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Datum: Mittwoch, den 9. Mai 2001, um 8:21 Uhr

Betrifft: dazu passt : Deseret News vom 07.05.2001

Utah’s ugly secret

Task force called one of the 5 busiest in U.S.
By Maria Titze and Angie Welling

The children are beginning to look familiar to detective Marni Montgomery.
"I can get into a computer and start looking at the child pornography, and I recognize them, the ones I’ve seen before," she said.
She sighs. "That’s the problem we try to explain to people. Even though a lot of these victims have been identified, they’re still being victimized every time that picture gets traded around."
And don’t confuse child erotica with child pornography, Montgomery warns. "Two little girls, standing there naked," she said. That’s about as far as most people want to go in thinking about this subject. "It’s too scary to think about the other."
The other is what Montgomery sees all the time: pictures of adults engaged in sex acts with children — as young as infants — or children acting out sexual positions with other children.
"Anything you would see in adult pornography magazines with two adults, you’ll see in child pornography," she said.
Montgomery didn’t always work these kinds of cases. She’s assigned to the child abuse investigations unit at the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
Slightly more than a year ago, the investigations division of the Utah Attorney General’s Office received a $300,000 grant for training and computer undercover work from the U.S. Department of Justice. Out of that funding was born the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force — city, county, state and federal law enforcement officers and prosecutors working together to stop the exploitation of children online.
Montgomery is part of that team. Their original goal was to work 65 cases in more than 18 months. Last year alone they investigated 108.
"With 30 regional task forces, I’d say we’re probably one of the top five (busiest) in the country," said the task force’s director, Ken Hansen.


"Every time we throw a line in the water, they’re fighting to get on the hook."
— U.S. Attorney Paul Warner, on finding predators in teenage chat rooms

Police in Utah aren’t struggling to find people in possession of child pornography.
"The very first cases we were getting came mostly from concerned family members," Montgomery said. "I’d get calls, you know, ’I got into my brother’s computer the other night, and I saw some stuff.’ "
Sometimes disgruntled girlfriends and wives report that their partners have graphic pictures of children, according to Assistant Attorney General Jason Perry. "We even get (tips) from computer repair shops," he said.
But Montgomery said she believes most business owners "would rather turn their head the other way" than call the police if they find child pornography on one of their own employee’s computer.
Recently, Montgomery said, law enforcement has taken a more "proactive" approach to finding offenders. Task force members spend a certain amount of time every day posing as children in online chat rooms, looking for adults who want to arrange to meet them in order to engage in sexual activity.
It’s a method of finding these predators that has been criticized as entrapment, but U.S. Attorney Paul Warner said it’s the only way to get at a new ground of cyberpredators known as "travelers."
Virtually unknown 10 years ago, more than 400 of these cases were prosecuted in the United States in the past year. Utah’s task force has netted almost a dozen local cases in the past six months.
"Remember where we find these folks," Warner said. "They’re adults in teenage chat rooms, and they’re trolling. Every time we throw a line in the water, they’re fighting to get on the hook. That doesn’t sound like entrapment."
Montgomery said she has never heard of a traveler case that does not involve pornography in some way. Sometimes predators use adult or child pornography to "groom" children, desensitizing them to the actual sexual activity they hope to have in the future.
Hansen said every year he sees between 200 and 300 new porn sites on the Internet. Some of the sites are specifically designed to lure children. In one case, a Web site constructed in South America advertised PokŽmon trading cards. But when site visitors pushed a button for a catalog, they got a list of 18 child porn videos instead.
Child sexual abuse investigations also turn up child pornography.
"The prosecution of child pornography is increasing, because the prosecution of sex abuse is increasing," Salt Lake deputy district attorney Kent Morgan said. "It’s difficult to see what the cause and effect is, but it’s not difficult to see that these crimes go hand in hand."
Paula Houston, the state’s obscenity and pornography complaints ombudsman, sometimes dubbed the "porn czar," agrees.
"Every single child sexual-assault case I worked on, pornography was involved," she said of her 15 years as a West Valley City prosecutor.
The possession of child pornography is an aggravating factor for child sex abuse cases, raising the offense from a second- to a first-degree felony. It also increases the possible penalty for offenders from 15 years in prison to a life sentence.


