Cybersleuths track Internet crimes

Kim Smith

Sunday, March 12, 2000 | 8:46 a.m.

FBI Special Agent Homer Young wrote the book on investigating sex offenders. His son, Las Vegas FBI Special Agent Roger Young, is writing the sequel.

For the past 60 years child molesters, pedophiles, pornographers and pimps have had to keep an eye out for one member of the Young family or the other.

Homer investigated sexual deviants in the 1940s, '50s and '60s -- before many federal laws even existed -- and Roger has been chasing them since the '70s, most recently on the Internet.

Roger and his colleagues at the FBI aren't the only one chasing sexual deviants through cyberspace, though. The Internet has become so inviting to sex offenders that local authorities, too, are working hard not only to arrest them, but to put them behind bars.

The Clark County district attorney's office and the U.S. attorney's office take great pains to determine where justice might be better served, Clark County Deputy District Attorney Doug Herndon said. Many times, the penalties are much harsher in federal court and the state will step back from the case to allow it to go through the federal system.

The advent of the Internet has resulted in such a significant increase in child pornography and sexual abuse of children that there are more than enough cases to go around, officials agree.

Instead of hanging out in back alleys and subscribing to underground magazines, people who prefer children sexually are turning to the Internet, Metro Police Sgt. Ralph Hemington said.

"It's just a new medium for them to explore and I don't know that the cases are any more difficult to investigate, but the volume of the increase is making it more burdensome," Hemington said.

While some sex offenders are trading child pornography on the Internet, others are actively seeking children to engage in sex with.

"The Internet has created a firestorm," Young said. "It has created a target-rich environment for those who seek children for sexual purposes."

The challenges Young faces because of the Internet's growing popularity with his foes are troublesome, but he knows his father had his own obstacles to overcome.

There were few federal laws dealing with child sex offenders during his father's time in the FBI, and it's only been within the last couple of decades that things have improved, Young said.

When he investigated his first child pornography case, Young said, there were no federal laws differentiating child pornography from adult pornography. Prosecutors still had to take the extra steps to prove that the images were clearly offensive to the average adult, intended to arouse "lustful, shameful or morbid" desires and lacked serious artistic, scientific, political or literary value.

Moreover, if federal agents wanted to pursue charges against someone who had sex with a child or who had arranged for someone else to have sex with a child, they had to prove that the child had crossed state lines, Young said. Pimps solved that problem by merely bringing their clients to the child instead of vice versa. Nowadays it's a federal crime no matter who crosses the state line.

Young also pointed out that until the early 1990s, it wasn't enough for someone to own pornographic videotapes of children -- federal prosecutors had to prove that the owner intended to sell them for profit.

Federal laws today are much more stringent, Young said. For example, a pornographer who takes pictures of children and develops the pictures himself can still be prosecuted federally because the camera, film and paper he used were not made in Nevada.

And, if a pornographer travels from Las Vegas to Boulder City with pornography he can be prosecuted federally because the roads he traveled were partially funded with federal dollars, Young said.

"Nowadays you can hardly commit a crime against a child without state and federal laws being violated," Young said.

Law enforcement officers hear about child pornography cases in a variety of ways.

Young said he is constantly investigating cases in which a child thinks he or she is talking to a peer online and then gets asked to send nude pictures of themselves to what turns out to be an adult. Or, the child is e-mailed unsolicited pornographic photos.

Herndon said he is amazed about how many cases he sees in which a pedophile is arrested after taking his computer in for an upgrade only to have the technician notify the authorities after finding child pornography.

The Internet has made things much simpler for those interested in trading child pornography, or those interested in sex with children, Young said.

"It gives them a sense of anonymity and security," Young said. "Before, they used to have to put an ad in the paper, meet someone by chance or in a bar."

Moreover, those who trade child pornography online often feel as though what they are doing isn't wrong, Herndon said.

