In 2017, Google detected photos on one of its platforms deemed to be child pornography. As required by federal law, the technology giant reported the photos to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which investigated further.
Investigators traced the images to a man in North Georgia and alerted the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes unit.
Agents found the home and recognized a rug from the background of some of the photos. The man who’d uploaded the images was sentenced to 25 years in prison followed by 15 on probation, during which he will be included on the sex offender registry.
Cases like that “are what keep us going each day,” Assistant Special Agent Lindsay Marchant said. “A lot of people hear about what we do, or all you say is, ‘child pornography,’ and people just don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
Credit: GBI
Credit: GBI
“That’s a tremendous unit,” GBI Director Vic Reynolds said. “They do some unbelievable work and it never, ever stops. It’s sad, but it’s true.”
In 2020, the unit received more than 11,000 tips, a record likely to be outstripped once again. This year, the GBI expects to receive more than 15,000 cyber tips, agency spokeswoman Natalie Ammons said.
Despite the horrors they see day in and day out, the agents of the CEACC unit come across as warm, open, candid and friendly. Most of them are parents, and it doesn’t take long to detect anger at the content they view as part of their jobs.
“There’s a misunderstanding of what’s going on,” Marchant said. “A lot of people out there think, ‘Well, they’re just looking at images. They weren’t hurting anybody.’ But what we’re trying to get them to understand is they are getting sexual gratification out of watching a child be raped.”
Agents hate the phrase “child pornography.” The truth, they say, is even worse.
“Let’s call it the rape of a child, or child sexual abuse material is the prettiest way we can put it,” Marchant said.
In many cases, judges and district attorneys will not look at the material even if it is presented as evidence critical to a criminal trial, Assistant Special Agent Tony Lima said. Reynolds, formerly the district attorney in Cobb County, said he could not bring himself to view some of the evidence in child porn cases he prosecuted.
“Not everybody can do that kind of work,” Reynolds said. “It’s a calling.”
The work continues to pile up for the GBI unit and the statewide Georgia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, both of which are commanded by Special Agent Debbie Garner.
One reason the number of tips grows each year is that internet service providers and major technology companies like Facebook and Google are getting better at detecting abusive content on their platforms. Another reason is that technology has made it easier than ever to create and share exploitative content.
“People used to molest kids and not take photos of it,” Garner said. “Now they’ve got a phone in their hand and they’re producing child pornography.”
The agents described online communities of pedophiles, where the horrific images serve as a kind of currency, traded like baseball cards.
“What’s the easiest thing, if you don’t have anything (to trade)?” Lima said. “It’s producing your own stuff with the kids that are accessible to you. So you’re seeing a lot more new collections.”
The agents say viewing such content is mentally taxing.
“What causes a lot of mental distress in officers working these types of cases is that… they know there are kids behind those cyber tips,” Garner said. “There’s not enough time in the day to get to all the kids that may need (help).”
With that in mind, the GBI has partnered with the consulting firm Accenture to help prioritize and triage tips, Reynolds said.
“We have this obsessive fear that somebody is going to slip through the cracks and a child’s going to be exploited or hurt that we could have stopped,” Reynolds said. “That’s the driving force behind it. That’s what has really motivated us to pursue this program.”
Paid for with $1.2 million of federal grant money distributed by Georgia’s Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, better data processing is meant to relieve some of the burden on the GBI unit. Reynolds hopes the extra help will allow the agents to be more efficient, though their unit is already tops in the GBI in terms of serving search warrants and making arrests.
According to Garner, the unit executed 110 residential search warrants in 2020, more than any other in the state agency. Those search warrants led to 85 individual arrests, many of which removed an abuser from a child’s life.
The CEACC unit and the statewide task force have continued to rack up impressive arrests in 2021. On Monday, six men across three counties were arrested at the culmination of a two-month investigation. One man arrested was found to have been chatting online with children as young as 9 years old, Ammons said.
When cyber tips are properly prioritized, agents can zero in on cases in which active abuse is suspected and take quick action to immediately stop ongoing exploitation — cases like the 2017 one where a child was saved from an abuser.
Reynolds saluted the commitment of the agents who continue to work on the heinous cases.
“To have people that are committed to doing that and have devoted their professional careers to it, who don’t want to be moved out of the unit...” Reynolds said, trailing off. “They want to stay. I’m extremely, extremely proud of that unit.”
