Workshop teaches how to prevent, investigate online crimes against children

More than 70 police, educators, prosecutors and representatives from child advocate agencies and victim service providers attended a workshop Monday to learn how to prevent and investigate online crimes against children.

The workshop at the Osage Community Centre in Cape Girardeau was part of a new U.S. Department of Justice initiative introduced in October called Project Safe Childhood. The project is designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse by creating strong information-sharing partnerships. Those are partnerships between law enforcement agencies and community organizations, including children's advocates, victim service providers, educators, and not-for-profit and social service agencies, said Abbie Crites-Leoni, an assistant U.S. Attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice's Eastern District of Missouri.

Linking these agencies at local, state and federal levels will target online child predators and increase awareness of online exploitation of children, said Crites-Leoni, who points out that only about 10 percent of unwanted online solicitations are reported.

People from Cape Girardeau, Scott and Dunklin counties attended the daylong workshop. Other workshops in the Eastern District have been held in Rolla, Kirkland and St. Louis.

600 area victims

Federal prosecutors discussed legal issues surrounding the search and seizure of electronic evidence, undercover operations, interviewing child predators and federal statutes regarding child exploitation.

The discussion focused on the types of questions police should ask when investigating a report of online child abuse and when questioning suspects, said Glendale police Lt. Joe Laramie, director of the Missouri Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. There was also discussion of how children are at risk by online predators and the ease in which they are targeted.

Tammy Gwaltney, executive director of Southeast Missourian Network Against Sexual Violence, attended the workshop.

"This is so relevant after what just happened," Gwaltney said, referring to Ben Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck, two Missouri boys allegedly abducted by a Kirkwood man and found alive by police earlier this month.

Each year the SEMO-NASV helps about 600 Southeast Missouri children who are victims of sexual crimes. In the past year, Gwaltney said, six children in the region were the victims of some type of online exploitation.

Cape Girardeau police Detective Hank Voelker attended the workshop hoping to learn different ways to approach child predators during an investigation and ways to sharpen his investigative skills in these cases. He said the crime is difficult to investigate because children don't typically tell their parents if they've encountered an abusive situation online.

"I don't think it's rampant in Cape Girardeau," he said of online child predators. "But we're discovering it just like everyone else is."

The workshop was hosted by the U.S. Attorney's Offices for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri, the Missouri Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, the Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, the Cape Girardeau Police Department and Southeast Missouri State University.

Federal prosecutors Catherine Hanaway and Bradley J. Schlozman introduced local prosecutors and law enforcement officers to Missouri's Project Safe Childhood in October. Hanaway is the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, and Schlozman is the U.S. attorney for the Western District.

Hanaway has said the FBI is about to begin an undercover operation in Missouri in hopes of tracking down online predators who share child pornography on peer-to-peer Web sites such as Kazaa or Limewire.

"We want these predators to know we are looking for them, we're going to find them and we will prosecute them to the full extent," she said.

Southeast Missourian staff writers contributed to this report.

carel@semissourian.com

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