14 million to the 46 task forces. A month later, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales decreed child-porn prosecutions a top priority, and he said federal law enforcement agencies would help state investigators and nongovernmental agencies to attack the problem.
Until recently, Minnesota's ICAC task force had just one full-time investigator. But last year the Minnesota Legislature voted to kick in $1 million a year, and the task force is moving from the St. Paul Police Department into the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), which is assigning four agents, two forensic analysts, an information technology expert and a trainer to the task force, according to BCA Superintendent Tim O'Malley.
Federal prison sentences for child porn producers more than doubled between 1994 and 2005, and defense attorneys expect them to get even longer as a result of recent congressional action. Federal prosecutors in Minnesota are pushing for and getting maximum sentences. "In the last six months we have obtained three sentences of terms that are 30 years, 30 years and 10 years, respectively," Paulose said. "We think those are righteous sentences."
Tougher laws and more resources will undoubtedly result in more criminals being brought to justice, said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. But he cautioned that no one really knows whether the Internet has spawned an actual increase in child pornography production in recent years or merely helped law enforcement agents uncover it.
St. Paul police Sgt. Bill Haider, the lone investigator on the Minnesota ICAC task force, said he hasn't noticed an increase recently in child porn cases in Minnesota. But the Internet has allowed people who have sexual interests in children to find others like themselves. "And for them, it leads them to believe that it's more normal," he said.
The FBI, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Internal Revenue Service, Secret Service, and state and local police all play a role in finding child porn online. Investigators work undercover in chat rooms, trace suspects through Internet service providers (ISPs) and credit card companies, track down peer-to-peer file sharing networks and follow tips.
ISPs such as Yahoo and Comcast, though not required to look for child porn, are now legally required to report evidence of it on their networks.
Haider said that most of the cases he gets are referrals from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a private nonprofit agency mandated by Congress to help law enforcement. It operates an online reporting service at www.cybertipline.com.
In 2004, the national center referred 492 reports in Minnesota, said Michelle Collins, director of the exploited-child unit. The total declined to 275 reports in 2005, but rose again last year to 353. The center also works with U.S. law enforcement and Interpol to identify victims of child abuse, whose photos persist online for years. As of last week, the center had identified 992 children in these photos, up from 886 at the beginning of the year. The increase is a direct result of law enforcement agencies working together, Collins said. And that's just what led to Betcher's arrest.
A Brownie uniform
In August 2005, federal agents in Atlanta seized a computer with more than 2,000 images of child pornography from a Georgia police sergeant. Alert investigators noticed the partial insignia of a Minnesota Brownie uniform, and that eventually led them to identify a girl in the photo as a relative of Betcher's. He was charged and convicted of 24 counts of producing child pornography, one count of distributing it and one count of possessing it. The sentencing guidelines suggest piling on extra prison time because of the repeat nature of his offenses, and the fact that he was in a position of authority over the children he photographed.
A similar thing happened to Steven Koenen, 45, of Robbinsdale. He was snared by undercover FBI agents after he posted more than 30 child porn photos to an Internet news group in 2005. Investigators recovered more than 7,000 illicit images when they seized his computer equipment, and Koenen admitted to sexually assaulting three relatives, ages 3, 7 and 9. Koenen is appealing a 30-year sentence meted out in July.
Paulose singled out his case as an example of why she's pursuing such cases so aggressively. Child pornography isn't just dirty pictures, she said. "It's a visual depiction of a crime scene, and we need to take that seriously. I don't think a society can have any greater responsibility than protecting its children."
Dan Browning • 612-673-4493 • dbrowning@startribune.com
Retrieved March 7, 2007 from http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1032190.html
Prosecuting child porn cases is a top priority for Minnesota's new U.S. attorney, who helped draft a no-holds-barred U.S. Department of Justice enforcement initiative a year ago. Child pornography isn't just dirty pictures, she says.
Bruce Betcher says he began searching the Web for sexually explicit photos of children in 2003, a predilection that led him to photograph two relatives -- both under 12 -- and three of their best friends in lascivious poses. When he appears in federal court in Minneapolis on Tuesday, Betcher, a 53-year-old Burnsville property appraiser, could be sentenced to up to life in prison -- a longer term than if he had been convicted of first- or second-degree murder.
Extraordinary prison sentences for first-time offenders and a willingness of prosecutors to throw the book at them are evidence of an expanding crackdown by the federal government on anyone caught producing, possessing or distributing child pornography. Mandatory minimum sentences have been lengthened twice in the past three years, and a year ago the Department of Justice launched Project Safe Childhood, a no-holds-barred enforcement initiative that has made prosecution of child porn a top priority.
Rachel Paulose, the new U.S. attorney for Minnesota, helped draft that initiative and promised vigorous enforcement of existing laws. A review of Minnesota cases brought by the government in the past year shows that it isn't prosecuting people who accidentally tripped across a photo or two. The cases thus far range from an international Internet consultant snared at the airport with child sex photos on his laptop to the father of three young girls who recorded himself raping and sodomizing them.
One man prosecuted in Minneapolis recently had more than 350,000 images of pornography, some of which included sexual penetration of toddlers. In another case, a Richfield man who worked as a pharmacy assistant sent child porn to an undercover agent and said he could drug young girls so they wouldn't remember being assaulted and photographed.
