NEW YORK
Detroit Free Press
By Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, Terence Corcoran and Alex Taylor
The (Westchester County, N.Y.) Journal News
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A single dad in Mahopac secretly videotaped his son’s 9-year-old friend in a swimming pool changing room, while a Westchester Medical Center nurse had 19 videos of children under 13 having sex with adults, authorities said Thursday as new details emerge about a regional crackdown on Internet child pornography.
Among the more than 70 people charged was a Port Chester man who had allegedly been downloading child porn for five years and a Kent man, charged with having images of girls as young as 6, whose father was deported six years ago for setting up a sexual tryst with a 14-year-old girl at a Wendy’s restaurant in Chicago.
Advocates contend it’s a small fraction of the disturbing illegal industry.
“How many more children are not counted? How much child porn is still out there?” said Keira Pollock, deputy executive director of programs and clinical services at the New City-based Center for Safety and Change. “It seems like there’s this epidemic hidden industry that continues to profit off of children.”
Dubbed Operation Caireen, the crackdown was headed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and was prompted in part by a probe of then-Mount Pleasant Police Chief Brian Fanelli, who was arrested in January and charged with downloading and distributing child pornography.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.