Scope of the Crime

There is a global child rape and torture crisis, otherwise known as child pornography, traded electronically in images, videos and live-streaming on the internet and cellular phone networks.

America now produces an estimated half of the world’s child pornography. Of all the global internet servers hosting child sexual abuse websites, nearly half are located in the United States. An estimated 50,000 Americans, at any given time, are trading child sex abuse images/videos.

In 2012 child sex trafficking became America’s fastest growing crime, expanding by 150% per year. The Department of Justice reports a pedophile can earn up to $1,000 per night molesting a child via a web camera. One investigator says the child porn industry is “very tempting” with lots of “sales to be made.” A picture can sell for $25, a video for $300. Monthly child porn subscriptions average $100 per month.

The global child porn industry may be yielding $20 billion to $50 billion per year. One estimate is that every second there are 750,000 pedophiles on-line globally. Germany, for example, has estimated some 250,000 Germans spent $27 billion on child sex abuse images/videos in 2013. That is Germany alone in one year.

Human sex trafficking is organized crime’s fastest growing business and is estimated as, at least, the third-largest criminal enterprise worldwide. Globally, an estimated 1.2 million children are trafficked for sexual abuse and exploitation every year. Says one expert, “the market is huge. And the operators of these forums will stop at nothing to keep their business running.” With this kind of easy profit, child porn is rapidly overtaking drugs as organized crime’s preferred money-maker.

Government officials, including, judges, military officers and police, often with substantial authority, have been identified as both consumers and producers in the illegal child porn industry.

Canadian Investigations

Canadian investigators have recently changed tactics in how they investigate the trade in child sex abuse, now “going after companies that host the online files and profit from the data sharing.”

Ontario Provincial Police (OPP)’s Deputy Commissioner Scott Tod said, “Our goal . . . is actually to look at the money behind the organization. Who made decisions so that profits could be made in a criminal manner? Where do they reside? And who are they?”

Isn’t this what investigators have been doing all along? Surprisingly, no.

Standard operating procedure (SOP) for child porn investigations, at least in America and Canada, have been investigators trolling known on-line child porn trading venues, posing as pedophiles, and catching the criminal in this random net-casting strategy.

Image throwing a net into a spring salmon run, mid-stream, and pulling out whatever you catch. So dense is the on-line trade in child sex abuse, the volume so rapid, pedophiles know that the chances of being caught are very small. Pedophiles also know that investigators have not structured their investigations in a systematic manner that targets the source, the kingpins, the leaders of this highly lucrative organized crime.

Bruce Campion-Smith, a journalist in Ottawa, Canada detailed the change in child porn investigations in Canada quoting Deputy Commissioner Scott Tod, “Rather than the peer-to-peer, one-to-one, we now want to look at . . . how do corporations actually profit and benefit from trading in child sexual exploitation… …This is the first investigation of the scale in my knowledge in North America, if not worldwide.”

In this manner, Canadian investigators found a file service owned by several web hosting companies and seized 1,250 terabytes of data. The estimated profits, in this investigation, were $18 million in just three months. The investigation revealed 2,200 IP addresses in the United States, 843 in Germany, 534 in Japan, 457 in Russia and 394 in Canada.

Let me repeat this fundamental fact: of all the global internet servers hosting child sexual abuse websites, nearly half are located in the United States. Why haven’t US investigators targeted these servers? Why has the US government allowed these servers to operate in America?

Prosecutorial Discretion

Like Canada, procedures also need to change in how child porn is investigated and prosecuted in America. The burden of change falls most heavily on corrupt prosecutors. Law enforcement investigators often express their frustrations to me that they will spend hours, weeks, months on a child porn investigation only to have it blocked by the prosecutors.

Why? Prosecutorial discretion — the two dirtiest words in the American legal system.

In 2014 The New York Times editorial board called prosecutorial misconduct “rampant” in America and that was a gross understatement. Prosecutors are not legally obliged to prosecute crimes. Prosecutors can pick and choose which crimes they wish to prosecute and which they do not. Stunning isn’t it? Can you image emergency room doctors choosing which patients are operate on versus who gets left to bleed out on the floor?

This is what prosecutors across America do every day. The poor get prosecuted and the rich play golf, drink, sail, and party with their favorite local and federal prosecutor who simply decline to prosecute his/her rich friend’s crimes if some hard-nose investigator ever dares to investigate.

In terms of child porn/child sex abuse investigations, this means that wealthy business men, lawyers, politicians, judges, lawyers, and prosecutors themselves are enjoying near total impunity. Prosecutorial discretion has given a green light to the richest, most powerful pedophiles in America to engage, at will, in the trade in child rape and torture.

How to Investigate Child Porn 101

Based on extensive discussions with law enforcement and prosecutors, at the state and federal level, across America, here are some ideas about the changes needed to better fight, prevent and halt the crime.

