Internet sex bill awaits upgrade

DENVER - In the first year since it became a felony to solicit minors over the Internet, police statewide have arrested a violator about once every three days.

Still, the bill’s sponsor and authors are looking for ways to update it to keep pace with changing technology, and they say more Internet-luring legislation could be coming forward in 2008.

House Bill 1011, the last piece of legislation signed by former Gov. Bill Owens after the 2006 regular session, also made it a felony for adults to expose themselves via webcams or digital photos, and it increased the penalties for possessing more than 20 images of child pornography. It was authored by Colorado Springs police and Attorney General John Suthers, a former 4th Judicial District attorney.

Between July 2006 and June 2007, 93 people were arrested under the new law for Internet luring and 30 for sexual exploitation via webcam, according to the Attorney General’s Office. No statistics were available on child pornography arrests.

Detectives involved in tracking Internet predators say the benefits of the law go beyond the number of people brought to trial.

Previously, officers posing as children in Internet chat rooms had to wait until predators showed up at scheduled meetings to arrest them. If they were no-shows, they couldn’t be arrested.

Now they can swoop in before the predators leave their homes or can have a search warrant ready for a suspect’s home before any evidence can be destroyed, said Colorado Springs police detective Adam Romine, a member of the statewide Internet Crimes Against Children Unit.

“It’s one of the few areas of law enforcement where we can try to pick off some bad guys before they do something wrong,” Romine said.

About one in five kids nationally between the ages of 10 and 18 is solicited for sex on the Internet, and of those solicitations, 1 in 33 involves additional contact, such as phone calls or meetings, Suthers said. His response was to create a Safe Surfing Initiative that includes both the new law and an educational campaign in which members of his office have teamed with law enforcement officers to teach kids about dangers on the Internet.

About 10 police departments and sheriff’s offices are a part of the Internet Crimes Against Children Unit, which puts officers in chat rooms to see if they will get solicited. When they do, they wait for predators to request meetings and then arrest them either at the spot or at their homes if the person doesn’t show, Romine said.

While arrests have been plentiful, jail time has been sparse because judges are less willing to put someone away for merely suggesting sexual liaisons rather than attempting to assault a child, Suthers noted. But those who are convicted are registered as sex offenders and may be deterred from committing more serious crimes, he said.

Sen. Paula Sandoval, a Denver Democrat who sponsored the bill, was surprised to hear sentences are low but accepts that as long as the new law reduces sexual assaults on kids.

“I’m very pleased, and frankly the numbers are all a function of how many officers we have working undercover on the Internet,” Suthers said. “If we had even a dozen more officers working on the Internet, that number would be doubled.”

Despite the success, changes could be coming soon.

The law may need to be updated to include text messaging. There is an argument now about whether House Bill 1011 covers that, Suthers said.

He’s also concerned about a trend among cities to allow community wireless online service that doesn’t allow officers to pinpoint who is logged on and entering the chat rooms, he said.

Romine added that he wants to change language that states a child must be younger than 15 years of age for the crime to be a felony, preferring that it cover all minors.

Sandoval sponsored another successful bill this year that requires convicted child-sex crime offenders to provide all e-mail addresses, instant-messaging identities and chatroom identities to law enforcement. She’d like that to be enough, she said, but is ready to do more.

“In some ways, it’s sad that there are that many predators out there,” she said. “I wish that we hadn’t caught that many — because I wish that there weren’t that many out there.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: (303)837-0613 or ed.sealover@gazette.com