Though many of the cases were already underway when Paulose took office in February 2006, she's promising to bring more. Several recent search warrants indicate that she means it. "You will, over time, see an increase," Paulose said.
Betcher's lawyer, Thomas Shiah, and other defense attorneys worry the federal sentencing guidelines are too harsh, particularly for first-time offenders like Betcher. "You can do much more heinous crimes and do less time," Shiah said. But in Betcher's case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald urged the judge to follow the sentencing recommendation of life in prison. "The lives of five little girls and their families were irreparably damaged by this man and his deviant behavior," she said in a memo filed Friday.
Paulose, too, is unsympathetic to any pleas for mercy. "To be blunt, no sentence would ever be long enough for a person who takes the innocence of a child," she said. Righteous sentences" The government has been tightening the noose on child porn for years. Congress enacted the first law dealing specifically with child pornography in 1978. Ten years later, it made it illegal to use a computer to create or promote it.
The PROTECT Act, passed in 2003, set stiff mandatory minimum sentences. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, enacted last summer, stiffened sentences even more and, among other things, established the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender public website.
Inexpensive digital cameras and the Internet have made it easier than ever for people to create, distribute and acquire child pornography, but they have also made it easier for investigators to track their footprints.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has more agents working on child porn than any other program in its Cyber Division. Since 1996, the Innocent Images National Initiative to target child porn on the Internet has resulted in 5,752 criminal cases. The Department of Justice began funding regional Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces in 1998 to help state and local law enforcement agencies investigate online child exploitation. In January 2006, the Justice Department awarded $14 million to the 46 task forces. A month later, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales decreed child-porn prosecutions a top priority, and he said federal law enforcement agencies would help state investigators and nongovernmental agencies to attack the problem.
Until recently, Minnesota's ICAC task force had just one full-time investigator. But last year the Minnesota Legislature voted to kick in $1 million a year, and the task force is moving from the St. Paul Police Department into the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), which is assigning four agents, two forensic analysts, an information technology expert and a trainer to the task force, according to BCA Superintendent Tim O'Malley.
Federal prison sentences for child porn producers more than doubled between 1994 and 2005, and defense attorneys expect them to get even longer as a result of recent congressional action. Federal prosecutors in Minnesota are pushing for and getting maximum sentences. "In the last six months we have obtained three sentences of terms that are 30 years, 30 years and 10 years, respectively," Paulose said. "We think those are righteous sentences."
Tougher laws and more resources will undoubtedly result in more criminals being brought to justice, said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. But he cautioned that no one really knows whether the Internet has spawned an actual increase in child pornography production in recent years or merely helped law enforcement agents uncover it.
St. Paul police Sgt. Bill Haider, the lone investigator on the Minnesota ICAC task force, said he hasn't noticed an increase recently in child porn cases in Minnesota. But the Internet has allowed people who have sexual interests in children to find others like themselves. "And for them, it leads them to believe that it's more normal," he said.
The FBI, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Internal Revenue Service, Secret Service, and state and local police all play a role in finding child porn online. Investigators work undercover in chat rooms, trace suspects through Internet service providers (ISPs) and credit card companies, track down peer-to-peer file sharing networks and follow tips.
ISPs such as Yahoo and Comcast, though not required to look for child porn, are now legally required to report evidence of it on their networks.
Haider said that most of the cases he gets are referrals from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a private nonprofit agency mandated by Congress to help law enforcement. It operates an online reporting service at www.cybertipline.com.
In 2004, the national center referred 492 reports in Minnesota, said Michelle Collins, director of the exploited-child unit. The total declined to 275 reports in 2005, but rose again last year to 353. The center also works with U.S. law enforcement and Interpol to identify victims of child abuse, whose photos persist online for years. As of last week, the center had identified 992 children in these photos, up from 886 at the beginning of the year. The increase is a direct result of law enforcement agencies working together, Collins said. And that's just what led to Betcher's arrest.
A Brownie uniform
In August 2005, federal agents in Atlanta seized a computer with more than 2,000 images of child pornography from a Georgia police sergeant. Alert investigators noticed the partial insignia of a Minnesota Brownie uniform, and that eventually led them to identify a girl in the photo as a relative of Betcher's. He was charged and convicted of 24 counts of producing child pornography, one count of distributing it and one count of possessing it. The sentencing guidelines suggest piling on extra prison time because of the repeat nature of his offenses, and the fact that he was in a position of authority over the children he photographed.
A similar thing happened to Steven Koenen, 45, of Robbinsdale. He was snared by undercover FBI agents after he posted more than 30 child porn photos to an Internet news group in 2005. Investigators recovered more than 7,000 illicit images when they seized his computer equipment, and Koenen admitted to sexually assaulting three relatives, ages 3, 7 and 9. Koenen is appealing a 30-year sentence meted out in July.
Paulose singled out his case as an example of why she's pursuing such cases so aggressively. Child pornography isn't just dirty pictures, she said. "It's a visual depiction of a crime scene, and we need to take that seriously. I don't think a society can have any greater responsibility than protecting its children."
Dan Browning • 612-673-4493 • dbrowning@startribune.com
Retrieved March 7, 2007 from http://www.startribune.com/462/story/1032190.html