Wife turns child porn addict over to a system overwhelmed and ill-equipped for the task
'When men get involved in this, you have no idea how it hurts their families." - terri Barber, who turned in her husband for viewing child porn
By Dan Herbeck - News Staff Reporter
Updated: 03/31/08 3:43 PM
Standing outside her Batavia home last year, Terri Barber agonized over the most painful decision of her life. Should she report her husband, Matthew, to police for having child pornography on his computer?
Or should she trust his promise that he would never again look at Internet images of the sexual abuse of young children?
He had made — and broken — the same promise months before.
The woman said a silent prayer, took two deep breaths and then punched the numbers 9-1-1 into her cell phone.
Batavia cops came to the home, seized two computers and called in the FBI. Her husband later pleaded guilty and was sent to prison for six years and two months.
Another child pornography offender caught and put in federal prison.
Statistically speaking, another small victory for the U.S. government in the war against child pornography.
But it’s a war that police and federal agents acknowledge they are losing.
“We are just scratching the surface,” said Stephan Lear, an investigator working with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va. “We catch the people we catch, but that’s just a drop in the bucket.”
Terri Barber is also frustrated.
She called police with the hope that her husband — whom she continues to support despite his crimes — would get help in prison. “It’s an addiction. What my husband needs is help and counseling,” said Barber. “At the prison he’s in, he’s not getting it.”
With Internet child pornography racing out of control and law enforcement struggling to keep up, the illegal viewing of sexually molested children is quickly becoming the disgrace of the 21st century.
A yearlong Buffalo News investigation found:
• Law enforcement isn’t coming close to stopping the flood of child abuse images over the Internet, even though cybercops catch and arrest offenders every day.
The FBI arrested or issued summonses for 1,546 child pornography suspects last year compared with 68 a decade earlier. But in New York State alone, an Internet task force identified 426,669 instances of child pornography being offered to undercover officers in just a 30-month period.
• The courts don’t treat all cases equally. Federal judges hand out much tougher sentences than state judges, who handle most of these cases nationally. In Erie and Niagara counties, men sentenced in federal court got an average 6-1/2 years in prison. In state courts, a majority got probation or less than six months in jail, The News’ review of 102 recent cases found.
• Many men sent to prison for child pornography crimes don’t get counseling. The sex offender program within federal prisons has room for fewer than 1 percent of sex offenders.
• The Internet industry isn’t doing enough to halt the flow of child pornography images, claiming that proposed reforms — extending data retention periods, monitoring customer Web sites and knocking child pornography off its computer servers — are too expensive, a violation of privacy, or would open them up to liability.
• The growth of child pornography is likely to get worse, with producers, distributors and consumers taking advantage of technological advances, such as wi-fi, to stay a step ahead of police.
The Justice Department says it devotes “the full force of our nation’s resources” to the fight against child pornography and other cybercrimes against children.
“That’s a joke,” said Andrew Vachss, a New York City attorney and criminologist who has crusaded against child pornography for decades.
“There is no war on child pornography,” he said. “Our government’s approach and the worldwide approach to this problem is pathetic.”
Terri Barber agrees. More must be done to stop the crimes from occurring, she said.
“When men get involved in this, you have no idea how it hurts their families,” she said. “Their wives and children are the victims that you don’t hear about. The looks I get, the remarks people have made since Matt was arrested …”
Offenders overwhelm the legal system
The flood of child pornography is overwhelming police, the courts and the prisons.
When federal agents three years ago busted up the Eastern European child pornography Internet company known as Regpay, they found a customer list of 90,000 — with one-third to one-half from America.
From that list, U.S. agents culled 13,098 “high priority” leads on Americans who subscribed to Regpay.
Less than 5 percent of those leads were turned into criminal cases. To date, 581 arrests have been made nationwide. Federal agents said they didn’t have the staff or resources to pursue all the tips.
“[The] system is designed to handle just so much,” said Claude Davenport, a supervisor with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s cybercrimes center. “There are just so many U.S. or district attorneys, and just so many agents and police officers.” It’s a refrain heard over and over from police officers throughout the country.
“We have the smallest state in the U.S. per capita, and we are behind by checking search warrants,” said Flint Waters, an investigator with Wyoming’s Internet Crimes Against Children’s Task Force. “We have priorities for the cases we work. Our primary focus is children in danger. One of the things that haunts us, that sends us home every night [is] thinking: ‘Did I pick the right one to go after?’”
“I don’t have the bodies,” he added. “I don’t have enough trained investigators.”
State vs. federal court
In the courts, meanwhile, the federal system hammers offenders.
By comparison, the state system coddles them.
Of 101 recent child pornography cases in Erie and Niagara counties reviewed by The Buffalo News, 79 were handled in federal court, while 22 went to state court.
Generally, cases involving large amounts of pornography or with defendants actively trading child images go to federal court. Cases involving men who work closely with children, or have previous state convictions, also end up in U.S. District Court in Western New York.
Those sentenced federally, in most cases, got at least 3 to 5 years in prison. After leaving prison, many spend years in supervised release — sometimes the rest of their lives.
