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Washington’s not-so-little dirty secret
Police 'overwhelmed' as state leads the nation in child pornography
BY LEVI PULKKINEN, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF Updated 1:34 pm, Wednesday, December 9, 2015
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Seattle Police Department Detective Ian Polhemus sits with Bear, the department's electronics detecting dog. Bear, who joined the department's Internet Crimes Against Children team in August, hunts for hidden electronics during investigations into child pornography. Polhemus, a longtime investigator with the unit, is Bear's handler. Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM / SEATTLEPI.COM
Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM
IMAGE 1 OF 18 Seattle Police Department Detective Ian Polhemus sits with Bear, the department's electronics detecting dog. Bear, who joined the department's Internet Crimes Against Children team in August, hunts for hidden electronics during investigations into child pornography. Polhemus, a longtime investigator with the unit, is Bear's handler. less
Ronald Merideth had something to hide.
Detective Ian Polhemus knew where to find it.
Pieced together on Merideth's computer was a two-minute video. The one the Seattle detective was looking for showed the degradation of a little girl, a 9-year-old bound with rope and sexually assaulted on camera.
The computer in Merideth’s Kirkland office was one of thousands in Washington known to be housing child pornography. Merideth was exceptional in only one respect -- he got caught.
Today, Washington law enforcement agents can pick out more than 17,000 devices that appear to be trading child pornography in the state. They know how to find the traders. What they lack are the resources -- detectives, prosecutors -- to bring them down.
Beyond those traders, hundreds of leads pour into a small group detectives monitoring all of Washington, which by one key measure leads the nation in child pornography. Overwhelmed, investigators try to target offenders hurting children most directly.
The images are like autopsy photos. They’re evidence of a crime. And they’re horrific.
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“There are some sections of the depictions world that are unimaginable, really, on any level,” said Cecelia Gregson, a state prosecutor who for two years has been hauling some of the Seattle area’s most egregious offenders into federal court.
“It’s not like you happen into it,” the King County senior deputy prosecutor continued. “You don’t happen into seeing a 6-year-old being raped by an adult man. And if you did happen into, and were as mortified as a normal person might be, you wouldn’t repeatedly click on it.”
But thousands do, many without even bothering to hide their crimes. And – despite desperate work of the handful of detectives and prosecutors who’ve taken on the heartbreaking burden – most aren’t paying a price.
A planned expansion of a Seattle Police Department-led unit tasked with policing child porn aims to change that. Gregson’s initiative, which has brought federal power to bear against two dozen King County suspects, is rolling forward.
‘These numbers have just overwhelmed us’
Crimes tend to find their moment. Methamphetamine gets the spotlight, then human trafficking, heroin, fraud.
All are undeniably deserving of prosecution. Each creates an injustice, a victim. Each might be cured if enough money, power and wisdom were brought to bear.
As a crime, child pornography’s moment has yet to arrive.
It occupies a space alongside other crimes that tend to prompt silence rather than outrage. Its victims are among the world’s weakest people – children – while its perpetrators can be anyone at all.
“We think about Seattle; it has myriad issues,” said Mike Edwards, the Seattle Police Department captain leading the state’s Internet Crimes Against Children unit. “What’s the flavor of the week, of the month? It is that rash of car prowls, that rash of burglaries. …
“Whatever it is, it becomes something that garners a lot of attention. And if it garners a lot of attention, it garners a lot of resources. That’s just how it works.”
Edwards is fired up after a recent win in the Washington Legislature that should deliver an additional $1.3 million to the effort.
Which is welcome, because, as an industry, child pornography is booming.
In recent months, coaches, teachers and one aspiring police officer have drawn child pornography charges in King County. Subway spokesman Jared Fogle’s child pornography-fueled fall made national news; Bear, the police dog who helped bring him down by searching his home, now works for the Seattle Police Department.
Edwards said his six detectives now sometimes receive more than 100 tips a week from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The most concerning statistics relate to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like BitTorrent, which allow users to directly exchange files.
Investigators say Washington ranks among the top five states when it comes to peer-to-peer network users who are trading child pornography. The other leading states are California, Florida, New York and Texas. Per capita, they say, Washington is No. 1.
At any given time, police in Washington have more than 17,000 potential leads on the most popular peer-to-peer networks. That number has been as high as 25,000, with each lead representing a device that appears to be moving child pornography. Currently, only eight investigators in the state are in a position to chase down those peer-to-peer leads.
“These numbers have just overwhelmed us, with the staffing levels that we have,” Edwards said.
