April Miller’s husband uploaded 999 family pictures using the application called on his iPhone. Many of the pictures were of their two sons, who are both under the age of 12. Her husband didn’t know he had to click the ‘privacy’ button.

Miller says she knows the pictures had been circulating for at least a few days before she found out. Miller got a text from someone saying they found the pictures of her sons on the Internet.Miller called 911 and filed a police report.

“They (police) found one of the sites that my son was on,” Miller said. “He said it was on, what he called, ‘A gay pedophilia site’ where people could make comments.”

Even though the website was shut down it didn’t stop the pictures from continuing to circulate.

Miller says she’s had to change her family’s everyday routine. Her sons can’t take the bus every day and they have to take different routes home from school. It’s because Miller is afraid, the people, who go on the pedophile websites, will track her sons down in real life.

“Had my husband would have known to put the privacy on, he would have done it,” Miller said.

Miller hopes to serve as a reminder to other parents what happens when privacy settings aren’t set properly.

In order to protect pictures via websites like Photobucket, customers have to manually go in and click ‘private’ in the settings. Otherwise, the companies allow the pictures to be public.

In Photobucket, customers need to click on their username.’ A page with a list of the albums created will come up. Here customers can see whether it is public or private. To change to private, click on public and the option will pop up.

If customers want to make their entire account private, click on ‘Account Options’ (on top right). Scroll down until you see ‘Edit My Account Settings’ click here. Photobucket will say the albums, by default, are public. Click on that option and change to private. Customers will have to then enter a password to protect their account.

Source: ktvl

Crown prosecutor Jenny Rees argued that the 48 images discovered on the card provided by Bradley Shawn Lemire on Aug. 28, 2009, half of them pornographic, led to more than 2,000 other images of child pornography being found on the accused’s computer after it was seized by police.

That collection included 228 images of the woman’s four-year-old daughter and another young girl from 10 separate occasions.

“There were two victims, both very young, who were sexually exploited by pictures being taken of them,” Rees, who argued for a total sentence of six to eight years, told provincial court Judge John Bascom on Friday.

“Young children are more vulnerable and are in need of protection by the courts. Courts have to send a message that abuse of the vulnerable will not be tolerated.”

Lemire, 48, who has been diagnosed as a pedophile, previously pleaded guilty to two counts of making child porn and one count each of sexually touching one of the girls and possessing child porn.

Defence lawyer Dean Zuk argued for four to five years for all of the charges, saying it was not a commercial endeavour in which the images were distributed to anyone else.

He also noted the touching was indirect and could warrant a concurrent sentence.

“Mr. Lemire says it was not right what he did. He says it was wrong,” said Zuk.

“He has admitted responsibility, he knows he is facing prison time and he wants treatment.”

Bascom said sex offender treatment is “absolutely necessary” for Lemire. But he added if the man doesn’t “buy into treatment” it won’t be successful. Court heard previously from the girl’s mother that there had been rumours among family and friends of Lemire’s questionable behaviour around children that caused some parents to not leave him alone with them.

The woman said in her victim impact statement that she never expected to find pornographic pictures of children when Lemire gave her the digital photo card from his camera.

She said she opened a file called “BAD” and discovered several photos of naked girls as young as four years old, and reported it to police.

Bascom adjourned sentencing, to consider both sides’ arguments, until Aug. 15.

dslade@calgaryherald.com

Source: The Calgary Herald

Marlek E. Holmes, 37, who was released from prison in October, was arrested after two separate investigations into complaints against him, detectives Todd Crossett and Charles Dudek said.

Crossett said the first investigation began when a complaint was filed Feb. 19, alleging that Holmes sent indecent text messages to a minor. Earlier this week more information came in, claiming that Holmes was not living at the address he had filed as a registered sex offender.

Holmes was arrested at Royal Apartments in Le Roy.

He was charged with disseminating indecent material to a minor, failure to notify a change of address and endangering the welfare of a child.

Holmes on the sex offender registry lists 516 East Main St. in Batavia as his primary residence. He is a Level 3 offender, the most serious level, and is considered a “sexually violent offender.”

He was arraigned in City Court and committed to Genesee County Jail in lieu of $50,000 bail.

Le Roy Police Department assisted in the investigation.

Holmes was sentenced in 2000 to 10 to 11 years in prison. He served the complete term and was released Oct. 5.

Holmes was convicted of first-degree sexual abuse, attempted assault and criminal possession of stolen property after a Genesee County Court trial. He was convicted of sexually abusing a 22-year-old woman.

Source: thedailynewsonline

When many think of sex trafficking, they think of prostitutes in Southeast Asia, Nepal, Bangladesh or another faraway country – anywhere but here in the United States, and especially not of our own kids in our own communities.

But it is happening here.

About 100 from the community met for a discussion on the problem of sex trafficking of children in Snohomish County April 28 at Rosehill Community Center.

The League of Women Voters of Snohomish County sponsored the meeting, so that a panel of experts could discuss with the community the Everett-to-Tacoma prostitution circuit, law enforcement efforts and legal challenges, and what help these kids and teens need to recover as victims of sexual abuse.

