FBI: Child Predator Jailed for Life

The FBI released the below information:

When FBI Indianapolis Special Agent Ryan Barrett was the newest member of the field office’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, a more seasoned agent wanted to show him what they were up against.

“We had a program that tracked the use of a file-sharing program popular with people trading images of child sex abuse,” Barrett said. “The agent asked the database to show a dot for every user in the state of Indiana. The whole map lit up red.”

Barrett stressed that those results are not unique to Indiana—any populated area in the United States and many other countries would show some number of people viewing and trading this content.

“I could be working these cases 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year,” Barrett said.

Though the scale is daunting, it doesn’t stop task forces supported by the FBI from trying to put an end to child exploitation. “No one is going to rest until kids are safe,” Barrett said.

Every case matters, but after 11 years on the task force, Barrett knows to prioritize cases that will make the greatest impact. That means pursuing large trading networks and groups, going after the people who are producing the materials, and tracking online predators engaged in sextortion.

It is work that often requires patience and tenacity.

Several years ago, Barrett got a tip from a Ukrainian citizen concerned about the activity of Charles Skaggs, Jr., an American who claimed to be running a non-profit for Ukrainian orphans. There wasn’t much in the tip for the FBI to go on, but the name of Skaggs’ organization raised immediate alarm.

The name of the so-called orphanage was the same as a widely circulated series of child abuse videos. “The fact that this guy names his orphanage after that—the second I saw it I was like, ‘Oh no,’” Barrett recalls.

At the time, it was difficult for Ukrainian authorities to help the investigation because the country was consumed with a war. So Barrett asked for the support of Homeland Security Investigations and U.S. Customs and Border Protection in monitoring Skaggs’ trips in and out of the country. It was then a matter of keeping tabs on Skaggs and waiting.

In December 2016, more than a year after the FBI received the tip, agents from Homeland Security Investigations and Customs and Border Protection stopped Skaggs for additional screening when he arrived at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport from Ukraine. When asked if he had additional cell phones, electronics, computers, hard drives, thumb drives, or any other computer equipment on him or in his luggage, Skaggs told agents he did not.

But in their search, the agents uncovered several thumb drives from his bag that were later found to contain child sexual abuse images, including videos Skaggs had made of a child who often stayed in his Indiana home.

While he was in detention awaiting trial, Skaggs asked his son to retrieve a hard drive he had hidden in the ceiling of his apartment building’s laundry room. That hard drive also contained images of child sexual abuse.

Skaggs was tried in July 2019 and convicted of nine counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, two counts of possession of child pornography, and one count of concealment of evidence. He was sentenced to life in prison on January 30, 2020.

Barrett said judges in Indiana and across the country are recognizing the seriousness of these offenses and handing down lengthy sentences to offenders. He said that should be a warning to anyone who is hurting children or viewing the photos and videos that document their abuse.

Barrett’s other warning is to parents and caregivers: Make sure you’re talking to your children regularly as they spend time online. His plea carries even more urgency as children across the country are relying on the internet more as classes and assignments have moved online.

“The web is great for so many good things, but it’s really bad for a few really bad things,” Barrett said. One of the bad things, he said, is allowing child predators easy, immediate access to millions of children.

Remember all those dots on the map showing people using a file-sharing program to view abusive material? Each of those individuals has an internet connection, which is all a predator needs to reach out to young people who are also online.

Caregivers need to find age-appropriate ways to explain to children that the person who wants to chat with them on an app or game or who wants a picture of them could be a real danger. Barrett said most of the child exploitation cases he now sees have an online origin, and children can be harmed even if they never meet up with the predator.

FBI: Child Sex Tourism - Alaska Man Receives Prison Term For Crimes Committed in Cambodia

The FBI released the below report:

A tip to police from a concerned citizen in Anchorage, Alaska led to an FBI investigation that stopped a sexual predator from victimizing children in Cambodia—and landed the offender behind bars for a lengthy sentence.

In March, a federal judge sent 45-year-old Jason Jayavarman to prison for 18 years for attempting to sexually exploit children in Cambodia over a period of years and attempting to arrange a child sex tourism trip there for himself and others.

Jayavarman’s crimes were “horrific,” said Special Agent Jolene Goeden, who investigated the case from the FBI’s Anchorage Division. In 2012, the Bureau was contacted by the Anchorage Police Department after a Crime Stoppers tip alerted the police to the possibility that Jayavarman was making frequent trips to his native Cambodia to have sex with children—an illegal act.

A preliminary investigation revealed that Jayavarman, who owned and operated a popular youth hostel in Anchorage and who has dual citizenship in the U.S. and Cambodia, had made at least a dozen such trips between 2010 and his arrest in 2013. During that time, it was later learned, he produced videos of himself having sex with a child victim.

As part of the investigation, an undercover source posed as a man interested in a child sex tourism trip. Over a period of months, Jayavarman “talked very openly about production of child pornography in Cambodia, how to smuggle that pornography back into the U.S., and about his connections in Cambodia and how he could procure young children for his friends—some as young as 12 years old,” Goeden said.

Jayavarman was arrested before he could travel overseas again, “but he had purchased his tickets along with those of the undercover source he believed would be accompanying him,” Goeden noted.

