America has a child porn crisis. The disturbing number of federal and state employees arrested for child porn charges makes this a national security issue.
Men, and some women, are down-loading child porn at the Pentagon, TheDepartment of Homeland Security (DHS), The Department of Justice(DOJ), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), The Department of Transportation (DOT), The Transportation Security Agency (TSA), TheFederal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), The Central Intelligence Agency(CIA) and police departments from Maine to California.
This article reviews military child porn arrests. Federal law enforcement, as well as state and local government employees, including police, will be considered in my next articles.
Bryon Bender, of The Boston Globe, first reported, in 2011, that up to 5,200 Pentagon employees, many with top clearances, were downloading child porn on Pentagon computers. Many were using their .mil email accounts and paying with credit cards in their own names. This brazenness indicates a culture that tolerates, perhaps even encourages, use of child porn on America’s most sensitive computer networks.
What’s worse is, there were almost no prosecutions. Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) fought to expose the Pentagon’s refusal to prosecute. The Pentagon closed the investigation, claiming it wasn’t “a priority.”
In July 2012 Bloomberg News reported that the US Missile Defense Agency issued a memo reminding staff not to download porn at work. The memo says, “These actions are not only unprofessional, they reflect time taken away from designated duties, are in clear violation of federal and DOD and regulations, consume network resources and can compromise the security of the network.”
When America’s most elite national security professionals, responsible for our missile defense system, need to be told not to download porn, very likely including child porn, on the Department of Defense networks, America has a problem.
• Former Undersecretary of the Navy, 70 year old James Daniel Howard, arrested on child porn possession and reproduction charges in 2013. Howard had served as special assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He plead guilty to ten child porn counts and served only seven months in jail;
• Joint Strike Fighter Program Navy officer, Bruce Babchyck, arrested in 2014 for downloading “hundreds of gigabytes” of young girls and bestiality on government computers. He received a one year sentence; and
• Army prosecutor and judge advocate, Daniel Wollverton, father of two, convicted in 2011 for infant sodomy and possession of over 30,000 images and 1,000 videos of brutal child sex abuse including that of a three month old infant.
Take a moment to let all this sink in. Anal rape of a baby. This man held a position of significant responsibility and power within our armed forces. Hundreds of gigabytes of child porn downloaded onto Navy computers by a man in our Joint Strike Fighter program? An Under Secretary of the Navy?
And these are only a few of the reported cases out of what appears to be thousands. In fact, it’s difficult to pick the worst. As I reviewed the material I kept thinking, with every new media report, surely this is as bad as it gets.
Such as, the arrest of America’s chief scientist responsible for monitoring global nuclear activity at Patrick Air Force Base’s Technical Applications Center which operates our Atomic Energy Detection System.
In May 2013, 71 year old David O’Brien was arrested and charged with a preliminary ten counts of child porn possession and distribution. Media reports said investigators found child porn on multiple home computers. It is not clear how much child porn O’Brien had, what kind, if any was on his work computers or if he was even fired from his position. There has been no public news since his original arrest.
I contacted the law enforcement agency who had made the arrest, Brevard County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. Lt. Brandon Lanza responded immediately saying “Unfortunately this case is still active and pending prosecution. Under Florida State Statue 119.071(2)C we will not release any criminal investigate information at this time.”
Are you comfortable knowing the man who is monitoring nuclear activity around the world is getting off to the rape of children? Do you feel safe knowing America’s Atomic Energy Detection System may well have been exposed to organized crime that operates child porn production and distribution?
When I read about Dr. O’Brien’s crimes against children, which are also crimes against America, I feel outraged and betrayed by my government.
Well okay. So a few guys were caught using child porn. It’s just a few rotten apples. That’s not a crisis or a national security threat. Right?
Rotten apples, particularly at the top, establish permissible conduct for the entire workplace. This culture permeates — compromising our national security on many levels from our computer systems and classified information, to the safety and well-being of innocent government employees simply trying to do their jobs.
Does anyone really think an Army prosecutor/judge advocate with 30,000 videos/image of child rape is going to hold his own colleagues accountable for adult sexual assault among the military ranks? Is the scientist monitoring nuclear activity vulnerable to blackmail that could compromise America’s security?
Remember, child molesters work together in networks. “Molesters working as a team… can cover up each other’s tracks and use their connections to outwit the police.”
By virtue of their positions government pedophiles have a unique ability, civilians do not have, to hide their crimes and avoid prosecution. When those involved in child porn are law enforcement themselves, it is easy to understand why this is a problem.
It appears pedophiles are highly networked through-out our military forces and government agencies; protecting and helping each other gain continual access to new videos and images of abused children.