“We need to do more,” the captain continued. “We just don’t have the resources.”
And those numbers under-represent the problem in several respects. They only account for child pornography offenders using peer-to-peer networks, and then only the most popular networks. They also miss child pornography that hasn’t been spotted by law enforcement.
Brian Levine, a University of Massachusetts-Amherst computer science professor, has been researching how child pornography moves through peer-to-peer networks for six years. He said the trading is basically done in public. Investigators who know where to look have no trouble finding hundreds of thousands of users moving child pornography.
“So many people do this, and they do it in public,” said Levine, part of a research group working closely with police to build investigatory tools for law enforcement. “The real challenge for police is figuring out who to arrest. … You want to save a child. That’s the real goal.”
There’s no consensus as to how common it is for child pornography collectors to commit other sex crimes. Recent studies indicate that anywhere from half to four-fifths of convicted child pornography offenders committed other sex offenses. About 10 percent have been convicted of other sex crimes.
What’s clear is that the children are often attacked by those they should be able to trust. That betrayal compounds the harm.
Speaking at her office at the Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent, Gregson recalled a young boy abused by a parent.
“This little guy, I just felt so sorry for him,” Gregson said. “He really loved that parent, even though we know what happened from what’s on the tapes.”
Opinions differ on what drives the collectors. Some are child abusers trying to relive their crimes. Some were abused themselves. Some say they’re caught in something of an addiction.
“They purport that there’s a compulsion,” Gregson said, who added that she wasn't sure whether to believe this.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a self-report, right? … How reliable is it? You’ll never really know.”
For their part, the suspects tend to talk once detectives come calling.
“Most of them, in their mind, they kinda know it is wrong but they don’t think it’s that wrong,” Edwards said. “They want to explain themselves to somebody. Because they figure if they can explain it, you’ll understand it and realize that it’s really not so bad.”
Survivors waiting on Congress
“Every day people are trading and sharing videos of me as a little girl being raped in the most sadistic ways. They don’t know me, but they have seen every part of me. They are being entertained by my shame and pain.”
That’s how “Vicky” described her life as a child pornography survivor.
Her father started raping her when she was 10. He recorded the assaults on video, taking requests from fans while terrorizing his daughter. He’s locked up now, but the recordings he made roam free.
“Vicky” was 17 when she learned that the videos her father made were circulating. In a letter to the court, she said her “world came crashing down that day.”
“They are trading my trauma around like treats at a party, but it is far from innocent,” she said in court papers. “It feels like I am being raped by each and every one of them.”
Child pornography collectors sometimes fixate on the boys and girls pictured in the horrific videos, said Carol Hepburn, a Seattle attorney representing several child pornography survivors. Some of the offenders catalog and organize their collections. Some chat online among themselves, casually discussing the abuse.
“It’s a very hurtful thing to know that the offenders are out there, and to know that there are people … getting pleasure from these exceedingly painful moments,” Hepburn said.
Hepburn, a former state deputy prosecutor, has been representing clients abused on camera since 2008. “Vicky” was one of them.
While they often need psychological and educational support, child pornography survivors aren’t easily able to collect from the men and women who trade images of their abuse.
In most criminal cases, defendants are ordered to repay their victims for the harm they’ve caused. But restitution remains an uncertain thing for child pornography survivors.
At present, courts have the impossible task of untangling the harm caused by the original abuse and hurt caused by those watching the recordings. The burden on survivors is tremendous.
“There are toddlers and infants that are abused and are the subjects of child porn,” Hepburn said. “How is that little one, when they grow up, ever going to disentangle … the distribution of the images from the fact that their father, their brother, their uncle abused them? So often the abuse is all about creating the videos so that the two issues are inseparable.”
Earlier this year, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill that would make it easier for child pornography survivors to collect. The House of Representatives has failed to move on the bill, the Amy & Vicky Restitution Act.
“You’d think that they could all get behind helping child abuse victims and iron out their differences in approach,” Hepburn said.
Two Washington representatives – Republican Dave Reichert and Democrat Suzan DelBene – sit on the House committee that could act on the bill. Both are sponsors; their aides say they’re waiting for the committee chair to put it to a vote.
Levine said many companies are trying to address the problem. Industry leaders – Facebook, Yahoo, Google – all have people working to fight Internet-based child exploitation. Still, the images and videos persist online.
“There’s no tool that will protect victims,” the computer scientist said. “I can’t deploy a security patch and fix the problem.”
