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economist sunsuntribune police saturday april 16 2005 cops making more child pornography arrests but keeping pedophiles locked up is bigger challenge by martin derbyshire staff writer the threeperson internet child porn team in york regional polices child abuse unit began last year by wrapping up the case against foster parent wayne relf in february 2004 the 50yearold keswick man was sentenced to 28 months in prison for making a video of his 13yearold mentally disabled foster daughter taking off her clothes he also pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography after officers found more than 500 pornographic images on his computer including graphic pictures of men having sex with toddlers because of credit for time spent in custody prior to his sentence mr relf is already out on parole technology has created a brazen new underworld for child pornography but investigators are also hoping technology will help them catch purvey ors of child pornography around york region and the rest of the world no doubt there was child porn before the advent of the internet just not as much of it york regional police det rob thomson said it also wasnt as disturbing according to one of his partners in the internet child porn investigative unit detconst anthony torresan the victims have gotten younger and it has become even more violent he said whatever you can think of adults doing theyre doing it with chil dren anything you can imagine the internet has allowed pedophiles to buy sell and trade images faster more often and with relative impunity police said as a result chasing down child porn connections has kept york officers busy investigators have spent the first three months of 2005 working on 21 cases and have made five arrests last year the team tackled 75 cases busting eight people but the issue isnt any worse in york region than anywhere else det thom son said back in 1999 authorities in texas dis covered a live child porn website and managed to pull credit card records for thousands of the sites customers they shared the information with police around the globe in what became known 35 project snowball york regional police were handed 57 leads and madenine arrests from the information but project snowball is a thing of the past these days investigators rely on tips from the public leads from the national child exploitation coordination centre and information from the website cyber- tipca canadas national tipline for reporting online child exploitation we also get a lot of tips from spouses usually during breakups det thomson said and repair shops when somebody takes their computer in to get fixed among highprofile arrests is a vaughan tae kwon do instructor busted on internet luring charges in october 2004 he is accused of convincing a 12- yearold boy to strip in front of a web cam and doing the same himself in february 2005 a 64yearold long time york region gymnastics and tram poline coach was charged with posses sion of child pornography acting on a tip police said they found more than 100 child porn images on computer hard drives in his home just one month later a swim coach who teaches children as young as six in toronto was arrested at his markham home and charged with possessing child pornography police seized a computer cds discs and around 650 videotapes its unfortunate but the kind of peo ple that are into child porn like to put themselves in positions of trust and authority over children det thomson said and theyre not going away there are ways however for parents to protect their children det thomson suggests not owning a web cam unless its absolutely necessary and keeping the family computer in a place where a childs online activities can be monitored you wouldnt let your 10yearold wander around alone in downtown toronto at night on the internet theres any number of strangers they could be talking to detconst torresan said parents just need to educate themselves about what their kids are up to parents should take advantage of the technology available as well he said heck out your childrens online contact lists so you know who theyre talking to there are sev eral software titles allowing you to log every keystroke so you know what theyre talking about but most importantly sit down with your kids and talk to them det thom son added to identify victims officers are forced to view every seized image the work is so horrific officers are required to move to a different unit within six years in the meantime officers try to remain professional in dealing with the kind of criminals even criminals detest we all have strong families det thomson said and we lean on each other a firsthand account of the kind of images officers have to see was enough to convince microsoft canada to provide technological support the child exploitation tracking sys tem cets designed by microsoft was unveiled in toronto last week and made available free to cops across the country microsoft canada got on board after receiving an email from the head of the toronto police child exploitation unit containing graphic descriptions of images police had discovered based at the rcmps national child exploitation centre in ottawa the sys tem will be accessible to all canadian police agencies allowing investigators to trade and internationally crossreference information the database will include email addresses credit card numbers and com puter user names from cases across the globe which police can match up with ones they are working on the hope is the 25million technolo gy will save time and eliminate duplica tion in investigations det thomson said its going to be a great help he said we have to keep up with the times we know the bad guys are so we have to but technology can only take police so far without help from the justice system child porn possession carries a maxi mum sentence of five years in prison and judges have been reluctant to go there a lot of times theyre getting condi tional sentences det thomson said its 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