As with other government agencies, the data available on child porn arrests in the military is incomplete and difficult to gather. Defense Department officials say child porn arrests and conviction are not “tracked” by the military and so it is “difficult to determine how widespread the problem might be.”
But some information is available. Regarding child porn investigations, theDepartment of Defense Computer Forensics Laboratory (DCFL) Director, in 2004, Lt. Col. Zatyko, said “We always have cases in the queue… and more work than we can handle.” In 2012 DCFL conducted 391 forensic child porn exams. As of November 2012 the Army tried fifty soldiers on child porn charges with forty-five convictions. In 2011 thirty-seven Army soldiers were convicted on child porn charges. The Air Force had eleven child porn convictions in 2012 and sixteen in 2011. However, none of this information includes service members tried in civilian courts.
In 2013 the Navy pledged to be transparent regarding sexual assault issues and now provides public monthly courts-martial verdicts. The following reports were noted in November and December 2013: (1) Navy Aviation Electronics Tech-Petty Officer First Class Richard Lesley was found guilty of child porn possession. He was sentenced to a bad conduct discharge and confinement for 18 months; (2) Navy Quartermaster Jason J. Carchio plead guilty to using a government computer to solicit, distribute and possess child porn. He received a dishonorable discharge and 30 month confinement; and (3) Missile Technician Nathaniel A. Camacho plead guilty to attempting to contribute to the delinquency of a minor. He was sentenced to thirty days.
The Army Times has made available cases of child abuse in the military; which has, reportedly, increased by forty percent from 2010 to 2012. In all four branches, Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, from 2011–2012 there were 12,881 cases of child abuse, 753 of these included sexual assaults and 67 children were murdered. The Army investigated 30,000 cases of child abuse from 2003–2012 including 118 child deaths. Reported child abuse increased by twenty-five percent in the Air Force from 2008–2012. From 2011–2012 The Marine Corps reported 1,591 confirmed cases of child abuse. The Navy reported 3,336 cases of reported child abuse from 2009 to 2012.
Of this information, there seemed to be no indication of child porn produced, downloaded and distributed related to the child sex abuse. Child abuse, child sex abuse and child porn investigations do not appear to be coordinated. In 2013, the Department of Defense (DOD) did create theDepartment of Defense Prevention and Coordinated Community Response to Child Abuse and Neglect and Domestic Violence Working Group. The group is tasked with a public review of the military’s child abuse and domestic violence crisis. It is not clear that child porn is included in this review.
Because the military is not publishing comprehensive data on child porn arrests, I conducted searches, using Twitter and Google, of mainstream media reports. When I could easily locate original court documents, I supplemented the media reports; however, often the court documents are sealed or otherwise not easily accessible. I also supplemented my standard Twitter/Google searches with searches in Stars and Stripes. As of 3 November 2014 a search in Stars and Stripes’ search box for child porn turned up 142 articles of military personnel , from all branches, arrested for child porn use. I do not list all 136 reported arrests here.
The reports I share here are, by no means, a comprehensive account of military child porn arrests. These are, simply, what appears to be a very small representative sample. A snap-shot in time. They do; however, provide a sense of the scope and scale of child porn use within our military; one that represents a serious national security issue for us all.
As I gathered the news reports, over and over, arrests referenced infants and toddlers. When the age of the children was indicated, and it often is not, I organized reports that included the abuse of children four years or younger in this section.
• Decorated Navy Veteran, 40 year old Michael Jachim, plead guilty to three counts of aggravated child porn. He had 44,000 videos/images with “10,000 graphic images depicted children who were an average age of 5. Several images and videos showed children bound by the hands and feet and wearing hoods or masks.” Prosecutors said, “This isn’t Playboy magazine. These are infants and toddlers being brutally raped.” Many of three and four year old children “in bondage positions with their hands and feet tied” with hoods or masks covering the heads and faces with children “screaming for their mommy as they were being sexually abused.” In the Navy he received a Good Conduct Medal, national defense service medal, a sea service deployment ribbon and a Navy commendation medal. He was sentenced to four years.
• Army Sergeant, 25 year old Kimberly Epperson, a Signals Intelligence Analyst with the 401st Military Intelligence Company stationed at Fort Sam in Texas, was sentenced in 2013 to twenty-eight years for molesting her own three year old son. She sent videos and live-stream of the abuse to a former boyfriend, Army Sergeant Wade Allen Perkins a Geospatial Intelligence Imagery Analyst, most recently with 306th Military Intelligence Battalion. He was also sentenced. Sergeant Perkins requested that Sergeant Kimberly Epperson include her infant son in their sex life and she complied. Epperson was also pregnant with Perkins’ daughter at the time.
• Air Force Staff Sergeant, 29 year old Daniel Freiwald, married father of two children formerly with the 83rd Fighter Weapons Squadron, was sentenced to eight years for receiving, distributing and possessing videos/images of child sex abuse, including infants and toddlers, on his computer at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. He later died, reported as suicide, in prison.