'Take these people off the street'
Police officers don’t join up to spend their days looking at child pornography. It’s not a job for the recruiting poster.
The work is draining and damaging. Detectives comb through the most disturbing images man has made. Then they meet the kids.
“We’re asking these people to do some pretty incredible stuff,” said Edwards, seated behind his desk at a Seattle Police Department office building near Georgetown.
“You never forget those images,” he continued. “Once you meet that child it brings a whole new level of reality. … These are real live people, and we end up meeting them.”
SPD spends $1.5 million annually to be the host of the state’s Internet Crimes Against Children unit. Additional state funding, won earlier in 2015 after a push by advocates in Olympia, will add another $1.3 million to the unit’s coffers during the next two years.
The SPD effort compliments investigations led or facilitated by the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Secret Service.
Until November, the Secret Service’s local leader on the issue was Special Agent Bryan Molnar. His work helped put away David McMillen, a teacher caught secretly recording a 14-year-old student.
Molnar and others with the Secret Service also made the case against Benjamin Franklin, an Algona child rapist who recorded his assaults on two young boys. A Secret Service review of Franklin’s electronics uncovered videos showing the abuse. Franklin, 39, pleaded guilty to child rape charges in state court after learning from Gregson that he might face federal charges.
Robert Kierstead, special agent-in-charge for the Secret Service’s Northwest office, praised Molnar as “a tremendous asset” during his five years in Seattle. Molnar was honored recently with the Homeland Security Department Secretary’s Exemplary Service Award before receiving a promotional transfer.
“The way Bryan Molnar sees it, he wants to take these people off the street,” Kierstead said. “That’s what his motivation is, and he has no issue doing it.”
Edwards said he and others are working to figure out how to select detectives who’ll best be able to police child pornography. Detectives usually last five to seven years before they need to move on to other investigations.
Their work is both delicate and urgent. Investigators fear for the child they could save but won’t reach in time.
“There unfortunately is the dark side. And that’s where we live,” Edwards said. “We’re there to protect and rescue kids.”
“Every one of the cases we look at, we have it in the back of our minds that this might be someone about to abuse, that we have to get on it,” the captain continued. “But we know we can’t. We’re overwhelmed.”
Make video –
Edwards envisions a robust cross-jurisdictional unit with offices around the state, funded in part by the new appropriation from Olympia. A Seattle office is slated to come online first, followed by one in the Tri-Cities. Others will follow.
The current head count at the unit is six full-time detectives, a sergeant, Edwards, Bear and Bear’s handler, Polhemus. Edwards wants to grow the operation to 20 dedicated detectives statewide and five forensic investigators.
Delving the darkness
For two years, Gregson has been splitting her time between the King County Prosecutor’s Office, where she prosecutes crimes against children, and federal court. There, as a special U.S. attorney, she’s able to elevate state investigations into the federal system, where resources are more plentiful and penalties are often more severe. The federal system is also better equipped to monitor offenders after they are released from prison.
Gregson became cross-designated in January 2014 after something of a child pornography boom in King County. On her watch, 23 men and one woman have been moved into federal jurisdiction or pleaded guilty to state charges knowing they could face federal prosecution. All are accused of making child pornography or are convicted sex offenders.
"We will always find a prison cell for this type of offender," King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said Tuesday. "We are grateful to the police and prosecutors who have to delve into the darkness of this criminal subculture to bring these men to justice."
“Partnering with county prosecutors to battle those who sexually abuse and exploit children is key to broadening our collective reach and effectively using limited resources,” said Annette L. Hayes, U.S. Attorney for Western Washington.
Hayes said Gregson’s assignment to the U.S. Attorney’s Office ensures close coordination across all levels of law enforcement investigating Internet-enabled crimes against children.
Gregson’s future as a special federal prosecutor isn't entirely certain, as someone has to find the money to pay for her time working with federal authorities. Prosecutor's Office spokesman Dan Donohoe said he expects Gregson will continue her work.
Thanks to that work, Merideth’s future is all but assured.
Raiding Merideth’s Kirkland office earlier this year, investigators found the child rape video they knew was there and many more. Meredith, a film production technician, has since admitted to all of it.
Because Merideth was previously convicted of a sex crime, Gregson was able to move his case into U.S. District Court. He pleaded guilty to federal charges in late November and now faces a mandatory 10-year prison term.
Seattlepi.com reporter Levi Pulkkinen can be reached at 206-448-8348 or levipulkkinen@seattlepi.com. Follow Levi on Twitter at twitter.com/levipulk.
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