opinion

15,000 cases of Arizona child porn, most uninvestigated

Investigators say child-pornography victims are getting younger, and the abuse is becoming more violent.

In Arizona, we know of 15,000 IP addresses (the Internet Protocol labels assigned to each computer device) belonging to people who own computers, cellphones and other electronic devices trading and downloading child porn.

A significant number of these videos and images consist of infants and young children being raped, tortured and sexually abused. Some of even include "how to" instructions on how a grown man can rape a 3-year-old and groom him or her for years of abuse.

Every one of these pictures and videos is a crime scene. But the vast majority of these leads will never be investigated, and most of these victims will not be rescued.

Not unless we act.

While Arizona has tough sentencing laws for those who prey on children, there are only four full-time investigators in the state to proactively investigate this depravity, along with a handful of part-time investigators from various agencies.

A full-time investigator can only handle 25 to 30 cases a year. It's extremely stressful for these investigators, seeing videos of kids being raped with the knowledge they are unable to get to a fraction of what's really out there.

The threat is real.

Fifty to 70 percent of perpetrators who download and trade child pornography are considered "hands on" offenders who actively molest and abuse children, according to data from the Arizona Internet Crimes Against Children task force and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Sixty to 65 percent of the images intercepted in Arizona are of prepubescent children, and 9 percent of all victims are infants. Because of these very young ages, most victims cannot or do not report the abuse.

As the House education chairman, I care deeply about good education policy. But for the children who cannot sleep at night for fear of sexual abuse by child predators, no education policy, however well designed, will help them. They desperately need law enforcement to rescue them from their abusers.

I recently introduced legislation that would enable the state to equip, train and hire 30 to 35 full-time investigators and forensic examiners for the Internet Crimes Against Children task force. House Bill 2517 has 79 co-sponsors and uses $5 million of state lottery money — $4.5 million to equip, train and hire full-time investigators and forensic examiners, and $500,000 to help victims.

For some context, $5 million is 0.05 percent of a $9 billion budget.

Enhancing task-force investigations has three objectives:

-- Rescue children.

-- Arrest and prosecute suspects.

-- Educate parents and children, thus preventing future children from victimization.

Last year, the Arizona Legislature appropriated an additional $60 million to create the new Department of Child Safety, making it an $834 million agency, after realizing there were 6,600 uninvestigated cases of children who were neglected and possibly in harm's way.

With nearly three times the amount of uninvestigated cases of children being raped, tortured and sexually abused, how can we not act now?

We have no time to wait. National studies show the average offender preys on 14 to 23 victims before law enforcement catches them, which is why I have included an emergency clause in my legislation.

If I receive at least 40 votes in the House and 20 in the Senate, upon approval by the governor, this legislation will take immediate effect, allowing us to hire and train more full-time investigators.

It takes 18 to 24 months to train a task-force investigator due to the special training and skills needed to investigate electronic crime scenes. This includes hundreds of hours of training and certifications to conduct these complex investigations.

In Arizona, 90 percent of all victims are known victims, meaning they know who their abuser is. In many cases, investigators are a subpoena away from rescuing victims and arresting and prosecuting their predators.

But as it stands, Arizona investigators must triage leads to locate "hands on" predators. With hundreds of new leads of child sex abuse coming in every month, law enforcement cannot keep up with current leads.

Less than 2 percent of known child-exploitation cases are being investigated.

Thousands of children are waiting to be rescued. Let's make the 52nd Legislature the one that acted swiftly to do so.

Paul Boyer serves Legislative District 20 (Phoenix and Glendale) in the Arizona House of Representatives.

LEARN MORE

For more information on national efforts to prevent Internet crimes against children, visit the National Association to Protect Children at protect.org.