• 44 year old William Gazafi an Air Force officer at Andrews Air Force base, was indicted on six counts of sexually exploiting a minor to produce child porn. Gazafi had been in an incest online chat rooms and bragged to an undercover cop that he drugged and molested young children including infants. Gazafi then sent images to the undercover officer, three of which he claimed to have produced. The subsequent seizure of his electronics revealed videos/images that Gazafi produced including a five months baby and drugged children sexually abused while bound and handcuffed.
• Air Force Cassidy Harwell, a 28 year old airman from Ellsworth Air Force Base, was sentenced to five years for child porn possession. He had more than 300 videos of child sex abuse including children as young as three years old.
• Army West Point Military Academy Cadet Ricky Patrick Hester was arrested for child porn possession and distribution of young boys. Hester had sent out requests on his Yahoo email account saying, “I am in to 4–10 year olds hardcore with sound.” His case was continued by the courts with no new hearing date set at this time. I contacted the local media outlet,NewsCenter16, reporting on Hester’s case. They responded saying, “Hester was placed on home detention with electronic monitoring on December 20th [2013] after paying bail. His case was continued to a later date on the day of our January article you linked. There are currently no scheduled future court dates for him in the federal court system. When a trial is scheduled, or if a Plea Agreement is made in the case, we will report that information.”
• Marine Officer, 26 year old Jonathan Adleta, was sentenced to two life terms for the sex abuse of his infant children, ages one-four, with his wife, Sarah Adleta, who was sentenced to 54 years for child porn production of her children. Jonathan Adleta had made “daddy-daughter sex” part of their pre-nuptial agreement. When Sarah Adelta, later, divorced Johnathan, she continued to sexually abuse her children on live-stream Skype videos at his request. He distributed this abuse on child porn networks. He also sexually abused his girlfriend’s Samantha Bryant’s four year old daughter. Bryant participated in the abuse of her own four year old daughter and filmed this abuse. Adleta had served two tours with the Marine Corps in Afghanistan.
• Tech Sergeant Erik Dean Rabes, a 44 year old Air Force Computer Security Specialist who had been assigned to the US Strategic Command, a joint service unit that oversees the nation’s nuclear arsenal and is responsible for defending American interests in space, was sentenced to ten years for child porn production. The military refused to confirm if Rabes had used military computers. He had more than 30,000 child sex abuse videos/images. Rabes’ former wife had operated a day-care facility from their residence in Colorado Springs. Unknown to his wife, Rabes had been sexually abusing children, as young as four years old, at the day care and filming and distributing that abuse.
• Senior Airman Czachery Rike, a 30 year old Peterson Air Force Base airman, plead guilty to child porn distribution that included children as young as four years old. He was also charged with forcible sodomy against an adult without consent. Over a period of a few months he had collected over 400 images of child sex abuse.
• Air Force Master Sergeant, 49 year old Charles Caley, was sentenced to fifteen years for paying to watch the sexual abuse of a four year old girl from a webcam at Aviano Air Force Base in Italy. Caley had an online relationship with a mother in Georgia (he was also from Georgia) and discussed a shared interest in incestual sexual abuse of children. He paid the mother to watch the sex abuse of her child and two other girls. He possessed hundreds of videos/images of child sex abuse. Although he was sentenced to fifteen years by a federal judge, after that sentencing the Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals reduced his original Air Force sentence from sixteen months to four months. He then he went onto to serve his federal sentence.
• Marine Captain Joshua Taylor, a 28 year old Marine pilot who flew Super Stallion Helicopters, had more than 5,000 videos/images of child sex abuse including children as young as four years old.
• Air Force Major, 37 year old David Riley, stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, was charged with child porn after he sent “extremely graphic” child sex abuse images to an undercover Washington DC Metro police officer. Riley said he “looking for other pervs in the area” and that he had sexually abused the six year old daughter of a former girlfriend. Riley, himself, a married father of a six year old girl. He said he never abuses his own daughter. The undercover officer sent Riley a picture of a child and claimed it was his daughter. Riley said: “What is the purpose of showing me pics of your daughter? Do you want to share her? … no pressure from me. Just curious.” Riley then discussed arrangement to have sex with the child. Riley was at Fort McNair in Washington DC enrolled in a National Defense University course at the time.
• Air Force Airman, 24 year old Craig Allen James formerly stationed at Ft. Mead, was sentenced for child porn distribution.
