Fighting child porn can be tricky

They wear pleated skirts, knee socks and pigtails.

But while their come-hither looks ape the vulnerability and naiveté of young girls, the models are often 18 or older and just playing to the camera.

The Web teems with explicit material designed to blur the line separating children from adults, even though "barely legal" pornography is just that — legal to view, produce and distribute.

For those who investigate child porn, distinguishing illegal images from legal ones can be a sideline distraction from the ultimate goal of arresting sexual predators and the people with whom they trade images. But it's just another obstacle in a job already freighted with technological barriers, evolving tactics, fly-by-night Web sites and online venues used as hidey-holes to conceal criminal activity.

"It's a sign of the world we live in, unfortunately," said Colorado Springs police detective Adam Romine of the department's Internet Crimes against Children unit.

In Colorado Springs, a string of recent arrests has spotlighted efforts to crack down on people suspected of trafficking in child porn. Suspects now behind bars include a Fort Carson soldier whose wife is accused of helping him conceal his crimes, a 70-year-old man suspected of providing illegal images to an undercover investigator in Florida, and a convicted rapist wanted in Virginia on suspicion of violating his parole.

A 16-year-old boy arrested Wednesday in Colorado Springs is accused of storing images of infants, police said. The boy's name was not released because of his age, and few other details were available.

"It's not just a picture you're looking at,'" said police Sgt. Bill Dehart, a supervisor in the unit. "What you're seeing is the memorialization of child abuse."

Internet crimes against children are on the rise across the country.

Since its inception in 1998, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children tallied 530,705 reports of child-porn-related offenses, 38,756 reports of the enticement of children for sex acts, and 6,871 reports of children receiving unsolicited lewd material online. Through the end of 2007, federal authorities seized child pornography collections from more than 11,650 investigations nationally and documented more than 1,233 child victims worldwide, the center said.

This year in Colorado, 36 people have been arrested by the Colorado Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, a multijurisdictional effort headed by Colorado Springs Police. The task force receives federal funding to arrange collaboration between agencies that investigate computer crimes against children.

Police in Colorado Springs have four people assigned to the task force full-time, though each has additional duties outside that realm, such as computer forensics and keeping tabs on convicted sex offenders.

Part of their job is checking out complaints from Web surfers who stumble across material featuring "barely legal" models - women who are of age but look much younger and dress and pose to exaggerate the effect.

Whenever there is doubt about an image, police said, the material is forwarded to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which checks it against its database of known victims. The center has documented many of the images that continue to make the rounds on the Internet, police said.

Often, however, it's immediately clear when a child is depicted, and the real challenge lies in finding whoever's responsible.

"A lot of the work we do is tracking its source and putting it to a particular person at a particular place," said Romine, who has been investigating Internet crimes against children for four years.

Complicating that task are innovations such as wireless Internet, which is increasingly available for free at Internet cafes, coffee shops, shopping malls and hotel lobbies.

One recent suspect, 26-year-old Fort Carson soldier Charles Brassfield, is accused of tapping into a neighbor's wireless account to send exploitative images. His wife, Jocelyn Brassfield, was arrested on suspicion of destroying evidence.

The unit periodically stages sting operations in which detectives pose as underage people online and wait for predators to make illegal overtures. They work in a target-rich environment: Predators use Internet news groups, chat sites, file servers, online groups and organizations, peer-to-peer file-sharing programs, bulletin boards and other online forums.

The payoff, police say, is getting fans of child porn offline.

"I love this work," Romine said. "I don't think there's anything better than catching bad guys who are hurting kids."

contact the writer: 636-0366 or lance.benzel@gazette.com

A LOOK AT SOME OF THE SUSPECTS ARRESTED THIS YEAR:

Randal Gomas

Gomas, 45, formerly an athletics coach and science teacher at James Irwin Charter School, was arrested Jan. 10 on suspicion of trying to arrange a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl he met on the Internet.

Gomas used his work computer and was arrested before the meeting took place, police said. He faces charges of sexual exploitation of a child, enticement of a child, attempted sexual assault on a child without force and Internet luring.


Robert W. Bell

Bell, 50, a therapist and former Methodist minister, was arrested Feb. 10 after police say he sent a 14-year-old girl in Pennsylvania a link to a Web site containing illustrations of graphic sex, bondage, death and cannibalism.

Bell — who was out on bond while awaiting sentencing on an Internet crime in 2006 — faces a pending charge of promotion of obscenity to a minor, a class six felony.

Christopher Carr

Carr, 41, of La Grange, Ga., was arrested April 24 by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation as the result of an undercover investigation conducted online by Colorado Springs police.

He was found to have hundreds of videos and thousands of images of child pornography, police said. He faces charges of sexual exploitation of children.


Ronald Huffman

Huffman, 70, was arrested Tuesday after enticing 10-year-old girl in Florida, police said. He is accused of performing lewd acts on a Web cam and sending the girl child pornography to "show what the girl should be doing with her dad," police said. He faces charges of sexual exploitation of children, a class three felony.