Porn | Dealing With Child Porn

COURTS, CRIME

Dealing with Child Porn
Prosecutors talk about the evidence

By Richard Connelly

Prosecuting those who produce or enjoy child pornography is a vitally important yet seemingly horrible job - to do it, you must face looking at the evidence.

In some cases it's "easy" - some child-porn consumers are like baseball-card collectors and aim to get every video or photo in, say, what law-enforcement officials have labeled the "Vicky" series. So the material is familiar after a while.

But then you can stumble on something new, and maybe a detail hits you and you are all of a sudden stunned and revolted as if it's the first time seeing horrific images of a 14-month-old girl getting raped or a terrified toddler in a bondage scene.

How do you deal with that? We talked to Sherri Zack and Robert Stabe , two veteran federal prosecutors at the Houston division of the U.S. Attorney's Office , where at any given time there may be 30 or so active cases under indictment. (We edited and condensed the interview.)

Hair Balls: How do you deal with having to look at that evidence?

SZ: It's always difficult, and it doesn't matter how many times you've seen it, it's difficult every time. I think my reaction is the same as anyone else who had to see something that horrific; I try to limit how much I have to look. I limit to look at only what I absolutely have to.

RB: I kind of look to see what type of images in general there are - are there a lot of bondage images, or are there a lot of really small toddlers and elementary-school-age kids as opposed to preteen-type age, just get an idea of that. But we just look at what we need to look at.

HB: The thing to me would be seeing some of these kids' eyes - the idea of it, that would just freak me out. Are there things that just get to you every so often?

RB: I can look at things and it gets put away in a spot - I still recall images and describe to you what I've seen, but I don't talk about it at home. Sometimes I come across a girl that was, say, particularly cute that I remember and was just thinking, "Wow." I'm still - I don't guess surprised - but it's more surprising when I see images I haven't seen before. When I come across one I haven't seen, it's more surprising or disturbing.

SZ: Some, like he said - a particularly cute child or there could just be something that sticks with you. Some are more haunting than others. You mentioned "eyes." I feel the way Bob does, you leave it here [at work] as best you can. It's not that you flip a switch, but it's not a pleasant topic to talk about; you're not going to go home and share that with a spouse.

HB: If you're at a cocktail party and someone asks what you do, do you just say "prosecutor"? I can't imagine something stopping conversation more than child pornography.

SZ: If people ask what kind of cases you do, I certainly don't shy away from saying, "I prosecute child-exploitation cases." It's a good opportunity to educate people, especially people with children. How to keep your computer safe, what to look for. I certainly don't talk about the graphic images I've seen, but I do talk about how they can protect their kids.

(Increasingly, the content of child porn users' computers includes stolen cell-phone shots that some young girl or boy has sent to a friend.)

RB: We certainly see in the child-porn collections images that are self-taken, with camera phones and videos from Web cameras where there are girls and boys performing sex acts on a Webcam. And however that first started, that is now circulating on the Internet and is out there and being traded and downloaded by adults that are looking for child pornography.

SZ: We tell kids, unless it's a picture you wouldn't mind sending to your grandmother, don't post it. You may think it's between you and your boyfriend or the two of you; it's not. You have no control over it once it leaves you, you have completely lost control over it forever and you can't get it back. I think that's the hardest thing to impress upon children.

HB: Anything else about the job you'd like to get across to people?

SZ: It's incredibly rewarding. Knowing that they're not producing or possessing these images which are essentially crime-scene photos - because that's what they are; every one of those pictures is a crime-scene photo. It's a photo of a child being raped, molested, abused, manipulated - that they can't do that anymore. Because every time that's viewed, that child is re-victimized. I think we're doing something incredibly valuable and necessary and I don't see anything more rewarding than protecting children.
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