“Sexual exploitation of children is a hideous problem – we all wish it didn’t happen but it does, and that’s a fact,” said the league’s Barbara Bush. “It’s happening internationally, it’s happening nationally, and it’s happening right here in Snohomish County.”

Child sex trafficking, aka domestic minor sex trafficking, is generally the sexual exploitation of 13- and 14-year-old girls – sometimes younger – who can’t legally consent to sex but are manipulated into having sex with adult men for another adult man’s profit.

Under federal law, the commercial sexual abuse of a minor is a Class B felony, punishable by a minimum of 27 months and up to 10 years in prison. The promoting of the commercial sexual abuse of a minor is a Class A felony, punishable by 7-10 years in prison.

That was not always the case, said Lisa Paul, deputy prosecuting attorney at the Dawson Place Child Advocacy Center.

In 2007, the law was changed from a Class C felony – the lowest of the felony offenses – and just 1-3 months in prison.

“Before the law changed, juvenile prostitution was considered less serious than theft of livestock,” she said. “So you could steal somebody’s cow, and it was considered more serious.”

Local law enforcement has seen prostitution in Snohomish County evolve in the last 5-7 years. Where there were once women in their 20s-40s “turning tricks” to support their drug addictions, there are now teenage girls working for their traffickers or “pimps.”

The scope of the problem is yet unknown. The pimps move their girls from Everett to Seattle to Tacoma, so there is a lot of overlapping of the sex-trafficking cases on record, said Dusty Olson, an advocate of Providence’s Intervention Center for Assault and Abuse.

She said the county had no way of tracking the movement of child victims until two years ago, and that it will be another year before it has any statistics.

“We’re talking about a lot of kids, but I can’t tell you what a lot is,” Olson said. “We don’t know yet.”

However, Olson said it is estimated that 300-500 kids a year are trafficked in Seattle. And with the overlap of victims, she said the numbers in Snohomish County couldn’t be too far off.

The FBI’s Pacific Northwest Innocence Lost Task Force and the Snohomish County Sexual Exploitation and Intervention Network are working to address the local sex-trafficking problem.

“First and foremost, our goal is to rescue them and get them in a safe house and get them out of that lifestyle and, secondly, go after that trafficker and seek a federal sentence,” said Everett Police Department Detective Tim Morgan, a member of the task force.

The challenge of solving child sex-trafficking cases in Snohomish County is that they are never reported. The pimp brainwashes the girls into thinking that law enforcement is the enemy.

If they do go to the police, it’s for domestic assault, and they won’t say the actual problem is prostitution.

Therefore, both the task force and the network are working to train themselves and the community to recognize the signs of children who are at-risk of becoming victims or already are victims of commercial sexual exploitation – and where to send them for help.

“I’ve seen victims with families of single moms, I’ve seen it with single dads, and I’ve seen it with middle class families that seem to have a normal life,” said Olson, co-founder of the network.

Risk factors include a history of sexual abuse, runaways, foster care, crime, poverty and a lack of education and job opportunities.

“People look at that and say, ‘That’s not our community’ or ‘That’s not my kid’ or ‘That’s not my neighborhood,’ but the other risk factors involved are pretty universal to kids,” Olson said.

Kids who go to school or other places by themselves, have access to a computer, want money and consumer goods, desire a romantic relationship, want more independence from their parents, test boundaries and take risks are also vulnerable to child sex trafficking.

The red flags include:

• A younger girl in a relationship with a much older boyfriend

• Money, cell phones, designer clothes, manicures, etc. without an explanation of how they were paid for.

• Change in appearance, including hair, clothing, nails – and sometimes even a changed name.

• Kids who are staying in hotels or traveling a lot without an explanation.

• Visible signs of abuse or specific tattoos.

“These are the things that need to be followed up on and need to be talked about,” Olson said. “Questions need to be asked.”

The task force and network are also working to adapt and coordinate the services available in the community to help the victims, who respond to sexual trauma similarly but not exactly like victims of sexual assault.

The children are difficult to work with because the trafficker has trained them to be difficult, to lie and to mistrust the police and service providers.

They go back and forth from feeling anxious and agitated to completely disconnected from the world.

There is also an incredibly strong psychological bond between the girl and the pimp that proves almost impossible to break.

“They have lost all sense of themselves, and so they completely identify with the pimp’s perspective and don’t know how to function without that individual,” Olson said.

“When we come and say we want you to make your own decisions and be empowered, they don’t know what to do with that. That is scary.”

Progress is slow for the task force and network, but it is still progress, Morgan said. He said they consider it a success if they are able to get a victim to stay in her designated safe house – away from the pimp – for more than a day.

“As far as longer successes, we haven’t gotten to that point,” he said. “We have to celebrate tiny successes or we won’t be doing this for very long.”

Source: mulkiteobeaconnews

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.

A boy in one of them is covered by a sheet: “His arms have been tied down and there is a rope across his back that is also tying him down” says an FBI complaint on filed in U.S. District Court in Newark. As a man has anal sex with him, “the boy appears to wincing and is gripping the object he is tied down to and is kicking his legs,” it says.