• Retired Air Force pilot, 49 year old Kenneth Nighbert of Kennebunk Maine, committed suicide after his arrest for his membership in the Wonderland Club-a pedophile ring that traded child sex abuse “like baseball cards.” Pedophiles had to contribute 10,000 videos/images of child sex abuse in order to join Wonderland. The Wonderland investigation resulted from a 1996 San Jose Orchid Club investigation where an eleven year old girl was being abused and her abuse distributed on-line. Only a dozen of the thousands of children were identified. In most cases these children were relatives or neighbors of the molester.
• Major Peter Christopher Davis, a 34 year old Air Force Major at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska, was indicated on thirty-nine counts of child porn distribution and possession. Davis was the Assistant Director of Operations for the 3rd Operations Support Squadron. He had “hundreds” of videos/images of child sex abuse.
• Senior Air Force airman, 29 year old Jeremy Parrott, escaped custody from a US air base in Suffolk, England after a child porn conviction. He was later found and arrested after nearly a year in hiding. Parrott was paying a fee to access a child sex abuse website which was “100 percent hard-core child pornography.” He was also using the file-sharing network Limewire to download 50 to 75 files with the sex abuse of very young children.
• Air Force contractor, 56 year old William Gebel, was arrested for pandering sexually oriented material involving a minor. He had downloaded 10,000 videos/image of child sex abuse and had been doing so, he said, for the past decade.
• Air Force Sgt. Joel Thorpe, a 37-year-old airman at Dover Air Force Base, was charged with twenty-five counts of dealing in child porn.
• Air Force Lieutenant Harold Henderon, from F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, was sentenced to serve twelve years for child porn possession. Five other Air Force personnel at the same base were also charged with child porn at the time.
• Brandon Meredith Hardy, a 23 year old Moody Air Force Base airman, was sentenced to nine years for child porn. He was using a computer on base to download child porn and chat with a 12 year child online, who was actually an undercover investigator. Hardy had arranged to meet the “child” for sex.
• Air Force Airman, 22 year old John Gramlich arrested and indicted for child porn possession.
• Air Force Tech. Sergeant Jonathan Amato, a leadership school instructor atDover Air Base in Delaware, was charged with child porn possession. He was caught using a credit card to buy child sex abuse online.
• Air Force Sergeant, 30 year old Christopher Garcia, was indicted on six counts of child porn possession. He had been part of the 16th Special Operations Squadron at Cannon Air Force Base.
• Retired Air Force Airman, 48 year old John Ellenbacher, distributed at least 90 videos/images of child sex abuse and possessed more than 600 videos/images and videos. He told investigators he was sexually aroused by young boys and admitted when he was stationed overseas with the Air Force he performed sex acts on a child.
• Air Force Airman 1st Class Chad McClelland-Hall, father of a young son, was charged with child porn possession when he was stationed in Saudi Arabia.
• Retired Air Force Master Sergeant, 46 year old Thomas Wheeler, was charged with seven counts of possessing and one count of distributing child porn. Wheeler had been working as a guard at Walt Disney’s Animal Kingdom. He had sex abuse videos/images of children between nine and eleven years old.
• Air Force employee, 30 year old Ronald Townsend, was sentenced to thirteen years for receipt and distribution of child porn. He had chatted online with an undercover detective and sent about forty images of child porn in exchange for child sex abuse videos from the detective. Townsend also developed relationships online and on the phone with under-aged girls including one as young as thirteen years old.
• Air Force Lt. Col. Stephen Governale, a former Protocol Officer for Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base, plead guilty to trying to entice a minor for sex. He had worked for General David Patraeus and was named Centcom civilian of the year. When he went to meet a teenager for sex, he was arrested by undercover officers, after the parents of the teenage boy called the police and report Governale’s attempts to have sex with their child. The child reported that he had already meet Governale, at least twice before, at a hotel and engaged in sex. The teenager said there were other children also having sex with the Lt. Col.
• Army Sgt., 27 year old Joseph French, was charged with aggravated sexual abuse. For three years he raped, and filmed/distributed the abuse, a seven year old female relative. French, stationed at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord, was arrested after the girl’s mother called authorities. He abused the girl on and off base including “tying her wrists and feet to a swing while he raped her on several occasions and sometimes allowing a military sergeant and woman to watch the abuse via Skype.” The woman viewing on Skype “urged French to “ravage” the girl.
• US Court of Appeal for the Armed Forces, America’s highest military appeals court, upheld, on 2 April 2013, a 2009 court-martial conviction of Fort Bragg Army Specialist Ryan A. Bowersox for animated child porn. He was found with 224 cartoon child sex abuse images of young children including incest. “The images are created with such realism that they showexpressions of pain and pleasure on the child participants’ faces, the children’s shadows on the ground and even depict the leg hairs of the men engaging in sex with the children.”
