by Anthony DeMatteo
Staff Writer
In her two years directing Florida’s Child Predator Cyber Crime Unit, Maureen Horkan has seen images of children she said would make most people sick.
The job of her Jacksonville-based unit includes viewing photographs and videos of children being molested, raped and forced into sex with animals.
Horkan said the images exist to trade among pedophiles and to sell for profit, and they are often recorded by those closest to the victims.
“The people doing the abusing are generally family members,” said Horkan.
Three investigators, an attorney, an administrator and a computer forensic analyst, who is located in Ft. Lauderdale, form the unit, which operates from a Downtown Jacksonville building. Horkan said unit members patrol the Internet for child pornography sites and those attempting to lure children into meetings.
“I think the problem is getting worse, at least on the child pornography side,” she said. “It is an explosion of activity.”
Horkan said the Internet has caused the explosion by providing access to material pedophiles would not have otherwise sought out.
“But I think you have to have some form of pre-existing desire to see these images,” she said. “They are not something most people could look at and not get ill.”
The unit was formed in 2005 by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who was then the state’s attorney general.
Late last year, Attorney General Bill McCollum asked the Florida Legislature for $4.3 million to fund an expansion of the unit.
McCollum said the expansion is needed to combat a growing presence of sexual criminals who prowl cyber space.
A 2006 study conducted by the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center found one in seven children received sexual solicitations on the Internet over a year’s time.
Horkan said if the funding is secured, the unit’s plan is to expand to seven locations throughout the state.
“I think the funding would let us accomplish that,” she said.
She said those who set up for-profit child pornography Web sites are difficult to locate, in part because they operate from servers outside the country and are only online for short times.
“Most of these covert sites are gone within 24 to 48 hours,” she said.
Horkan prosecutes many of the cases investigated by the unit. Like NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” series, the task force, uses police decoys to invite predators to meet a person they think is a child interested in having sex.
“The behavior of individuals online is utterly reckless,” she said. “Just like somebody selling drugs, I guess they think they will not be the ones caught.”
Polly Franks, founder of the Franks Foundation, a Virginia organization which advocates longer sentences for sexual offenders, said the increase in Florida’s child cyber crime unit would be an important step in continuing the fight against Internet predators.
“It’s absolutely important,” said Franks. “The Internet has become a lazy predator’s way of reeling in children. They don’t have to go to parks anymore. They just go online.”
Franks said in more than five years of working with paedophilia cases, she has not seen a predator cured.
“They don’t stop,” she said. “It’s an addiction. They gradually need more and more stimuli for their own gratification.”
Franks said one of the most important steps parents can take is visiting Web sites that gather public information on the whereabouts of sexual criminals, such as www.familywatchdog.us.
“I encourage everybody to do that,” she said. “It’s an important tool parents can use to protect their families.
On Feb. 26, The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case of a 52-year-old high school teacher sentenced to 200 years in Arizona prison for 20 counts of possessing child pornography. The man had no criminal record, which Horkan said is typically the case with those arrested for the crime, though many are later found to have histories of molesting children.
In Arizona, each count carries a minimum sentence of 10 years.
But not every state has minimum sentences for the possession of child pornography.
“A number of people in Jacksonville have been given probation,” said Horkan. “It’s a common thing.”
Horkan said there is a divergent view among those who make law and enforce sentences on those possessing child pornography.
“There’s a thought out there that possessing pornography is not the same as someone who put his hands on a child,” she said. “But the consumption of this material leads to the abuse of children.”
While Horkan said the overwhelming majority of those caught with child pornography are men, women are often seen in short homemade video clips prompting children to preform sexual acts. Those clips, she said, are the most popular form of child pornography circulating on the Internet.
Horkan said bills are moving through the Florida Legislature to increase the felony charge for traveling to meet a minor for sex and possessing child pornography featuring images such as abused infants or beasteality.
She said she hopes the laws will pass and that many states increase minimum sentences for child sex crimes. But she is not sure if the law can stop those with deviant desires from pursuing them.
“I would hope that greater deterrents would work,” said Horkan. “But I don’t know. I don’t know if it will make the difference we need.”