Stern, who teaches at the Kimberly Academy in town, “downloaded and shared videos and images of child pornography via peer-to-peer file sharing software – through which others had access to the material on a shared drive,” U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman said in a statement.

Stern is being held without bail following a court hearing in Newark today.

Fishman asked that anyone who has information related to the case contact the FBI’s Newark field office at (973) 792-3000.

Fishman credited special agents of the FBI’s Innocent Images Unit with making the case, which is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam N. Subervi of Fishman’s General Crimes Division in Newark.

Stern has been a bit of a traveler, according to blog posts in which he cites trips to Hong Kong, the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador.

This year, he wrote on one blog, he was teaching three classes of 7th grade science and one class of 7th grade algebra.

He also cited “a lot of trips in the beginning of the school year to help everyone get to know each other and work on some teambuilding activities.”

These included a camping trip to Round Valley State Park in Clinton Township and a 4th grade trip to a YMCA camp.

Source: cliffviewpilot

Surprise police have arrested a man on 18 counts of allegedly engaging in sexual misconduct and sexual abuse with two minors.

The incidents took place in 2009 while the two female victims, ages 12 and 13, were under the care of the suspect and his wife at the couple’s Surprise home, said Sgt. Mark Ortega.

The incident came to light March 1 after the girls notified their mother and grandmother, Ortega said. The two girls are in the custody of their biological mother in Texas.

After a lengthy investigation, the suspect was taken into custody by Surprise police. Edward Deluna, 30, was charged with eight counts of child sexual abuse and 10 counts of sexual conduct with a minor, according to Ortega. He was then booked into the Maricopa County Jail.

Source: yourwestvalley

A teenage quadriplegic, brain-injured and confined to a wheelchair, repeatedly molested by his own perverted caregiver.

The disgusting deed was caught on surveillance video, and police in two countries are now trying to catch the creep convicted of the crime – a former Calgarian believed to be hiding in Canada.

“He’s wanted for several counts of sexual misconduct with a minor,” said Deputy Jason Ogan of the Pima County, Arizona Sheriff’s Department.

George Ross Wilcox vanished before a Pima County Superior Court could sentence him for the crime after he was found guilty of four counts of sexual conduct with a minor under 15.

It was June 9, 2009, when Wilcox fled Arizona and a seemingly certain jail sentence after the court found him guilty – in part based on the video which documented the pedophile attacks on the child.

So keen are police to catch and jail 53-year-old Wilcox, who was born and raised in Calgary, that the case was given top billing on America’s Most Wanted, a website and TV show dedicated to catching fugitive criminals.

“Before Wilcox was sentenced, he took off. He is a Canadian citizen and police believe he may have fled the states – hiding out in Calgary or Vancouver, Canada,” reads the Most Wanted description.

From a family with nine brothers and sisters, Wilcox still has strong family connections to Calgary, including his mother, father and many of his siblings.

Other family has moved to B.C.’s coast, and the avid fisherman and computer consultant was allegedly spotted in Vancouver late last year.

Since then, Wilcox has vanished and police believe the six-foot-one, 180-pound father might have chosen his former home as a new place to hide.
“He is wanted here and I can confirm there is an extradition order,” said Calgary Police Insp. Darren Cave.

Pima County police, working with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, want Wilcox returned to Arizona, where sexual crimes against teens under the age of 15 carry a 27-year maximum sentence.

Police aren’t the only ones wanted Wilcox to face justice for molesting the quadriplegic boy, who suffers from a brain injury which leaves him severely disabled.

“That was one thing they said in court, that there was no lasting harm to the child because he’s very much unaware of what’s around him,” said a relative of Wilcox, reached in Alberta.

“Not that it changes anything (Wilcox) did to him.”
A close relative of Wilcox, she agreed to speak with QMI Agency on condition of anonymity – she is among a group of family members secretly working with police to turn the fugitive in.
The whole case, she says, has divided the family into those who want George Ross Wilcox to face justice in Arizona, and those who are struggling to accept that he’s a pedophile, despite the overwhelming evidence.
“It was so out of the blue – at first we were all completely shocked that the allegation had even been made,” she said.
“Never in a million years would we have thought this possible – he’s always been around children in the family. Never would I have imagined that this would be the case.”
She describes her family as stable and normal, without any of the typical triggers that might be found in the background of a future child molester.
“I was so floored when I found out, and we all were – it was devastating to the whole family,” she said.
“There are still those in the family that don’t believe it.”
She describes Wilcox as very clever and cunning, though she also slams the Arizona court for failing to keep him in custody before sentencing.
“The judge asked him if he had a passport, but then it wasn’t taken away,” she said. “It’s almost like they were telling him to go.”
With nearly two years having passed since Wilcox fled Arizona, she says the family members who want him caught continue to watch for him while updating police.
She says there’s little anyone in the family can do to convince him to surrender – even a public plea would just fall on deaf ears.
“I don’t think there’s anything I can say to him now that will make a difference.”

Source: TORONTOSUN