MADISON — After FBI agents arrested pedophile, rapist and child pornographer James Perry at his Stoughton home in early 2004, it took two long hours to persuade a scared 8-year-old victim that she could reveal the secret she had kept for more than three years.
Later, the little girl’s mother cuddled her daughter to sleep whispering, “I’m so sorry,” through the night.
Perry befriended and then sexually abused the girl and her friends, at least twice inviting another man to join him.
Perry, now 35, is in a West Virginia federal prison. He was sentenced to 375 years. The girl, now 10, and Perry’s other victims, continue to be grist for the Internet pedophilia mill.
He took photos and videos of the assaults and posted them online, so they probably continue to be traded or downloaded — and may be forever.
Reports of adults collecting and trading sexual images of children is increasing exponentially, federal statistics indicate.
So far in 2005, new FBI cases of child sexual exploitation on the Internet have increased by more than 2,026 percent since 1996, according to the bureau’s Innocent Images National Initiative.
*advertiser censored* is the most prevalent form of reported exploitation.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that child *advertiser censored* tips make up more than 90 percent of reports filed with its CyperTipline, a Web site it runs in cooperation with the FBI.
Just during the week of Nov. 14, tipsters filed 2,923 reports of child *advertiser censored* out of 3,102 total exploitation reports.
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A Pandora’s box
Eric Szatkowski, a Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation agent, said
he sees the same images
over and over in collections of perpetrators, known as “traders.”
The department expects to arrest more than 100 child *advertiser censored* users statewide in 2005.
“It’s an epidemic,” he said. “The Internet has opened Pandora’s box to some of the most evil images people could ever imagine seeing.”
The Internet is a cheap, quick and relatively safe way for pedophiles to satisfy their desire, said Tom Trier, head of Madison’s FBI office. They retrieve images from Web sites, bulletin boards, newsgroups, chat rooms, messaging programs, e-mail and peer-to-peer file sharing programs.
Madison police Detective Maureen Wall said some perpetrators use cell phones to capture images of children at places such as malls or fund-raising car washes, then upload them to the Internet for other pedophiles, even though they don’t involve nudity.
“They are always sharing and swapping images,” she said.
Investigators say they don’t have near enough people doing the time-consuming computer forensics — recovering deleted images or viewing stored files of child *advertiser censored*.
Without a way to remove the images from the Internet, the problem will never go away.
“Before the Internet, these child pornographers were working alone, going to seedy bookstores, maybe getting mail orders of different illegal magazines,” Szatkowski said. “But now it’s just exploded. ... I don’t know if law enforcement will ever get a handle on this problem.”
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No closure
Perry pleaded guilty to federal and state charges related to assaults on children and a slew of attacks on women in the Madison area that led to him being dubbed the “Mall Rapist.”
The mother of the 8-year-old victim said her family has moved to another state because facing other children Perry abused was too difficult for the little girl.
She knows their secret, and they know hers.
The mother, whom the Wisconsin State Journal is not naming to protect her and her daughter’s identities, said she can’t face the Internet images yet.
She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to face them. Right now, there’s no computer in the house, and she said she’ll try to keep one from her child as long as possible.
The girl knew she was being recorded, but she doesn’t fully understand why, said her mother. She wishes her daughter would never have to know.
Dr. Richard Loewenstein, a national expert on childhood trauma, said victims of childhood rape never get closure when that abuse is photographed or videotaped.
“You don’t have any control over what’s happened,” he said. “I have cases where the perpetrator told the victim, ‘We have your pictures and if you tell anyone, those pictures are going to turn up on your father’s door.’”
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Much more, and I probably copied too much already :doh:
http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2005/12/05/news/02porn.txt