CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Child pornography possession and child sex trafficking continues to be a growing concern in West Virginia as more and more arrests regarding the horrific acts are made.
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia Will Thompson was joined by Assistant Attorney Jennifer Herrald who focuses on child pornography and sex trafficking cases on MetroNews ‘Talkline’ Tuesday to talk about its exponential growth.
Herrald said according to statistics from the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children, there were 450,000 images and videos of child pornography reported in 2004, last year it was 100 million.
Herrald said she believes this has to do with the rise of the internet that has made the enticement of children easier, as well as child porn and trafficking more accessible to everyone.
“Child pornography has always been there, but the number of people using social media and the internet to actively entice children to either produce child pornography or engage in sexual activity has grown astronomically,” Herrald said.
She said while it’s happening more and more on a national scale, it’s also happening right here in the small rural communities of West Virginia more so than ever before. She said it’s happening to local children often by trusted caregivers.
Herrald said the accessibility of such pornography has now been made more accessible to people who would have otherwise not have had access to it, and it increases the idea that they can do it as well.
“When they’re talking to other individuals online who are also exploiting children it empowers people to attempt that in their own communities,” she said.
Thompson said tackling these kinds of cases has been a priority for him ever since he took office as he knew how much of an increasing issue it was becoming.
“I’ve dealt with a lot of these types of cases both in my career as a lawyer and my career as a judge, and now my career as U.S. Attorney, and I think the one thing that we owe the children of West Virginia is a safe childhood,” Thompson said.
There were just two of many recent West Virginia cases of child pornography and trafficking that was mentioned on Talkline Tuesday.
Derick Russell Long, 48, of Huntington was just sentenced to 15 years in prison after a total of 668 images and 321 videos depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct was found in his possession.
In another case, the former police chief of Gauley Bridge, Larry Allen Clay was found guilty of conspiring to engage in sex trafficking of a minor by coercion and two counts of obstruction of justice.
Thompson said while they are prosecuting more suspects for these offenses, he said they are also just scratching the surface, and believes there is even more cases being kept in the dark they still haven’t cracked.
He said the cases range from the involvement and exploitation of teenagers all the way down to very young children under the age of three.
Thompson said many of these cases are very difficult to investigate and bring to justice simply because of how young the victims tend to be, as well as the fact that they’re very computer-sensitive cases.
“I tried one of these cases myself last year, I thought I knew a lot about computers, I had to learn a lot more in order to try the case, so they are difficult to investigate but they’re certainly worthwhile investigating,” he said.
Additional statistics from the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children confirm that there were a total of 4,681 cyber tips out of West Virginia regarding child pornography that came across the organization’s cyber tip line.
Thompson said more localized activity happening on the internet is also very difficult to track down.
He said it’s an intimidating monster of an issue they are still very much trying to tackle.
“It scares me when I realize how prevalent it is and that we’ve got to get these victims to come forward, and I think there’s just a lot more of it out there,” Thompson said.
Thompson does add however, that they do have the help from two federal agencies– the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security– who commit a lot of resources to investigate these types of crimes in the state, as well as the support they receive from the state police and local law enforcement.