The Edmonton Sunby Keith Leslie, The Canadian Press
TORONTO — Police battling the scourge of child pornography are busting more and more people for trading in the horrific images and while there are tens of thousands of known suspects, Canadian authorities lament they don’t have the time or resources to investigate them all.
While authorities say tough laws are already in place to deal with child pornographers, rapidly evolving technologies and a lack of consensus among experts about why people abuse children makes it nearly impossible to “arrest our way out of this.”
“I’m not sure what the answer is,” conceded Paul Gillespie, former head of Toronto police’s groundbreaking child exploitation unit.
“But I think we need to do research with regards to their DNA to potentially, some day, identify that one gene or that one thing that causes these very anti-social impulses that they can’t control.”
Officials estimate there are at least 65,000 people in Canada — and up to 600,000 in the United States — trading pictures and videos of the sexual abuse of children.
“There’s just not enough manpower to go and identify and arrest these 65,000 individuals,” said Gillespie, now president and CEO of the Kids’ Internet Safety Alliance.
“That’s where it gets scary and people sort of change the channel, because they don’t want to hear that the police know there’s 65,000 suspects they’re never going to get to.”
The magnitude of the problem is a “significant challenge for law enforcement, said Staff Sgt. Rick Greenwood, who provides support and strategic planning for the RCMP’s National Child Exploitation Coordination Centre.
“It’s not just here in Canada,” he warned. “It’s global.”
The Ontario Provincial Police special child pornography unit always has a backlog of cases.
“The OPP is arresting about 75 of these offenders a year, when we know there are tens of thousands of them,” said Insp. Andy Stewart.
“We’re never going to be in a position to arrest our way out of this.”
Stewart called the 65,000 a “very conservative” estimate for the number of Canadians collecting, trading
and selling child pornography.
The provincial force is trying to identify criteria that they can use to properly triage child pornography cases to make sure they’re going after the ones who pose the biggest threat to children, he added.
“You can imagine if we’re only arresting a very small number of the people that are committing these offences, the chances of somebody that’s a very dangerous predator slipping through our fingers is pretty high,” Stewart said.
Gillespie said when he was in charge of the Toronto unit, they had 40 arrests and about 800 open files.
“They’re very onerous investigations, and thus we just couldn’t get to enough of the criminals,” he said.
The RCMP said police are getting more effective tools to track online predators, but will need extra resources to keep pace with “technically savvy” offenders who spend up to 20 hours a day at their computer.
“We’re no longer fumbling in the dark. Our ability to protect people is increasing all the time,” said Greenwood.
“However, the technology is a challenge, as is identifying the people and having the resources to make those arrests and prosecutions.”
Police estimate child pornography is a $2- to $3-billion industry, with over 20,000 new images posted on the Internet every week.
The ease with which digital photographs and videos can be shared online has meant police are discovering huge collections of child pornography when they make arrests.
“Years ago a large seizure might be 1,500 to 2,000 images, but with the electronic sharing of images,” Stewart said. “The average is now 100,000 images, and we’ve had seizures with well over 1,000,000 images and 1,200 videos.”
An investigating officer has to document each of those disturbing images. The detectives do it knowing that each picture could help them identify, locate and rescue a child who is being sexually abused, Stewart said.
The Canadian Centre for Child Protection, a charitable organization set up by Cybertip.ca in 2002 as a tipline for reporting online sexual exploitation of kids, processes over 600 reports from the public every month.
Child pornography is sexual abuse and it’s not a new phenomenon, said Cybertip.ca director Signy Arnason, who believes the Internet has “normalized” the behaviour of people who collect these images and made it easier for them to seek each other out.
“They tell themselves that this isn’t so weird, what I’m doing isn’t so abnormal, because other people find children sexually appealing,” Arnason said.
“The Internet has just connected these individuals. It hasn’t created them.”
Parents have to be even more vigilant about staying on top of their kids’ online activities, and keeping the computer in the family room just isn’t enough any more, said Greenwood, who recommends parents check out Cybertip.ca for advice.
“Even if you think you do know, the reality is parents are not as wired as children and they’re not aware what children are accessing, where they’re going on the Internet,” he said.
Even if victims of child pornography get counselling and manage to overcome the abuse they’ve suffered, the Internet means they can never escape the images of their assaults or truly put the horrible experience behind them.
“It starts this life-long process of hurt and pain and lack of trust, and it destroys human beings,” said Gillespie.
“I’ve been contacted by victims asking if they should tell their boyfriend their pictures are out there ” `When I get married, do I have to tell my husband?’ ”
Sentences for possessing and manufacturing child pornography vary widely, but rarely is maximum term of 10 years ever handed out in Canada unless there are additional charges such as sexual assault.
“There was no violence, such as gagging, threatening or hitting the child,” Quebec Appeal Court Judge Lise Cote ruled in 2006 as she reduced a prison sentence for a father of four who sexually assaulted his two-year-old daughter, and posted the photos on the Internet, from 15 years to nine.
“It’s more of a morals type of issue than a sexual one,” Otto Nupponen of the Immigration and Refugee Board said last month as he allowed a Norwegian man caught with videos of child pornography in Winnipeg to remain free before being deported.
In the U.S., the Supreme Court last year let stand a 200-year prison term for an Arizona teacher who had been convicted of possessing 20 images of child pornography. Canada already has good laws to deal with child pornography, said Arnason, who added sentencing in this country would get tougher as people become more aware of the problem and its impact on society.
“As years move on and more adults have a higher level of (online) exposure, there will be a different level of understanding and hopefully applying the laws in a different way,” she said.