GBI says arrests on the rise for crimes against children

ALBANY — The number of arrests resulting from investigations conducted by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit (CEACC) and the Georgia Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force has steadily risen over the past three years, according to GBI officials.

“These increased arrests illustrate the importance of the task force working together and show that individuals attempting to exploit children will not be tolerated,” said Debbie Garner the GBI Special Agent in charge of the CEACC unit.

According to reports, arrests have increased significantly over the last several years — 189 in 2014, 201 in 2015, 275 in 2016 — and are the direct result of the added number of active new affiliates who partner with the GBI to conduct more proactive investigations.

The increased proactive efforts produce tangible results, Garner said.

“The three main missions of the CEACC unit is to work child exploitation cases (mainly child pornography cases), child sex trafficking cases and we do all the computer forensics for the state of Georgia,” she said. “The forensics we provide is not just for the GBI, but also for other law enforcement agencies if that service is needed, and not only for child exploitation cases but all types of crime.”

The Georgia ICAC Task Force comprises more than 200 local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, other related criminal justice agencies and prosecutors’ offices. Created by the U.S. Department of Justice and managed by the GBI, the mission of the ICAC Task Force is to assist state and local law enforcement agencies in developing an effective response to cyber-enticement and child pornography cases, including support through forensic and investigative components, training and technical assistance, victim services, prevention and community education.

“As sort of a fourth mission,” said Garner, “we also do a lot of education, internet safety education and a lot of presentations at schools, churches and Scout groups, things like that.”

The ICAC program was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the internet, the proliferation of child pornography and the heightened online activity by predators searching for unsupervised contact with underage victims, according to Garner.

“The task force in Georgia was started in 2003,” she said.

The Georgia ICAC Task Force received almost 3,000 tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 2015 and worked 3,872 investigations that year related to exploited children.

“There are several ways in which we get cases and open investigations, but the main way that we receive information is from NCMEC,” Garner said. “They send us thousands of tips per year from a variety of different sources. Unfortunately, many of these tips do not result in arrests because we can’t make a case. If we can’t prove that a child is involved, there is nothing we can do.

“For example, if it is a case that we think is child pornography and it is an up-close picture where we can’t tell if it is a child or an adult, we can’t make a case. There are also cases involving not pornography, but what is considered child erotica (non-nude), which is not illegal in Georgia. In these instances, we cannot make a case either. In other cases, we can’t tell where it is or who is involved, etc. For all of these reasons, out of the 3,872 cases that were investigated in 2015, only 201 arrests were made.”

ICAC also works with local law enforcement agencies who can join the task force and receive training for child exploitation cases: both reactive cases, in which a tip has been received and an investigation is launched, and proactive cases, such as undercover internet investigations of chat lines, websites and other means through which predators target minors.

According to Garner, child predators do not fit any particular profile, which makes them harder to target.

“There is not a profile at all,” the special agent said. “The arrests that we have made have been people of all ages, all walks of life, demographics, careers, socio-economic status, race, etc. All across the board.”

For anyone wishing to report an instance of child exploitation, officials have created a cyber tip-line, which is a national reporting mechanism for cases of child sexual exploitation including child pornography, online enticement of children for sex acts, molestation of children, sex tourism of children, child victims of prostitution and unsolicited obscene material sent to a child. Reports may be made 24 hours per day, seven days per week online at www.cybertipline.com or by calling 1-800-843-5678.