Idaho’s child pornography problem: Tens of thousands of abusive images, hundreds of cases
Editor’s note: This story contains graphic content that may be upsetting to some readers.
The level of violence is horrific, and the terror inflicted on the children is jarring.
Some of the victims are younger than 2.
Adults are seen victimizing and torturing children. The language used to describe the children is dehumanizing. They cry out or are manipulated into performing sexual acts that a person their age should never be subjected to.
These are the types of videos and images exchanged in sexually exploitative material, otherwise called child pornography, and Idaho law enforcement sees it daily. The 18 investigators at the Idaho Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children Unit sift through thousands of the images, and their work is only increasing.
Last year alone, the ICAC unit received 732 cybertips that had Idaho connections. When including other state police agencies’ requests for help, the unit handled roughly 1,000 cases, ICAC Commander Chris McCormick said.
McCormick described many of the images as “violent tortures” with “screaming and yelling,” sometimes involving toddlers.
ICAC has seen images “up to the murder of a child for sexual gratification,” he said. “What these 18 officers look at on a daily basis is atrocious. I want the public to understand that this isn’t a victimless crime.”
McCormick said his unit’s goal is to identify victims, prosecute abusers and shut it all down. The process can be painful, and despite the work of law enforcement, the problem is getting worse. In 2018, ICAC opened 570 cases — a 121 percent increase from the 258 cases it opened in 2017.
Numbers show problem in Idaho
The Idaho Statesman reviewed new and old cases involving suspects arrested for possessing child pornography in the state. Some of the suspects were first-time offenders, beloved and respected in the community. Others were registered sex offenders who had served time in prison. Some suspects were teenagers, others elderly men.
A review of Idaho Supreme Court data shows that in fiscal year 2019, 434 charges involving the possession of sexually abusive images showing children were filed across Idaho, ranging from the state’s most populous counties to its most rural ones. The criminal charge is called sexual exploitation of a minor, under Idaho Code 18-1507.
From fiscal years 2015 to 2019, a combined 1,704 charges related to child exploitation were filed across Idaho, with tens of thousands of images involved. That’s the number of charges filed, not the number of suspects arrested. Some suspects were charged with more than one count.
Those charges were spread across 31 of Idaho’s 44 counties, and they do not include Idaho suspects charged in federal court.
In 2019, the ICAC unit opened 928 new cases in Idaho stemming from cybertips and other sources. That’s a 63% increase from 2018.
Who are the victims?
Some of the children seen in online child pornography might be from another country, but law enforcement says many of them are close to home.
“There’s a lot here in the Valley,” McCormick said. “In Idaho and regionally.”
For instance, a Caldwell man, Jason T. Simon, drew national attention in 2016 after an Amber Alert was issued for three children believed to be in his custody. When he was arrested, he was found to be in possession of child pornography, including sexually abusive videos he had taken of one of the children. In 2017, a Canyon County judge sentenced him to 40 years in prison.
Tracking the number of potential victims can be especially time-consuming for police.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) works with ICAC to help identify the children. The center’s Child Victim Identification Program has reviewed more than 299 million images and videos, and more than 17,900 children have been identified.
“We need one image and I can put a person in prison,” McCormick said about convicting suspects. “But I can’t in good faith not go through all the images, because we may find a new victim, which happens regularly.”
McCormick acknowledges that ICAC’s investigators sustain some trauma by doing this work, but the victims are what motivates him to continue.
“That kid that hasn’t been saved yet” is what McCormick says keeps him at ICAC. “The stuff that we see … it floors me that people could get pleasure in a child’s pain. That child is so innocent. So helpless. And that’s what we’re here for.”
Not all children who fall victim are necessarily held against their will or even being held at all, but many are being blackmailed.
NCMEC published a national study on the subject of “sextortion,” in which children are pressured into providing sexual images to someone. The offender might befriend and then manipulate a child into providing the images, and then blackmail them into more.
NCMEC officials explain that an offender threatens to post explicit content of the child on the same social networking sites that their family and friends use, unless the child produces additional sexually explicit content.
McCormick also acknowledges that victims of the exploitative material struggle because once an image is on the internet, it’s very hard to get it back. They are revictimized every time someone gets arrested for viewing the image of their abuse.
“Look at it from their perspective,” he said. “Anything you put on the internet, whether it’s a smiling face with you and your grandma, or something bad, that doesn’t ever go away.”
According to NCMEC research: “Many survivors say, because they have no control over the spread of the abusive imagery online, they live in fear. They don’t know who’s seen their images or videos online, so they constantly worry about being recognized in public.”
Faces of Hope crisis counselor Rachael Bazzett said sex abuse and the sexual exploitation of children is especially challenging because the victims might know their abuser and have an attachment to them.
“I think some additional challenges that we have with kids are that as they grow older, their perspective on what happened might change,” Bazzett explained. “If they are revisiting that a year later or five years later, their perspective might be very different.”
And she said the thought of feeling revictimized doesn’t go away.
“With things being put online, there is a difference in how do we mitigate those triggers and put in safeguards against those triggers,” Bazzett said. “When things get placed on the internet, we don’t really know what happens to them, or how long they are available, or if they are going to show up some point into the future.”
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREHow we did this story
The Idaho Statesman reviewed data collected by the Idaho Supreme Court to look at the rate of child exploitation charges filed in the last five years. We broke the information down by county.
