How Detectives Catch Child Predators

The men and women who hide behind computers, cameras and cell phones to prey on children can be anyone.

Marco Alferez, a former teacher, was indicted in federal court for possessing and distributing child pornography. Detectives accused Edward Portillo of trying to win his victims over with gifts like doughnuts and teddy bears. He’s been charged with online solicitation of a minor with intended sexual contact.

Catching child predators means it is someone’s job to view the repulsive evidence. The images and the videos they watch are far too graphic to go into detail. The conversations they carry on with predators would make your stomach churn.

Porn detectives operate behind closed doors, in small windowless cubicles, where no one has to go through what they experience everyday: the shocking world of child pornography.

“We spend most of our day chatting on the computer,” Det. Alfonso Montelongo said. “You have to change your mindset. You have to go from a detective to a 15-year-old and use language that 15-year-olds use today.”

On this day, Montelongo is playing the role of a teenage girl as he hunts online for pedophiles. Montelongo works side by side with Det. Robert Hanner and an FBI agent. The trio work in the Internet Crimes Against Children unit for the El Paso Police Department. ICE also has its own investigators that have caught people making and distributing child pornography.

“If we were talking with real kids, we’d have a problem. They’d spot us really quick,” Hanner said. “But we’re talking to adults trying to fit in with kids. So we can make up anything we want to say and if the adult says ‘what does that mean?’, we just tell him and pretty soon he’s using it.”

They often chat away to unsuspecting pedophiles behind closed doors to keep visitors from stumbling across things they’d never want to see.

“These images are so gross,” Montelongo said. “When I first started dealing with these images, sometimes, there were nights that I couldn’t sleep.”

Gaining access to predators is as easy as joining a chat room and earning the trust of eager men and women.

“They’ll start telling you, ‘You’re pretty,’ or ‘You’re handsome,'” Montelongo said. “The stuff that they text us, they go so graphic into their texting, it’s unbelievable.”

Detectives said most predators don’t have a criminal record, but there is no typical offender.

“We’ve seen soldiers. We’ve seen law enforcement. We’ve seen teachers. They’re usually people that fit into society,” Hanner said. “That’s part of them keeping this secret. They know to stay out of trouble so they stay in good graces with society.”

The unit also monitors file-sharing networks, such as the now defunct Limewire, where people trade graphic images and videos. The same factors that make child pornography so easy to access make prosecuting the cases relatively straightforward. Detectives said these cases almost never go to trial because the evidence is so damaging and so embarrassing. Even so, the detectives’ work seems never-ending.

“It seems like every time we arrest somebody, there are five people that take their place,” Hanner said.

But investigators said they can’t let a predator’s disturbing world take over their lives.

“You have to have an outlet, because it will consume you after a while,” Montelongo said. “Don’t let it take over your life, but at the same time, it is our life and it is what we do.”

In a report to Congress in August, Attorney General Eric Holder said the distribution of child pornography, the number of images being shared online and violence against child victims all have increased.

“Tragically, the only place we’ve seen a decrease is in the age of victims,” Holder said in a speech at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va.

The report, ordered by Congress in legislation approved two years ago, concedes that the market for child pornography continues to grow rapidly and determining its size is impossible. “The number of offenders accessing the images and videos and the quantity of images and videos being traded is unknown,” the report said.

Creating or possessing images that depict the sexual abuse of children is illegal. There is no First Amendment protection for child pornography.

In announcing a national strategy for preventing child exploitation, Holder laid out several steps that he said would help authorities make progress:

– The U.S. Marshals Service will target the “top 500 most dangerous” sex offenders who have not registered with authorities in the states where they live.

– The Justice Department is creating a database intended to increase cooperation among authorities at all levels of government that investigate child porn cases.

– Thirty-eight new prosecutors will be hired for child porn cases.

The increased attention to fighting child pornography already has led to record numbers of prosecutions and tips. More than 8,600 people have been prosecuted at the federal level since October 2006. State and local authorities focused on the use of the Internet in child sexual exploitation reported that documented complaints of online enticement of children more than tripled from 2004 to 2008 and complaints of child prostitution rose more than 10 times.

Related Links:www.missingkids.comLink:History Of Child Porn; Punishments For Having Child Porn