A search of Jayavarman’s house revealed child pornography, and from that evidence, investigators were able to identify one of the child victims in Cambodia. “We tracked her down in a mountain village in the middle of nowhere,” Goeden explained, “and we were able to interview her.”

Investigators learned that the victim was 14 years old when Jayavarman first began sexually abusing her. A year later he began making pornographic videos with her and ultimately recorded more than eight hours of him having sex with the girl.

After his arrest, Goeden said, Jayavarman discussed how it was common for extremely poor, young Vietnamese and Cambodian girls to be traded to traffickers by their families for food. Many are brought from their rural villages to the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, which is where Jayavarman had first met the young victim.

“He was definitely a predator,” Goeden said. During recorded conversations with the undercover source, “Jayavarman went on in detail about how to groom a child and what to do to a child,” she said. “It was incredibly graphic and very disturbing.”

Child sex tourism is a serious crime, Goeden added, “and it happens more than we realize. Some people think that what they do overseas can stay overseas, but that is not the case. The FBI is serious about stopping those who sexually exploit children, no matter where the crimes are committed.”

FBI: Long-Time Fugitive And Child Predator Neil Stammer Captured

The FBI web site offers a piece on the capture of child predator Neil Stammer.

How do you catch a fugitive who has been on the run for 14 years, has traveled extensively overseas, speaks a dozen languages, and could be anywhere in the world?

The answer to that question, as Special Agent Russ Wilson learned, is a lot of hard work—and a little bit of luck.

Neil Stammer, a talented juggler with an international reputation, was recently arrested in Nepal and returned to New Mexico to face child sex abuse charges. The events that led to his capture are a testament to good investigative work and strong partnerships, and also to the strength of the FBI’s fugitive publicity program.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/august/long-time-fugitive-neil-stammer-captured/long-time-fugitive-neil-stammer-captured?utm_campaign=email-Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=fbi-top-stories&utm_content=344044 

FBI Initiative Focuses on Child Sex Tourism

The FBI web site offers a piece on child sex tourism.

Last month, the FBI asked the public's help in a case involving a suspected serial child predator who for years taught in private international schools overseas. The suspect committed suicide after his employer saw pornographic images on his thumb drive, but as part of our subsequent investigation—when we began the process of identifying and notifying the victims shown in these images—we also asked that possible victims and others who may have information come forward, not only to aid investigators but to potentially access our victim's assistance services.

Child sex tourism—people traveling to another country specifically to engage in illegal sexual conduct with children—is a very real issue that causes devastating and long-lasting psychological and physical consequences for victims. And the problem is growing, thanks to the relative ease of international travel coupled with the popularity of the Internet in helping individuals exchange information about how and where to find child victims in foreign locations.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/may/bureau-initiative-focuses-on-child-sex-tourism 

You can also read an earlier post on the FBI and the suspected child predator noted above via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/04/fbi-help-us-catch-child-predator.html 

FBI: Help Us Catch A Child Predator

The FBI released the above photo and the below information:

The FBI is seeking the public’s help to stop a child predator.

The unidentified individual we are seeking is known only as John Doe 28. In November 2012, online video of the man engaging in sexually explicit activities with a young boy was reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), an organization that works closely with the Bureau to stop child predators.

The video contains a brief image of the alleged predator, which investigators hope will lead to his identification—and the recovery of the exploited child. “Subjects who show their faces in child pornography are not typical,” said Special Agent Karen Jurden. “It is our hope that someone will recognize this individual and come forward. We were able to recover a very clear image of John Doe 28.”

Working with NCMEC, investigators in our Violent Crimes Against Children program have enhanced other details from the video that could be clues to help identify the suspect. For example, the video shows the individual and the victim inside a residence with what appears to be a blue chair and a picture hanging on a wall in the background. Someone familiar with the house might easily recognize the chair. Also, John Doe 28 is wearing wire-framed glasses and a burgundy T-shirt with a fish logo on it.

There are no details linking the suspect to a particular area, but Jurden said investigators believe he may be a U.S. citizen because he speaks one word during the video—“careful”—which is in English.

“Sometimes we will get some type of identifier that narrows down the geographic region,” said Jurden, who has been investigating crimes against children for the last four years, “but that didn’t happen in this case. That’s why we are asking for the public’s help nationwide.”

The video is just over two minutes long and was recovered during the arrest of a San Francisco man on child pornography charges. “The video was part of his collection,” Jurden added, explaining that sexually explicit videos and images of children are often traded anonymously through online forums.

The efforts to identify and apprehend John Doe 28 are part of the FBI’s Operation Rescue Me and Endangered Child Alert Program (ECAP) initiatives and represent a longstanding partnership with NCMEC.

Operation Rescue Me identifies child victims of sexual exploitation by using sophisticated image analysis to obtain evidence. ECAP seeks public and media assistance to help identify the John and Jane Does who display their faces—and other distinguishing characteristics such as tattoos—in pornographic images and videos of children.

Since the inception of ECAP in 2004, 28 John/Jane Does have been investigated; 20 of these cases have been successfully resolved so far. These investigations have led to the identification of nearly 70 child victims.

We need your help. John Doe 28 appears to be a Caucasian male in his 30s or 40s who has a receding hairline and wears wire-framed glasses. Anyone with information should submit a tip online or call the FBI’s toll-free tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI.

“We need to identify John Doe 28,” Jurden said, “so we can make sure no harm comes to that little boy.”