Counter Pedophilia Investigate Unit

CAPE CORAL, Fla.- In mid-September, a Cape Coral couple discovered that their 14-year-old daughter was having inappropriate contact online via social media with a person believed to be a 15-year-old male, but was actually a 34-year-old male named Stephen Kozak of Brandon, Florida.

The parents contacted Cape Coral Police and the case was assigned to a detective that belongs to the FBI’s Innocent Images Task Force.

The child’s Facebook account was taken over by the Cape Coral Police Detective and the Innocent Images Task Force and contact was resumed with Kozak. Kozak engaged in graphic sexually charged conversations online with the Detective (whom he believed was a 14-year-old girl). (more…)

Beyond the web we use every day there is a lawless underworld of child abuse and black marketeering that is difficult for authorities to investigate, Christopher Williams reports.

A rare shaft of light has shone on one of the darkest corners of the internet in recent days. A latter-day Sodom and Gomorrah, it is a place where rape and murder are openly advertised, and earthly authorities appear almost powerless to intervene.

This is the lawless world of darknets and specifically the Hidden Wiki, a site that isn’t on the web, that nobody reaches directly from Google and that can only be accessed using special tools. (more…)

About a year before a disabled 33-year-old Stagecoach man in 2010 founded a non-profit organization to help handicapped children, federal authorities said he produced his own child pornography with a boy he was babysitting, and shared the images on the Internet.

During an online chat in 2010 with a New York FBI agent — who was posing as a pedophile — Jeremiah Higley wrote he also had sex with minors, according to court records.

The agent had also downloaded dozens of child pornography from Higley’s account. Investigators said the images included Higley performing oral sex on a 6-year-old boy whom he had been babysitting in the home where he lived with his parents. (more…)

How could the wife not know?

Hang ‘em high. If he is indeed guilty, that’s what I say. And she doesn’t get a pass from me either.

When I first read the Shorewood Patch story about the man who was arrested for child pornography, I was ill. It took me three days to uncurl myself the fetal position. (more…)

AMSTERDAM (AP) — Dutch police have uncovered huge caches of child pornography on “hidden” websites, including four based in the United States, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

The discovery was made as part of the far-reaching investigation into a suspected pedophile identified only as Robert M. who was arrested in Amsterdam last year. He is accused of abusing dozens of young children while he worked in at least two Amsterdam preschools. (more…)

A Mississauga man who travelled to Atlanta to have sex with a person he believed to be an 11-year-old girl was sentenced yesterday to 30 years in prison.

Brian Schumaker, 54, who also boasted about having sex with young girls in Canada, was convicted on April 5 of crossing state lines to engage in sexual activity with a young girl.

According to Patrick Crosby, spokesperson for the United States (U.S.) Department of Justice, the father of five daughters received 30 years for count one (travelling across state lines for the purpose of having sex with a minor), 15 years for count two (enticement with a computer) and five years for count three (possession of child pornography). (more…)

A seventh-grade science teacher and swim coach at one of the largest co-ed Pre-K through 12 independent day schools in New Jersey was downloading kiddie porn for nearly eight years, said federal authorities who took him into custody today, seizing what they said were images that included boys as young as 6 giving oral sex to men who also had anal sex with them.

Brian Stern, 34, was trying to destroy evidence on his computer’s hard drive when FBI agents forced their way into his Montclair home, authorities said.

Among hundreds of images were videos of boys no older than 6 giving men oral sex and men having anal sex with boys, the FBI said. (more…)

MacRae was traced after an FBI investigation

BBC News. A British man who used an internet chatroom to incite a paedophile to sexually abuse an eight-year-old girl in the United States has been jailed.

Ronald MacRae, 51, of Duncan Street, Pallion, Sunderland, sent messages to the offender on his home computer and watched the abuse filmed on a webcam.

He was traced after the FBI tipped off UK police, a court heard.MacRae, who pleaded guilty to eight charges relating to the 2004 abuse, was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Det Sgt Eric Myers, of Northumbria Police, speaking after the hearing at Newcastle Crown Court, said: “The sentence reflects the horrific nature of the crimes he was involved in.

“MacRae instigated these offences against an innocent girl for his own twisted gratification. ” The court heard that MacRae was tracked down after a two-year investigation involving the FBI and the UK based Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP). Ruth Allen, head of intelligence at CEOP, said: “MacRae believed that because he was thousands of miles away from his victim law enforcement would be unable to connect him with these horrific offences. He was wrong.”

MacRae was put on to the Sex Offenders’ Register for life.