• Army Specialist 28 year old Nery J Ruiz, based at Fort Campbell, was sentenced to twenty year for the sexual abuse of a six year old girl which included anal rape. Ruiz had forced the girlto perform oral, anal and vaginal sex “sometimes two or three times a week.” She “was too scared to tell” because Ruiz told her he would “he’d do the same to my younger sister” if she told anyone.
• Army Colonel, 55 year old Robert Joel Rice, a war game developer at Army War College, was charged with 130 child porn counts. He had more than 30,000 images/videos of child sex abuse when his wife discovered the files and notified local police. The Army War College continues to employ Rice, and allow him supervised access to Army computers, while on bail pending trial. Col. Rice had been scheduled for a July 2013 arraignment; however, journalist Steve Marroni informed me, on 10 March 2014, that Rice “had a pre-trial conference scheduled for last week, but that was continued until next month pending some defense motions, so the case is still pending.”Andrew Carr, a reporter with The Sentinel, confirmed, on 4 November 2014.Rice’s federal hearing was delayed until February 2015. Rice’s preliminary county hearing had been set for April 2013.
• Army Specialist Anthony Haddock, based at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, was convicted of child porn possession. He had also been charged with distribution but that charged was dropped during a plea. At the time Haddock was sentenced to sixteen months and a bad conduct discharge. However, on 16 February 2007, the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals remanded the case for a rehearing or dismissal of charges. On 6 April 2007, the Department of the Army officially dismissed all charges.
• Army Master Sergeant, 42 year old Thomas Meyer, Army Intelligence Officer stationed at Special Operations Command Central at Air Force MacDill Base, was arrested for child porn. Meyer sent child sex abuse images and an “explicit” video where he was “touching” himself to a thirteen year old girl who was an undercover officer. He was “supposed to use Department of Defense computer systems to help fight insurgents” instead he used his government computer to engage in child sex abuse. He was also communicating with a sixteen year old girl, he had known since her birth, and told the girl, “lol..your pic was hot…I had to come home from work” so he could touch himself he said. His Yahoo user ID was “bigddddd.”
• Nathan Young, a 22 year old former Army soldier from Nebraska, was sentenced to twelve years for child porn. He was already a registered sex offender at the time of his second conviction. When he was stationed at Fort Huachuca in Arizona he had been sentenced to four months for child porn possession. Young’s second child porn conviction occurred when a parent of a middle-school child alerted authorities to suspicious activity. Young had more than 470, mostly middle-school children, as Facebook friends. He would game online, and chat via Facebook, with the children and then get the children to produce child porn for him.
• Army Sergeant 1st Class, 43 year old Steven Shafer of the 58th Aviation Regiment, was convicted of child porn possession. He had some 10,000 adult porn images and hundreds of images of child sex abuse on his computer and a thumb drive.
• Army Sergeant, 34 year old Leonard Talley from Fort Benning, was indicted on child porn. Talley was caught when a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, monitoring peer-to-peer file sharing networks, found more than 400 child sex abuse videos/images linked to Talley’s IP address. Investigators found, on several computers and external hard drives, child porn “too voluminous to be catalogued” during their initial search at his residence.
• Civilian contract at Brooks Army Medical Center, 55 year old Victor Zamarron, was sentenced for downloading more than 30,000 child sex abuse images including while at work on the government computer system. There were also allegations he had sexually abused a ten year old girl.
• Army Corporal, 26 year old Gregory M. Willis who was stationed at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, had more than 7,000 videos/images of child sex abuse he was distributing and downloading from base. He was sentenced to two years and discharged from the military for bad conduct.
• Army Specialist 30 year old Julian William Velasco an infantryman with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division stationed at Fort Hood, was sentenced on multiple child porn charges, including possession and distribution. He was using child porn at military camps in Iraq when stationed there.
• Army 37 year old Robert Bruce Campbell, stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord was brought home from Afghanistan to face child porn charges after admitting to possession and distribution of child porn. This was his second child porn arrest.
• Army Lt. Col. 43 year old Christopher Butler, based at Fort Drum, was charged with child porn possession. He had more than 200 videos/images and was using on on-line name “daddyformommies.” He had sent child sex abuse to an undercover agent.
• Army Specialist 30 year old Joseph Garcia, based at Fort Carson, was sentenced on multiple child sex abuse and child porn charges. Garcia admitted to the sexually abuse of a six year old girl for whom he was “in a position of trust.” He admitted to producing and distributing more than 1,100 videos/images of child sex abuse. At the time of his arrest, police say there are at least four victims and could be more. Some of the child sex abuse occurred, and was filmed, inside Hawaii’s Schoefield Barracks.
• Army Staff Sergeant, 34 year old Oscar Rodriguez, based at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, was charged with child and adult sex abuse.
• Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy, 70 year old retired Navy Capt. Wade Sanders, plead guilty to child porn possession. He had been awarded the Silver Star, the nation’s third-highest valor award. The Navyrevoked this medal after Sander’s child sex abuse conviction. Sanders introduced candidate John Kerry at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was sentenced to thirty-seven months.
• Navy Command Master Chief of Joint Task Force North at Biggs Army Airfield, 48 year old Robert Cuff, plead guilty and received a life-sentence in July 2012 for child porn charges. Cuff had been a Dreamboard member; an on-line group engaged in the violent sex abuse of children under twelve years old-otherwise known as pre-teen hard core (PTHC). Members are required to contribute sex abuse videos/images of children under twelve years old and continually share new abuse. Members who video themselves raping children “received elevated status.” Cuff had been repeatedly raping a five year old child. His online names included “slapalot” and “dd0040.”
• Navy seaman, 24 year old James Driver, was sentenced for child porn possession and distribution. He was based in Japan and said he had an “interest” in child porn for five years.
• Navy officer 40 year old Richard Smith Andridge, serving Afghanistan, plead guilty to child porn charges after he sent child sex abuse images to an undercover detective posing as a fourteen year old girl. He had more than 600 child sex abuse videos/images including children under the age of twelve that were “sadistic or violent in nature.”
• Navy seaman, 26 year old Jakob Benjamin Lee, pleaded guilty to child porn distribution. He had shared more than 400 child sex abuse videos/images with an undercover agent and bragged about sexually abusing a boy he had access to every weekend and over twenty-five boys, as young as nine years old, Lee told the undercover agent he had routinely abused. Lee worked at the Portsmouth Naval Medical Center. He was sentenced to thirty years.
• Navy doctor’s assistant, 39 year old Brandon Schroth, was charged with thirteen counts of sexual exploitation of a child and two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child under twelve. He plead guilty to child porn production. Schroth had flown to Germany to sexually abuse, film, and distribute the sex abuse of two girls, age nine and eleven, who were the daughters of an active duty Air Force member. He had also produced child porn of a nine year old girl at his home in Mission Valley.
• Navy JAG attorney, 44 year old Lt. Commander Mark Tilford, was sentenced to more than ten years for receiving and distributing child porn. Investigators found over 300 images/videos of child sex abuse on Tilford’s home computers.
• A former Navy reservist, 30 year old Anthony Mastrogiovanni, plead guilty to child sex abuse and child porn production. He sexually abused more than thirty boys in Maryland and Louisiana to produce child pornography. Authorities say he befriended his victims through his military affiliation and recorded sexually explicit videos of the children on hidden cameras in his homes. When investigators searched Las Vegas hotel room they found external hard drives with over 30,000 images of child sex abuse. He had previously been arrested for impersonate a police officer in Washington DC.
• Brock Mason, a 24 year old Navy Officer, stationed in Japan, befriended a single mother with the intent of sexually abuse her twin boys age eleven and thirteen. Mason anally raped the children, gave them drugs, forced them to perform oral sex and masturbate him. The mother thought that Mason was a positive male mentor for her children and was unaware of the abuse. Mason was charged with multiple child sex abuse and child porn charges.
• Navy Pilot, 30 year old Daniel Harris, originally charged with six felony counts of child sex abuse and child porn production, had an 32 additional charges added in October 2014. From 2011 to 2013, when he was caught, he had been “terrorizing” multiple girls between the ages of 12 and 17 posing as a teenage boy and using a fake Facebook account to initiate contact with girls. He got one girl to send him a photo of her topless and then threatened her into making sex videos for him. When Harris tried to find her home address, through on-line friends, the girl reported the abuse to her parents. The local sheriff office then took over the girl’s Facebook account and continued to communicate with Harris. As of May 2014, the Navy continued to employ Harris. Harris is in the weapons-training school in Oceania and has taken part in the Navy’s Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, known as TOPGUN. His trial is set for February 2015.
• Navy Recruiter, 35 year old David Humphries, was charged with multiple child porn charges. Humphries was caught when concerned parents of a fifteen year old boy contacted their high school principal about on-line contact the boy had with Humphries, who had been at the school recruiting for the Navy. When investigators searched his home he had “many, many” sexually graphic images of young boys.
• Navy Chief Petty Officer, 37 year old Donald Duane Schaff, was convicted for child porn possession. He had over 400 images of child sex abuse, included a girl named “Cindy” abused by her father who was distributing the recorded abuse and another girl named “Missy” who was also being sexually abused by her father in Florida for child porn production.