"A lot of them feel they have a degree of immunity because they think 'It was there on the Internet, it was free, how can I be prosecuted?' " Herndon said. "They think 'What harm is there? It's a victimless crime, I'm just pulling pictures off the Internet.' "

Herndon said many child pornography cases end with a plea agreement, but those defendants who go to court often will argue that they were not the ones in control of the computer. Or if the cases involve nude photos of children and not children engaged in sex acts, they'll argue that the photos are of an artistic nature.

The Internet also helps people who ordinarily would never speak to each other share their sick obsessions in words, if not in action, Young said.

Preferential sex offenders -- sex offenders who are only interested in children of a specific sex and age group -- tend to reach out to others of their ilk more than other sex offenders, Young said.

"They reach out to validate their behavior. They say 'I'm not a bad guy. They enjoy it, they're seducing me, too,' " Young said. "In their mind, they have this justification need and so they reach out to find others who feel the same way they do to validate their behavior and their feelings."

In fact, there is a group called the North American Man Boy Love Association that meets regularly in New York and San Francisco, Young said. Although they support activities that are clearly illegal, group members are well within their right to meet.

That Young even knows about such a group is a fluke. He never had any intention of becoming a law enforcement officer, let alone an FBI agent.

Young wanted to be a college football coach. But, eight years into a high school coaching job, he realized raising children and pursuing a college coaching career weren't compatible.

Still, it wasn't until he was talking with one of his athletes that a career as an FBI agent occurred to him.

"He said he wanted to be an FBI agent and I told him that my dad was one and I'd get some information for him to read," Young said. "The more I read it, the more I realized that it would beat the heck out of teaching."

Young joined the FBI in 1975, three years after his dad retired from the Los Angeles office. His dad presented him with his credentials during his graduation ceremony in Virginia and his FBI instructors gave him badge No. 5269, the same badge his father used throughout his career.

Another two years went by before Young really stepped into his father's shoes, however. He was investigating organized crime cases when he was "volunteered" for a case that involved child pornography and prostitution. By the time it was over, the suspect got 11 years in prison and Young was being called upon to investigate all of the office's pornography cases.

To aid him in his investigations Young closely followed the FBI's written guidelines and its sex investigative manual on sex offenders -- both were written by his father in the mid-1950s.

And, up until his dad died in 1991, he remained one of his best sources of information, Young said. They would talk weekly and many a time they discovered links between the cases his father once handled and a current case.

Young said he is just as surprised as anyone that both he and his father ended up in the same profession.

Investigating sex offenders day in and day out is wearing, and just as in every field, not everyone is cut out for the job, Young said. He knows of three investigators who ultimately left the job because they couldn't handle hearing the horror stories anymore. One of them is pumping gas for a living now.

Young said he keeps at it because he feels he owes the victims.

People often ask him why he pursues pimps when everyone knows prostitution is one of the oldest professions and why he pursues pornographers when many don't see a problem with it.

"I ask them if they mowed the grass when they were growing up and they say 'Yes,' and I say, 'Why? It just grows again,' " Young said. "It's kind of a silly question to ask. I mean, do you just give up and not do anything? Not try to hold some kind of line of defense? You have to draw the line somewhere."

Part of drawing the line, Young said, is developing stricter laws and harsher penalties -- things that can only be done if regular citizens step forward and demand them.

Right now, Young said, money launderers get longer prison sentences than pimps of child prostitutes.

Hemington said a group of local law enforcement officers who investigate such crimes meets monthly to discuss what does need to be done and to pass along information about ongoing investigations.

"It's a new field for law enforcement officers and I'm not sure we can project what the future will be," but maybe with new laws and more public awareness law enforcement will be able to get a handle on the problem, Hemington said.

Young said he hopes the efforts he personally has taken to fight child pornography will help those who follow in his footsteps, and he has some relatives who have expressed an interest in carrying the torch.

"Many considered my dad the expert on child pornography, and I would hope that I've made some impact in areas that he couldn't get to because the laws or technology didn't exist then," Young said.

Kim Smith covers courts for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-2310 or by e-mail at kimberly@lasvegassun.com.

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