"Simple nudity is not enough. A picture of your naked baby is not child pornography."
—Paula Houston, Utah’s porn czar



The fact is, unlike adult pornography — which, as long as it doesn’t rise to the level of obscenity, is legal — child pornography is not protected by the First Amendment.
"It’s contraband to even have it," Houston said.
But that doesn’t make prosecution of child pornography slam-dunk simple.
"Age is one thing that’s questionable, whether or not (the children in the photographs) are actually minors. If you can establish age, then it’s against the law," Houston said.
And if the pictures feature women of legal age who simply look young? Many defense attorneys, such as Orem attorney Andrew McCullough, maintain those images are constitutionally protected.
McCullough represents a man charged in Carbon County’s 7th District Court with seven felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, the state’s equivalent of possession of child pornography. The man is accused of photographing underage girls nude or partially nude, as well as downloading pornographic images from the Internet.
McCullough said six photos involving four different models did not constitute child pornography because the "children" in the photos were not minors. Additional research, including logging onto the Web sites to gather information from those who posted the images, was necessary to prove the women were old enough to consent to the photos.
Although the 19-year-old women looked underage, the photos did not rise to the level of child pornography and prosecutors were forced to dismiss the charges relating to the six photos, McCullough said. The man still faces charges relating to the other photos.
The other standard child pornography has to meet in order to be prosecutable, Houston said, is that images contain sexual content.
"Again, we’re not talking about an obscenity standard here, but the pictures do have to have some sexual context," she said. "Simple nudity is not enough. A picture of your naked baby is not child pornography."
The Utah Supreme Court is currently considering a case that focuses on that very point.
Gary Davis Peterson pleaded no contest last year to one count of sexual exploitation of a minor for downloading photos of young nude girls from the Internet.
His attorney, Neil A. Kaplan, argued that the law under which Peterson was charged is unconstitutional because it is too broad.
One picture in question, Kaplan told the high court in oral arguments, is "just a girl, not in an unnatural pose, standing on a beach."
But Assistant Attorney General Laura Dupaix argued that the photos Peterson downloaded were clearly intended for the "purpose of sexual arousal." They were not, she said, mere nudity.
"The statute covers content. That is what’s prohibited," Dupaix told the justices.
It’s that kind of thinking McCullough says he cannot understand.
"I think they seem to be trying really, really hard to say, ’If a person has a predisposition (to be aroused by something), he ought to to be locked up. We ought to find a way.’ And I can’t handle that," he said. "Good heavens, lots of things are innocent enough and can be misused, but you can’t be responsible for everybody’s thoughts."
But that’s not what prosecutors set out to do, Dupaix said. For example, someone "turned on" by looking at children modeling underwear in a Sears catalog would not be prosecuted, she said, because the purpose of the catalog is clearly not sexual arousal.
Although there are several high-profile state cases right now, Montgomery said Utah law doesn’t have as much bite as federal child pornography statutes. Under federal law, "if you are in possession of even one picture of a child engaging in a sexual position," you’ve got something, she said. Whenever possible, she said, task force members look to prosecute under federal statutes.


"Would artificial images be as satisfying or arousing to them as the real thing?"
—Utah assistant attorney general Craig Barlow on virtual child pornography


But even federal laws are tangled in legal debate. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case involving "virtual" child pornography — computer-generated images of children engaged in sex acts.
The case comes out of a lower court in California, where several representatives of the adult entertainment industry sued to stop the enforcement of the 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act.
Through that law, Congress banned computer-altered pictures that only appear to show minors involved in sexual activity. Proponents say that by banning sexual images that do not actually portray children, the market for child pornography involving real children will lessen.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found the law to be vague and overbroad.
Utah officials disagree about how a ruling on the case would affect the way they prosecute child pornography here.
"I guess if there was some attempt to use morphed images to avoid prosecution, it would be a problem down the road, but there seems to be such an inexhaustible supply of actual children," said assistant attorney general Craig Barlow. He said he hasn’t seen a Utah market for such digitally enhanced images.
"Maybe I don’t know enough about the mentality of people who like to look at this stuff, but would artificial images be as satisfying or arousing to them as the real thing?" Barlow asked.
But Montgomery said she’s seen too many cases where "a picture just isn’t enough after so long" and consumers of child pornography turn to predatory behavior.
"There’s no reason to have that stuff, whether it’s real or fake," she said.

EMAIL: mtitze@desnews.com ; awelling@desnews.com