• A Navy Lieutenant, whose name the Navy and the Virginia family courts are withholding, confessed to Virginia’s Child Protective Services (CPS) thathe raped and sexually abused his thirteen year old daughter over a two year period and signed a statement admitting “severe” abuse. His ten year old son said his father had tied him to a chair and forced him to watch as he had intercourse with a girlfriend. A Virginia judge attempted to jail the mother for reporting the Navy Lt. father to child protection when her daughter reported the abuse. The family court judge said the mother was trying to “derail the officer’s career.” After a detailed article, published by Bill Sizemore, of The Virginian-Pilot, The Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS) promised, in December 2013, to look into why no criminal investigation had been opened four years ago. According to Bill Sizemore, as of 4 November 2014, the Navy continues to employ this man, stationed in California. A criminal investigation has been opened as a result of Sizemore’s article. NCIS responded, within minutes, to my request for information and confirmed, on 4 November 2014, “We did open a formal investigation. We conducted multiple interviews with family members and others and NCIS continues to work with Navy RLSO about this case. It is still open because the Command has yet to officially prefer or decline charges.” The Navy has promoted the Lt. twice since the known sex abuse of his own children.
• 20 year old Alexander Michael Green was charged with four counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. He had over 3,000 child sex abuse files. Green admitted to a Navy doctor on base that he was using child porn. The doctor called authorities and Green was taken into custody by the Naval Weapon Station Police. Green told investigators he had been using child porn for the past year and preferred the abuse of girls between nine and ten years old. He said he had been caught by his wife twice before but she failed to report him to authorities. None of the media reports noted Green’s position within the Navy or the base he was serving on.
• Former Navy seaman, 31 year old Joshua Daniel Moon, was convicted for physical and sexual abuse of two five and nine year children while serving at Naval Air Station Lemoore. Charges included aggravated sexual assault of a child, lewd and lascivious acts with a child by means of force and assault with a deadly weapon. “Moon enjoyed hard core pornography” said a former girlfriend. Apparently, he subjected the children to things he had seen in hard core porn that he watched. The Navy, claiming because Moon had now been discharged, would not provide his rank.
• Navy Petty Officer Corey Hamilton, had images on his computer of himself sexually abusing a child, among other child porn. He was arrested on fourteen counts of possession of child porn, among other charges.
• Navy Petty Officer, 27 year old Adam Simpson, who served on the USS Hartford nuclear submarine as an Information Systems Technician Second Class, was arrested for child porn possession. He was on the nuclear submarine when the investigation began and was transferred to shore duty at the Naval Submarine Support Center. Investigators found child porn on the Navy base in Simpson’s possession.
• Navy Corpsman stationed at the Navy Hospital, Joshua Anderson and his wife, plead guilty to the sex abuse of a five year old girl whom they drugged with sleeping pills and sexually abused when the child fell unconscious. They video recorded the abuse and, apparently, distributed the recording. This abuse occurred on Camp Lejeune and involved another Navy man whose name was not released. Joshua Anderson admitted to sexually abusing three children and child porn possession. He was sentenced to thirty years and a dishonorable discharge. Anderson’s wife, Laura Elizabeth Anderson, plead guilty and was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison.
• Navy Chief Petty Officer, 41 year old Thomas Christopher Moore, an Aviation Ordnanceman at Naval Air Facility Atsugi, Japan, was sentenced to six years for the rape of his girlfriend’s eight year old daughter. He was found guilty of indecent acts on five separate counts and given a dishonorable discharge and stripped of his retirement benefits. Moore raped the eight year old girl on base after he sent her mother out to the McDonald’s to get lunch. The child told her mother what had happened. Moore had also forced her to watch porn on his computer.
• Navy Petty Officer, 33 year old Charles Ray Benavidez, an Aviation Ordnanceman Second Class at the Naval Air Station in Lemoore, plead guilty to child sex trafficking a minor. Benavidez knowingly recruited a seventeen year old girl for commercial sex.
• Marine Captain, 32 year old Daniel Joseph Nilsson was charged with six counts of child sexual exploitation including child porn distribution. He was sentenced to nine and half years. At the time of his arrest he was aide-de-camp to Lt. Gen. John Paxton at Camp Lejeune. Nilsson was caught in Operation Spyglass, an investigation into a ring of child porn dealers where investigators found “hundreds of thousands” of child sex abuse with children as young as three years old on the computers they seized.”
• Retired Marine Corps Captain, 60 year old Michael Joseph Pepe, was sentenced to 210 years. He had been drugging and sexually abusing girls in Cambodia. The girls, who testified at Pepe’s trial, were between nine and thirteen years old at the time of the abuse. They testified Pepe drugged, bound, beat and raped them. Pepe required sexual massages and oral sex, daily, from the girls. He produced child porn of the abuse.
• Marine Corps Corporeal Edward Morales, a radio operator based on Camp Hansen in Japan, was sentenced to eighteen months and a bad-conduct discharge for child porn possession. He had downloaded the child sex abuse when serving in Iraq.
