"It's mind-blowing," Deputy District Attorney Christopher Gallo with the Special Victims' Unit (SVU) in the 18th Judicial District said. "It's everywhere. The detectives could work all day, every day, and still not run out of work to do."

Douglas County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) and the SVU expect to arrest twice as many people this year than last year who have distributed or downloaded images and videos of children as young as infants being tortured, degraded and raped.

"This is scary, scary stuff," Lt. Kevin Duffy, who oversees the ICAC unit, said. "When law enforcement officers who are used to dealing with this type of stuff every day are cringing at some of the things they're seeing and some of the things they're having to deal with, people need to take notice."

The task force is now writing up to five search warrants a week. So far this year, it's made five felony arrests. In 2010, the unit arrested 14 suspects for possessing child porn, including 71-year-old Ronald Barrett of Sedalia.

"I was bored to death," Barrett told 9Wants to Know Investigative Reporter Deborah Sherman. "Just sitting there, it was so easy to just download them and not think. It was very light-hearted and easy."

Court documents say deputies found 3,556 images of child pornography on Barrett's computer, ranging from teenagers to infants.

Barrett, who is a grandfather of seven, said the pictures remind him of his youth.

"It reminds me of when I was a kid and we played doctor. They were nice, innocent happy days. They were exploratory fun things for a little kid," Barrett said.

The unit began catching more suspects like Barrett last summer when it started using peer-to-peer file-sharing networks that work like Napster. The software opens windows into other people's computers and allows you to view and take what's there.

"It's about as easy as downloading music from the Internet," Gallo said. "It can be shared again and again and again. So it's a continuum of that child being perpetrated on."

The ICAC team is made up of people like Gallo and Det. Shawn Cronce of the Douglas County Sheriffs Department.

Cronce and Gallo volunteered for the job and plan to stick with it, despite the hundreds of thousands of images they have to look at to find the suspects and find the children.

"We see bad things and we go into that with our eyes open. We know that on the other side of that we might be helping a child," Gallo said

Their co-workers say they do the job of angels.

"You see dedicated detectives like Detective Cronce who are out there every day. They're out there in places that the rest of us don't want to be," Detective Sgt. Bill Dehart, who heads the ICAC unit in Colorado Springs, said.

Pictures of angels decorate Cronce's office next to a poem she wrote titled, "I watch."

"These kids are being victimized by being watched. But the only we can help them is by watching," Cronce said. "I'll keep watching. I'll keep watching for somebody to make a mistake. I'll keep watching for a clue. I'll keep watching."

While Cronce thinks children are being abused and photographed in Colorado, she says the manufacturers are harder to track down than the people looking at the pictures. Even looking at one image is a felony.

"Every time we execute a warrant and take these images off the street, that's a good day for us because that's one less person who's sending these images out," Cronce said.

Barrett and many other suspects don't think they're hurting anyone by looking at pictures.

"I didn't hurt any kids. They don't know I exist. I don't know they exist, except for that JPEG image," Barrett said. "I don't consider myself a criminal at all."

The task force says every time the picture is viewed, the child is re-victimized.

"It's crushing to them that the possibility exists that someone they don't know is looking at them in an awful situation. It's crushing," Gallo said.

"They are victims for life," Cronce said.

The mother of then 13-year-old Alicia Kozakiewicz, who was kidnapped, caged, beaten, tortured and then photographed, says looking at the pictures hurts her daughter today.

"What these are, are crime scene photos and videos of children being raped, tortured and degraded. They are crime scene photos," Kozakiewicz said. "If you look at degrading pictures of children, you want to degrade them. I believe it leads to children being harmed physically and harmed mentally."

Barrett was charged with possessing and distributing child pornography. He, like most other first offenders, will probably get probation. Cronce says it's a rare day when she sees a first offender get actual jail time. She has seen suspects re-offend twice before they go to prison.

"I would be lying if I said it doesn't affect all of us who do this that there's such a minimal punishment for such a huge, horrific offense. But we can only do what we do. We can only keep fighting the fight," Cronce said.

While her prosecuting partner agrees that more should get jail time, he says the detective's work alone arresting suspects could fill prisons.

"Sometimes the right thing is probation for them, the special probation that all sex offenders go on. And sometimes it's go to prison for life," Gallo said. "If they can be treated, if they can be contained, if they can be safe, then they go on probation and the can contribute to the community."

The Colorado ICAC was formed in 1997. There are now 56 participating agencies statewide and 61 across the country. All of them have the single goal to find the children in the videos and pictures and rescue them.

There are more children unidentified than there are children identified and who have to be saved," Cronce said. "Our work is nowhere near done."

 

If you have any news tips or story ideas, please e-mail Investigative Reporter Deborah Sherman at Deborah.Sherman@9NEWS.com.

 

(KUSA-TV © 2011 Multimedia Holdings Corporation)