CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — There’s an epidemic of child pornography and exploitation in the United States, the government says, and don’t think you’re immune if you’re stationed overseas.
In recent months, several servicemembers on Okinawa have been court-martialed on charges of downloading child pornography on the Internet.
In one case, an Air Force technical sergeant on Kadena Air Base was found guilty of using his home computer to solicit sex from a 13-year-old girl who also lived on base. In April he was sentenced to 5 years in prison and a bad-conduct discharge for child solicitation and downloading child porn.
Child pornography, the images of people younger than 16 engaged in sex, is illegal “anywhere at any time,” said Lt. Col. Janice Pegram, commander of the Air Force Office of Special Investigation’s Detachment 624.
In the past year, Pegram said, there have been five cases of child pornography on Kadena and other investigations are ongoing. Most of the cases involve downloading the pictures from the Internet, she said. A few involved sharing child porn with other Internet users.
“Only one was a predator,” someone who tries to solicit sex from a minor directly, Pegram said.
During the investigations, all computer equipment seized is sent to the Defense Computer Forensics Laboratory in Virginia, part of the Defense Cyber Crime Center. Earlier this year, center director Steven Shirley said child porn made up 50 percent of the cases the center handled.
Pegram emphasized there is nothing harmless about downloading and viewing child porn.
“The children depicted have all been abused,” she said. “They have all been exploited and victimized.”
People found guilty of downloading and possessing child porn face lengthy prison sentences and bad-conduct or dishonorable discharges, and they also must register as sex offenders.
Pegram said there is not a greater incidence of child pornography in the military than among civilians.
“We’re just a smaller version of what exists on the outside,” she said, adding that dependents of military members and civilian workers can be charged and tried in a stateside federal court.
Most of the child porn cases on Okinawa Marine bases have involved individuals being turned in by others who came across the material on the suspect’s personal computer, said Randy Dulay, a special agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
“We’ve had cases where the material was discovered by a family member or a friend who had been looking for something else on the computer and this stuff turned up,” Dulay said. He said none of the three cases in the past year or so investigated by NCIS involved a predator.
“Most of the time they were just visiting Web sites and downloading pictures,” he said. In the most recent case, a Navy hospitalman at the U.S. Naval Hospital on Camp Lester was handed a dishonorable discharge and sentenced to 30 months in prison for downloading and possessing child porn.
“It’s a violation of a federal statute,” Dulay said. “You could get up to five years in prison for just one picture.”
He said most of the suspects at first claim they regularly viewed legal adult porn and downloaded the child porn by accident. But an examination of their hard drives, the search terms they used and the Internet cache history usually shows they were seeking child porn.
Supervisory Special Agent Joe Kennedy, also with the Okinawa NCIS office, said he’s encouraged by people stepping forward to report child porn.
“Our cases were initiated by our Marines coming forward and doing what’s right,” he said. “They knew this was wrong and that it had to be reported.”
Recently, all of the supervisors in the Okinawa NCIS office went to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for a three-day seminar on child porn.
In April, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales visited the headquarters of the center in Alexandria, Va., and spoke about child pornography on the Internet. He praised the center’s new CyberTipline (www.missingkids.com/cybertip) and said he supported a bill that would strengthen criminal penalties for Internet service providers who fail to report child pornography on their systems.
Gonzales said child porn collectors evolve into producers, “driving them to molest even more children and to make new and increasingly vulgar material.”
Most troubling, he said, new forms of abuse have taken root on the Web. One form is molestation on demand, where pedophiles molest children while others watch the act live through streaming video.
In May, the Department of Justice launched Project Safe Childhood, which will focus on the online exploitation and victimization of children.
Parents urged to be proactive
CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — The best way to protect children from online predators is to know what they are doing when they log on to the Internet, military investigators say.
“It’s dangerous for kids to know more about computers than their parents,” said Lt. Col. Janice Pegram, commander of Detachment 624 of the Air Force Office of Special Investigation on Kadena Air Base, Okinawa. “Never allow them to download anything from an unknown source, and have them tell you if they get any unsolicited instant messages.
“As parents, we try to give our children some liberty and support their privacy,” she said. “But some things (like child porn) they have to be aware of. There are pedophiles and predators out there and they have a lot of tricks.”
Some Web services, such as AOL, have special blocks on teen chat rooms, Pegram said. And parents can get their own accounts on other Web services that offer homepage and blog sites, such as the popular MySpace.com, so they can sign on and examine the content of the sites their children visit.
Special Agent Randy Dulay of the Okinawa branch of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service said parents should never allow a child to have a computer in his or her bedroom.
“Put the computers in a general area of the house, the living room or dining room, someplace where they can be monitored,” he said. “Also, give them set hours for using the computers and have them ask you for permission before they log on.”
He also suggests parents learn how to view the history section of the computer’s Web browser to see what Web sites have been visited.
To report an incidence of child pornography or an online predator, servicemembers should call their base criminal investigations office.
Parents also can get more information from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Web site at www.missingkids.com.
— David Allen