Servers located in America that host, store and distribute child porn must be investigated, shut-down, and the owners must be prosecuted. That this is not yet happening in America is gob-smacking. Target the top, not the low-hanging fruit. Period. This should be a top priority. Investigators need to conduct targeted investigation of known supply-side sources to which pedophiles flock. For example, the amount of child porn produced in day cares, preschools and baby-sitters is significant enough for investigators to start requesting search warrants to randomly search any and all day care, preschools and baby-sitting services IP address and cell phone networks for child porn production and distribution. Judges need to issue search warrants for these investigations. State licensing agencies should require legal consent to submit to random child porn investigations as a component of all licenses granted to day care, preschool and baby-sitting services. The amount of military and police, both local and federal, arrested for trade in child sex abuse is staggering. All military and law enforcement personnel must be required to submit to random child porn search, just like random drug tests, on their IP networks, phones, hard-drives, etc. Federal and state law enforcement should police each other outside of their areas of influence. For example, an Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) investigator in Texas should be able to get a search warrant for a police department in Maine. This would eliminate the roadblocking “code of silence” within corrupt police forces when good cops are prevented from investigating and exposing crimes they are often aware their own colleagues are committing against children. All state and federal employees should be required to sign a Code of Conduct where they acknowledge that trading in child sex abuse is a crime and they pledge to refrain from doing so, to report anyone they are aware may be engaged in child porn on government computers and agree to random searches of their phones, laptops, hard-drives, thumb-drives, etc, for child porn. All state and federal employees must be randomly searched for child porn on a regular basis. Full stop. State and federal government agency servers and IP addresses must be routinely searched. State and federal government agencies must implement software that blocks porn and child porn from being downloaded on government computers. When investigators encounter prosecutorial discretion, they must be able to network with other prosecutors and investigators outside their physical jurisdiction to do an end-run around a corrupt local or federal prosecutors who may be involved in the trade of child porn themselves. Likewise, when a prosecutor encounters an investigator unwilling to investigate, that prosecutor must reach out to law enforcement outside the physical jurisdiction and receive investigative assistance and do an end-run around a local or federal investigators who may be involved in the trade of child porn. The trade in child rape and torture, aka child pornography, knows no physical, geographic boundaries. It is not a traditional crime that occurs in one single physical location for which law enforcement and prosecutors have “legal” jurisdiction. It is crime that explodes all over the world via electronic networks the instant the rape of a child is posted on-line or sent over cell phone networks. Child porn must no longer be investigated and prosecuted as a traditional crime based on traditional legal jurisdictions.

Maine: Governor LePage & Attorney General Janet Mills

On 20 February 2015, Maine’s Governor, Paul LePage, issued an Executive Order prohibiting Maine state employees from accessing pornographic or sexually explicit material on both state computers or devices even when they were off-duty on personal time.

To my knowledge, it is the first executive order of its kind and Governor LePage is to be congratulated. It is highly likely Governor LePage issued this executive order, in part, out of frustration for prosecutorial discretion and misconduct in Maine, which is extensive.

Governor LePage (R) has been waging a public battle with Maine’s AG, Janet Mills (D). Maine is the only state in the country where the attorney general is neither elected by the general population nor appointed by the governor. In Maine, the AG is elected, solely, by the state representatives. This is a huge problem in that it enables and protects massive state-level corruption among state legislatures who are protected against prosecution for their crimes under “prosecutorial discretion” by the AG they elected to office.

The structure is essentially a legalized protection racket for Maine politicians. It is a structure that has been working very well for Maine Democrats who have controlled Maine politics, more or less, for the past three or four decades.

However, in 2011, in a protest vote, Mainers elected Republicans across the state, including Governor Paul LePage. Janet Mills lost her position as AG because the state legislature went Republican. Bill Schneider was voted in as attorney general. In 2013 the state legislature returned to a Democratic majority and voted in, again, Janet Mills to be attorney general. The war between Mills and LePage began.

I must note, I have a personal connection to Janet Mills. Not only did she grow up in my very small, rural home town of Farmington, Maine, where my father was a history professor at the University of Maine (UMF) and a very active member of the Democratic Party, but Janet’s mother, Kay Mills, was one of my favorite teachers at Mt. Blue High School. Kay Mills was absolutely wonderful. I do not what happened to her daughter.

In addition to a childhood connection with both Janet Mills and her mother, later, in my adult life, it was Janet Mills, in her capacity as attorney general in 2009, who made the trafficking and abuse of my daughter possible. In December of 2009 Janet Mills, as AG, ordered DHHS senior officials to cancel meetings around the confirmed sex abuse of my then two year old daughter with both me and my attorney Bill Harwood of Verrill Dana law firm in Portland, Maine.

Janet Mills, as AG, then, I have been told, engaged in a prolonged email argument with Bonnie Titcomb Lewis, a former Maine state Democratic Party heavy-weight, and Lucky Hollander, a senior DHHS employee about my daughter’s rape and abuse and defended her actions to halt Child Protection from protecting my daughter. Janet Mills is alleged to have said, in writing, that Child Protection was to “take no action to protect this child no matter what happened because “a judge was going to handle this one.”