• Decorated Marine, 55 year old Glenn Scott was sentenced to 135 months for child porn possession. He had more than 600 images of the sex abuse of girls under twelve and as young as five years old. Scott had destroyed hard drives and DVDs before investigators could recover his entire electronic collection. He had served in the Florida National Guard, was a volunteer firefighter and a CPR instructor.
• Former Marine Corps, 27 year old Roberto Hernandez, was arrested for child porn. His local internet service provider had altered law enforcement.
• Former Marine Reservist, 23 Lee Baca, was sentenced to five years for a child porn. He had more than 2,000 videos/images of child sex abuse. Forty-seven of children in these videos/images were identified and rescued.
• Marine recruiter, 27 year old Sgt. Andrew Curran, was charged with five counts of child porn possession. Curran was using a potential recruit’s personal email and Facebook passwords to solicit the man’s female friends for nude photos.
• Marine Corps recruiter and Iraq war veteran, 25 year old Craig Thomas Walker, was arrested for downloading hundreds of files of child sex abuse images/videos including six and seven year old children. He did not serve any jail time. A Colorado judge gave him a four year deferred judgment, in 2010, if Walker plead guilty to a felony count of sexual exploitation. “The deferred judgment means the felony will be erased if Walker stays clear of trouble over the next four years.” He was dishonorable discharged from the Marines.
• Former Marine, 44 year old Vincent Charles Fasone, was sentenced in 2013 to 22 years after his second child sex abuse related conviction. Fasone, married father of two boys, had been a US Marine for twelve years before his 1997 conviction for child sex abuse when he attempted to abuse playmates of his young sons. At the time investigators found “large amounts” of child porn. After he was released from jail a second time Fasone returned to his wife and children and was then arrested again after attempting to meet a father who was willing to share his seven year old daughter, explicated for rape. The father was an undercover detective.
• Former Marine Lance Corporal, 28 year old Isaac Elias Salazar who had held top secret clearance, was sentenced to three years for child porn possession. He had been investigated twice before after cyber-tips had reported his engagement in child porn and attempts to solicit under-age children for sex.
• Marine, 31 year old Corey Hollis McAdoo, was sentenced for receiving child porn sent by his girlfriend when he was stationed in Afghanistan. His girlfriend, 24 year old Inez Lambert was also arrested. McAdoo’s girlfriend was a daycare provider in Oregon. She produced numerous videos and live-streams of herself sexually abusing the young children in her care, including sodomy, for McAdoo.
• Former Marine Lance Corporal Rigoberto Aguilar-Turcios plead guilty in military court to child porn possession and sentenced to ten months and a bad-conduct discharge from the Marine. A federal judge prevented his deportation.
• Marine Sergeant, 30 year old Jarod Barry, was sentenced to nine year for child porn possession. When he was caught he had more than 250 videos of the sex abuse of children under twelve years old, including “sexually assaulted by adults, children being raped and strangled and bondage.” Barry was dismissed from the Marine Corps.
• Marine Captain, from Camp Pendleton, 34 year old Richard Toschiaddi, was arrested for child porn production and distribution. He possessed over7,000 of images/videos of child sex abuse. He was sentenced to three months and discharged from the Marines. He was caught on an internet chat site called “100%PreteenGirlSexPics” commonly referred to as PTHC or pre-teen hard core indicating the violent abuse of young children under 12 years old.
The military has the technical capacity to block child porn from the work place. Yet, no branch of the military, and no government agency, has done so. Why?
The blocking programs are an easy technical fix. Iceland, for example, has been considering a nation-wide block on all porn; adult and child. TheUnited Kingdom has also been discussing instituting country-wide blocks on child porn and a system where internet service provider must provide an active opt-in/opt-out system to adult porn. A library in Canada blocked all child porn.
If a library in Canada can block child from their computers, surely the Pentagon, the Air Force, Army, Navy, and Marine Corps can block child porn on their computer networks?
The military can opt-out of allowing access to child porn on government computers at any point, yet, it appears, the military is choosing child porn over our national security.
America now produces an estimated half of the world’s child porn. How many children are being destroyed to feed that consumption?
Half of the global internet servers that host child sexual abuse are located in the United States. Why has the government allowed these servers to remain in operation?
The technical capacity to block child porn exists. Why does government allow child porn to be downloaded on military computers, and government agencies, compromising our national security?
What is our government doing about this crisis? Next to nothing. Not even with their own government agencies and employees responsible for our most sensitive areas of national security.
I hope you will contact your US Senator and ask: what are you doing about America’s child porn crisis?
Dr. Lori Handrahan’s forthcoming book Child Porn Nation: America’s Hidden National Security Risk details America’s child sex abuse epidemic. Her Ph.D. is from The London School of Economics. She can be reached on Twitter@LoriHandrahan
