In 2010, NCMEC compiled about 213,000 tips involving child pornography. In 2017, the number had exploded to more than 10 million.<\/p>\n
The heartbreaking experience that Beth and her family endured is common for federal investigators, who deal daily with the growing issue of internet child pornography.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s your neighbor, it\u2019s your pastor, it\u2019s your teacher, it\u2019s your soccer coach,\u201d said FBI Special Agent Tina Fourkas. She has been investigating such cases for more than seven years as part of a team at the Denver field office.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish there was some magic profile where we could identify these people,\u201d she said. \u201cBut there\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was Fourkas and her fellow federal investigators in Illinois, Missouri, Arizona and Colorado who were able to identify Beth\u2019s son and track down those who had abused him for years. At the center of the case was Richard Franklin, a 50-year-old military veteran who lived with his parents in a quiet Denver neighborhood. He would closet himself for hours with computers near his bed, sorting and viewing his collection of pornographic images of children being sexually abused.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had one of the largest collections that I\u2019ve dealt with over the years,\u201d Fourkas said. \u201cHe had hundreds of thousands of images and videos of child pornography.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fourkas said Franklin traded his collection with like-minded predators all over the United States and beyond, often soliciting those with access to children to send him new photos and videos, which they did, in exchange for his images. By tracking down all the cyber connections to and from Richard Franklin, the FBI was able to identify the children and rescue them, including Beth\u2019s 4-year-old son, who was spending time at his grandfather\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy dad had some people that were helping him out,\u201d she said. \u201cThey were family friends who did work around the yard and, you know, he\u2019s doing a lot of remodeling and they were doing that kind of work.\u201d<\/p>\n
She says her father had no idea what was happening.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was just in as much shock as we were to find out not only what happened but who did it,\u201d she said. \u201cThese would be the last people that you would suspect of doing anything harmful to our family because we consider them to be part of our family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both men were convicted in the case. And Richard Franklin, who was convicted of advertising and solicitation of child pornography, was sentenced to 100 years in federal prison.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody wants to know that this dark side of humanity exists,\u201d says Judy Smith, the chief of the Cybercrime and National Security Section of the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Denver. \u201cThe volume of it is exploding.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, we just feel like we\u2019re dishing the ocean out with a spoon.\u201d<\/p>\n
The difference is the ease with which the abuse can be captured in photo or video, then shared widely with devices as common as a smartphone.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom a technology standpoint \u2026 we have many devices that take photographs. We can video. We can livestream,\u201d said Special Agent in Charge Calvin Shivers, who heads the Denver field office of the FBI.<\/p>\n Before coming to Denver, Shivers led the Violent Crimes Against Children Section at the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s that ability now to connect to the Internet from almost anywhere.\u201d Shivers said. \u201cWe also look at the storage capacity where years ago it was megabytes to gigabytes to terabytes to petabytes. So, the storage capacity is there. They can maintain a large inventory of child pornography.\u201d<\/p>\n Assistant U.S. Attorney Judy Smith says for investigators and prosecutors, that means an impossible amount of work that must be prioritized.<\/p>\n \u201cWe focus on travelers \u2013 people that are coming into the district or leaving the district who engage in sex tourism with little kids. There\u2019s quite a bit of that,\u201d she said. \u201cNext in line would be the production cases \u2013 the guys that are actually taking the pictures, uploading them to the internet and sharing them. Then we move on to the distributors. Those are the cases that are distributing images to other child pornographers.<\/p>\n \u201cWe could be doing those cases all day, every day.\u201d<\/p>\n A growing sector of child pornography is self-produced by kids who initially believe they are sending photos of themselves to their peers, often of the opposite sex. And younger and younger kids are now carrying cell phones.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are online predators out there who pose as young boys or girls, who then entice or ask kids to self-produce child pornography,\u201d said Smith, the assistant U.S. Attorney.<\/p>\n And FBI agent Fourkas says kids then sometimes find themselves trapped.<\/p>\n \u201cThey can be blackmailed or they\u2019re too embarrassed to say anything, so they continue to send pictures,\u201d she said. \u201cOftentimes these teenage girls actually find out they\u2019re talking to an adult male, they continue that conversation because they feel that that person understands them \u2013 that they\u2019re someone who understands them more than their parents do.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the victims don\u2019t feel that they can talk to their parents, and that causes them to be revictimized over and over again,\u201d said the FBI\u2019s Shivers. \u201cParents should be cognizant of what their children are doing on the internet and on their smartphones just across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n In Beth\u2019s case, ongoing, intense counseling has helped her and her family come to terms with the worst of their trauma. She is now hopeful and optimistic about her son\u2019s future as a survivor.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s going to be doing things that some people could only dream of,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd he\u2019s also going to have this story to go with it that, you know, I dealt with this as a child and look where I am! And you can get through it, too.\u201d<\/p>\n johnferrugia@rmpbs.org<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n The Durango Herald brings you this report in partnership with Rocky Mountain PBS News. Learn more at rmpbs.org\/news.<\/em><\/p>\n Pedophiles are using social media and other online venues to lure children and teens into sharing sexually explicit photos and videos. Sometimes the predators pose as peers \u2013 a potential boyfriend or a girlfriend. Then, once the child shares a photo or video, the predators blackmail them into sending more by threatening to show their friends or family. \u2018We could be doing those cases all day, every day\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":101194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[747,3817,524],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-101193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-children","tag-pornography","tag-sexual-assault"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101193"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=101193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Rescuing the innocentWhat parents can do<\/h4>\n
\n What parents can do:
\n Monitor your children\u2019s phone and social media use. Are they communicating with people they don\u2019t really know?
\n Talk to your children about the dangers of sharing inappropriate photos, even with people they do know because those can be passed on to others, including potential predators.
\n Make sure your children know it\u2019s safe to talk to you about anyone who is pressuring them to send explicit photos or videos.
\n Here are some resources that can help parents have a conversation with their kids:
\n Watch the special report \u201cRescuing the Innocent,\u201d the 30-minute Insight with John Ferrugia special report and get more resources at
\n rmpbs.org\/insight\/rescuing<\/a>
\n .
\n Watch \u201cSexploited,\u201d a public service video from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that depicts how a child might be exploited online, at
\n http:\/\/bit.ly\/sexploited<\/a>
\n .<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"