Talk about prosecutorial discretion and misconduct.

Janet Mills’ actions constitute extremely serious obstruction of justice. Imagine. An AG who not only refuses to prosecute child sex abuse but also intervenes in a child protection investigation for the confirmed rape of a two year old girl by her father, taking action to protect the rapist and not the child?

Janet Mills should be behind bars, not re-elected by Maine state Democratic politicians to the AG’s office. But she was. Party politics above all else. Right?

Governor LePage is very well aware of the details of my daughter’s case and Janet Mills’ role. It is likely actions like these by Janet Mills that have prompted Governor LePage to issue this recent executive order. Surely there are more children Janet Mills has, literally, helped to traffick into sex abuse. My daughter cannot be the only one.

Governor LePage is also well aware, as are most people in Maine, that child sex abuse by state employees has been protected by corrupt prosecutors and cops for far too long. AG Janet Mills is the top prosecutor refusing to prosecute. She is the boss of every District Attorney (DA) in the state. Public knowledge, even of many reports and rumors of institutional child sex abuse, is useless when prosecutorial discretion is invoked.

Next Steps for Governor LePage

Governor Paul LePage does not have the power of prosecution. He does have the power of Executive Order over his Executive Branch. His executive order is a powerful first step. But it is only a first step.

Now, investigations and prosecutions of all Maine state employees trading in child sex abuse on government computers must follow. Swiftly. How will Governor LePage accomplish this if the top prosecutor in the state is protecting child rapists and enabling the trafficking children like my daughter?

First, Governor LePage will need the assistance of good, clean federal investigators outside of Maine and outside of New England. It’s now public knowledge that the Boston FBI protected and enabled Whitey Bulger for decades. Maine does not have a real FBI office. Maine’s FBI is only a remote outpost for Boston. Boston calls the shots in Maine, still, even though Maine separated from Massachusetts in 1820.

Second, Governor LePage will need to request that trusted, clean, federal law enforcement in Washington, D.C. investigate Maine state computer servers and IP addresses for child sex abuse images/videos, etc.

Third, a Triage List must be composed of which state agencies are investigated and prosecuted.

Triage in Maine

First, on the triage list for outside federal investigation must be every prosecutor in Janet Mills office, including Mills herself, and every District Attorney and their staff. All Maine judges and court staff should also be included.

Second, all Department of Health and Human Service (DHHS) employees, particularly those working in Child Protection, be investigated immediately. It is widely rumored former Child Protection Director Dan Despard, fired over his role in my daughter’s case but not yet investigated and prosecuted, is, and has been, key in Maine’s child sex abuse ring.

In 2001, Senior Child Protection staffer Cynthia Wellman claimed University of Maine Orono (UMO) professors were sexually abusing children, along with Child Protection Staff, on UMO’s campus. Maine’s prosecutors refused to prosecute and law enforcement refused to open a criminal investigation. It is suspected that Dan Despard was one of the Maine state employees Cynthia Wellman named. He needs to be investigated.

Third, every single Maine state employed law enforcement official must be investigated, starting with Lt. Glenn Lang, Maine Computer Crimes Director. Again, it is common public rumor in Maine that local and state police have been running a child sex abuse ring for a long time now. Cole Farms and former Maine State Police Chief Demers are only the bits of the slip that escaped under the skirt. Multiple sources have told me it is “open knowledge” that South Portland’s former Police Chief Robert Schwartz “was raping little boys in the woods for decades.” Schwartz is now Executive Director of Maine Police Chief Association. These rumors must be investigated.

Lighthouses & Lobster Rolls

Maine is not all lighthouses and lobster rolls. Maine is a key supplier (thanks to a legalized structure of corruption and an abdication of key checks and balances fundamental to a rule of law) of children to abuse for the national and global child sex abuse industry.

Prosecutorial discretion is a dirty term in America’s broken legal system. In Maine the phrase takes on even darker connotations — prosecutorial discretion and misconduct centers on the trade in child rape and torture on the internet and cell phones, otherwise known as child porn.

My daughter and I are victims of this crime. Maine’s top prosecutor, Janet Mills, is directly responsible. God willing, Governor LePage has just issued a shot across the bow to Maine state employees engaged in the trade in child sex abuse. If he is able to take appropriate next steps to give his executive order teeth, this could be a game-changer in the history of Maine and in the lives of many children who are being raped and destroyed each and every day in Maine.

Changing the way child porn is investigated and prosecuted is an urgent need, as the Canadians have identified. Perhaps Governor LePage’s new executive order will trigger the start of a much-needed shift in American policy and procedure regarding the crime of government employees trading in child rape and torture, aka child pornography.

As goes Maine, so goes the nation. We hope and pray.

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Dr. Lori Handrahan’s forthcoming book Child Porn Nation: America’s Hidden National Security Risk details America’s child sex abuse epidemic. Her Ph.D. is from The London School of Economics. She can be reached on Twitter @LoriHandrahan2