Most sentenced in state courts in Erie and Niagara counties received probation or no more than six months in jail. It is only after a probation violation that some face the hammer of the federal court system.
Timothy Brenon of North Tonawanda, for example, was sentenced in state court to 10 years probation in 2002 for viewing child pornography.
Last year, the 57-year-old warehouse worker was caught with 87 images of child pornography, and federal prosecutors took over his case. This time, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
“He caught a fabulous break on his state case, getting no jail time. But he couldn’t stop himself from doing it again,” said Brenon’s attorney, David G. Jay. “That’s how strong the compulsion is for these guys.”
Focus on addicts
Like Brenon, most arrested for child pornography nationally, as well as in Erie and Niagara counties, were viewing images — not producing or selling.
Seven of the 101 cases reviewed by The Buffalo News involved men who took pictures of children, either for their own use or to trade — but not sell — on the Internet. Two others molested children, but didn’t necessarily photograph the abuse. Two others attempted to meet children to have sex with them.
Concentrating enforcement on child pornography viewers is like running a war on drugs by arresting mostly addicts, and rarely arresting any drug dealers, according to Mark J. Mahoney, a Buffalo defense lawyer.
“This material is so easy to get on the Internet,” said Mahoney, who represents several child pornography defendants. “Why are these guys serving as scapegoats for the problem of child porn in America?”
Federal prosecutors said they try to target producers and sellers, but they defend the practice of arresting addicts.
Studies of federal child pornography convicts show that a large percentage of these men also molest children, Buffalo U.S. Attorney Terrance P. Flynn noted.
Prosecutors cite Matthew Barber, 40, who worked as a computer repairman in Batavia. When authorities investigated his use of child pornography, they learned he molested a 5-year-old girl. After his federal prison term, he will spend an additional seven years in state prison for sexual abuse.
“These men also provide the market for child porn. If there’s no market, there’s no need to produce it,” Flynn said. “And when you put one of them in prison, you’re preventing a lot of potential molestations.”
Lack of prison space
This explosion in child pornography arrests, however, threatens to overwhelm the prisons.
“I don’t know where we are going to find the prison space to house all these people,” said Joseph R. Taylor, a sex crimes investigator with the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office.
When U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny sentenced Barber to federal prison in April, the judge asked federal prison officials to assign Barber to its Sex Offender Treatment Program at Butner, N.C.
Barber didn’t get in. Most sex offenders don’t.
The program can accommodate 112 men. There are 12,000 sex offenders in federal prison. Federal prison officials don’t break down how many of these inmates are in prison for child pornography.
Prison officials said they are attempting to provide better treatment programs.
But law enforcement and child advocates say it’s going to take more than incarceration and prison counseling to rein in child pornography.
More efforts are needed, they say, to limit the availability of the material.
“We know we can’t prosecute our way out of this,” said John F. Shehan, CyberTipline manager with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va.
Global approach needed
But as law enforcement struggles to cope with the massive child pornography problem, regulators are unable to reach an agreement with the U.S. Internet industry on methods to identify, shut down and block child pornography on its Web sites.
And even if an agreement is reached, the problem is worldwide, and needs a broader approach, law enforcement says.
“People ask, ‘Why don’t you take the sites down?,’” said Davenport, with the U.S. cybercrimes center. “We do take them down, but you can take a site down in Denver today, and it opens in Slovenia tomorrow under a different name.”
“We need help from other countries to chase the money,” added agent Don Daufenbach, who also works with the cybercrimes center. “We’re getting more and more help from other countries, but it’s still like playing ‘whack-a-mole.’ These sites go up and down so fast, it’s unbelievable.”
Every nation, however, doesn’t place the same priority on halting child pornography.
Of 186 countries surveyed by the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, more than half lacked any child pornography laws, according to Ernie Allen, president of the U.S. and the international organizations.
“Many countries still do not have legislation on child pornography,” United Nations investigator Juan Miguel Petit wrote in a 2005 report. “This legal vacuum leaves a dangerous gap that exposes children to the risk of abuse.”
Japan, Portugal, the Bahamas and Brazil are among the countries where possesion of child pornography is not illegal, according to the International Centre report. So are China, Russia, Ukraine, Sudan, Singapore and Egypt.
“The only possible way to interdict it is through international treaties and cooperation, and we don’t have any,” said Vachss, the New York City child advocate. “If we don’t raise the stakes, we’re worse than hypocrites.”
Erie County District Attorney Frank J. Clark is afraid of what will happen if we don’t.
“Look at the growth of adult sex on TV and in the movies. Things that were absolutely taboo when I was a kid, you see on TV now every night in prime time,” said the 64-year-old Clark. “Community standards relax over time. Are we ever going to let our guard down? I hope not, but who knows? The thought of that frightens me.”
It all leaves Terri Barber very distraught. She still believes that turning her husband in was the right thing to do, but she wonders what will become of him once he is released from prison.
“I’m angry because our government doesn’t really seem to be doing anything to fight this problem. We need to do more than just putting people in jail. We aren’t doing the things we really need to do.”
Buffalo News reporters Lou Michel and Susan Schulman contributed to this report.
