With the advent of technologies like the internet and cell phones, police have been dealt an enormous blow in a battle they had once nearly won: the battle against child pornography.
At one time child pornographers had to go outside into the world to find someone to develop and print their photos and to seek out like-minded people through underground networks, never knowing who would come through with the goods they sought and who would bring only handcuffs and a long prison sentence.
Now within just a couple of minutes, and without leaving the comfort and safety of their homes, child pornographers can exploit a child, digitally produce child pornography, and make it available to the entire world, anonymously.
But is child pornography a problem in Murphysboro?
“I can’t specifically say [it’s] just Murphysboro because usually it extends way out into other states... the internet is everywhere,” said Murphysboro Police Chief Jeff Bock.
”When you’re dealing with one of these cases the probability of it being just in Murphysboro is probably next to none,” he said. “It’s going to be out somewhere else affecting here or here affecting somewhere else.”
Murphysboro sees few cases, said Bock, remembering a total of just three in the past two years, with one in 2008 and two in 2006.
While there are relatively few cases brought to trial, that does not mean it’s not a problem in Murphysboro.
“It occurs all the time, as people are finding out,” said Bock.
Catching child pornographers isn’t as easy as taking witness statements and interviewing friends of the victim. Since the victims are children, and often hundreds or thousands of miles away, they are not around, or even identified, to point out their abusers.
Those abusers often hide behind anonymous web browsing programs freely available online, which hide a user’s internet protocol address, or IP address, a number that specifies from which computer a site was accessed.
Child predators are most often caught by police officers posing as underage children in chat rooms, or by computer repair stores, said Bock.
“Trust me, they will come to us if they find it,” he said, “because their concern is that at that point they are possessing it and could be charged with it, if it for some odd reason, it would be found. So they’re doing it to save themselves, to say, ‘Look, I’ve found this, you need to deal with it.’”
In increasing numbers, however, the producers of child pornography are the children themselves.
Underage teens are using their now-ubiquitous cell phone cameras to send nude photos of themselves to their underage friends, now termed “sexting,” changing the child porn fight entirely. Debate is rising over this new use of technology, and whether say, an underage girl can be charged with making child porn if the photos she’s taking are of herself.
One such case recently made national headlines. A group of Greensburg, Pa. teens were arrested on child pornography charges after three girls, ages 14 and 15, sent nude or partially nude photos of themselves to boys who were also underage. The girls are facing charges of producing and disseminating child pornography, while the boys are facing charges of possession.
Sexting is not something Murphysboro Police have had to deal with, said Bock, but, “I’m sure that we will, as common as it’s becoming, but we have not seen any cases yet.”
So the fight continues, on new fronts and with new participants.
Citizens of Murphysboro can fight child porn by reporting any suspicions to local authorities, said Bock, or to sites like cphotline.org, which will then involve authorities as needed.
While the issue is not as black and white as it once was, it is no less criminal.
“We take it very seriously. A lot of times people see it as a victimless crime but there are victims,” said Bock. “Even though the photographs may have started out somewhere else and they get exchanged over the internet hundreds and hundreds of times, that person is a victim every time that that is exchanged. Doesn’t matter [in] what context the picture was originally taken, that person continues to be a victim, and that is why it’s so serious.”