We looked through the court files of people who had been previously convicted of child exploitation and people recently charged with child exploitation.
The story is intended to help readers understand the scope of the problem in Idaho.
Read more by clicking the arrow in the upper right.
Data collection
The Idaho Statesman collected data tracked by the Idaho Supreme Court, searching for the number of charges filed for sexual exploitation of a minor, under Idaho Code 18-1507, in every county.
We collected data from fiscal years 2015 to 2019 and cross-referenced it with specific cases.
Case review
The Idaho Statesman reviewed multiple cases involving suspects charged with sexual exploitation of a minor in Idaho.
The information in the case files detailed the graphic, sometimes violent and dehumanizing nature, of some of the images collected by the suspects in the cases.
We interviewed experts
We interviewed law enforcement and victim advocates to look at the scope of the problem and the toll the crime takes on victims.
The abuse is unique in that images on the internet are difficult to take down, according to police. Victims can be re-victimized every time someone new gets arrested for viewing the image of their abuse.
Who are the predators?
The people who exploit and harm children run the gamut. They are teachers and priests, postal carriers and parents, and they might not seem alarming.
Almost all of them are men, but there is no other demographic for the adults who seek and watch images of child sexual abuse.
Media attention in recent years has focused on people who were previously beloved in their community.
That includes former Boise priest W. “Tom” Faucher, who was sentenced in 2018 to 25 years in prison for possession of child pornography. Faucher had online discussions about wanting to rape and murder children. The Catholic Church laicized Faucher after his sentencing, and he remains in prison.
Martin “Marty” Peterson, the former Idaho state budget director, pleaded guilty in January to two counts of child pornography possession. The images he was caught with included children as young as 3. Peterson was a regular face in the Idaho Statehouse, a valued political source and a former Idaho Statesman editorial board member.
An Idaho Falls U.S. Postal Service worker and Air Force veteran of 19 years, Stanley Gallegos, was sentenced last year to 11 years in federal prison at age 62 after he was found with more than 62,000 images and videos of child pornography. In a memorandum written by his defense attorney, Gallegos is described as having “a distinguished career in public service.”
Other suspects are teenagers, facing their first criminal offense.
Law enforcement arrested 18-year-old Colton Turner in November on multiple counts of suspected child pornography. Court documents outline how Turner, of Middleton, is believed to have had online conversations about kidnapping and sexually abusing children.
In those conversations, he allegedly stated that his favorite age range was “0-9” and asked other online users to “come rape a girl with me,” according to a deputy’s probable cause affidavit. He is accused of making a sexually abusive video of an 8-year-old child while on a trip to Oregon. Turner has since been charged federally for suspected possession, distribution and transportation of child pornography. He awaits trial.
Other people apprehended by ICAC are known sex offenders. In 2018, police arrested Jeffrey Schreck for child pornography possession in Boise. He had been a registered sex offender since his 1987 conviction in Colorado.
Court documents outline that Schreck was looking at abusive images of children as young as 8 being violated. He pleaded guilty to four charges and is serving a 35-year prison sentence.
Can the problem be curbed?
While law enforcement continues to combat the material that is already on the internet, spread globally, educating children about online safety is one way to halt exploitation, authorities say.
Social media, video games and a variety of cellphone apps allow children to communicate openly with strangers.
“Talk with your child and let them know that the person they’re talking to might not be who they say they are,” McCormick said. “(A stranger might) say they’re a 13-year-old boy down the street, but it’s probably a 40-year-old man in a basement somewhere.”
Just this month, a 54-year-old Ammon man, Timothy Stillman, was arrested in Bonneville County, and in a copy of the probable cause affidavit obtained by the Statesman, Stillman reportedly admitted to making a Facebook account for the purpose of corresponding with young girls.
Stillman allegedly told a detective that he had a fake profile picture and would tell girls that he was 19 when he talked to them. He denied ever meeting any of the girls in person.
Detectives said they arrested Stillman after they found him in possession of more than 4,000 images of believed child pornography, with victims ranging in age from 3 to 18, according to the affidavit. Stillman awaits trial on suspicion of sexual exploitation charges.
McCormick advised parents to look through their child’s phone, stressing that it is not an invasion of their privacy, but a way to keep them safe. He offered the example of children taking their cellphones with them to bed.
“(A) child will be corresponding with someone at 2 a.m.,” McCormick said. “Would you let a boy in your daughter’s bedroom at 2 a.m.? It’s the same thing.”
Idaho’s ICAC Unit will also provide presentations on digital safety, upon request, for educational purposes.
Idaho Statesman reporter Ximena Bustillo contributed to this report.
Need to report abuse or seek help?
To report suspected sexual exploitation of a child, visit icacidaho.org or report.cybertip.org or call 1-800-843-5678.
To seek help educating children about online safety and personal boundaries, visit kidsmartz.org or request a presentation from ICAC at icacidaho.org/request-a-presentation.
The Faces of Hope Victim Center is available for victims in need of emergency services at 417 S. 6th St. in Boise. Victims should call 911 in emergencies or call 208-577-4400 on weekdays during business hours. Faces of Hope provides free medical care and forensic examinations for victims, as well as assistance with filing police reports and mental health care.
Survivors who may need help are also encouraged to contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.
This story was originally published March 1, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
