Moscow detective fishes for child pornographers

Moscow Police Forensic Detective Eric Kjorness is a fisherman in a sea of cyber sexual predators. He said sometimes he can't help but feel as though he is only catching a single small fish at a time, but that won't stop him from reeling them in.

On Tuesday, Kjorness was the third guest speaker in a five-week "Stopping Sexploitation" series organized by the Rev. Dawn Beamish and the Campus Christian Center.

Kjorness is one of 4,000 officers nationwide in the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force that works to investigate and prosecute those involved in child abuse and exploitation, a crime that usually involves sharing images and video of child pornography over the internet.

In Moscow and as a detective with the Lewiston police, Kjorness said he has identified, and helped prosecute, close to 20 predators. In May he received one of only four national awards from the National Missing Children's Protection Act for his work in catching predators.

About 10 percent of victims are infants or toddlers, Kjorness said, while 14 percent are young adolescents and 76 percent are between 6 and 10 years old. He said he has only investigated male offenders but recently he has seen an increase in videos and images that show women abusing children.

There is a national database of about 4 million photos and videos of child pornography images that he uses to compare files shared with him to catch predators, he said. He has identified predators all across the state in almost every county, he said.

Unfortunately, even though Idaho has some of the steepest penalties for sex crimes involving extortion, unless the offenders are convicted at the federal level, the majority of the time they may not serve any real jail time, he said. But for him, as long as they are required to register as sex offenders, he considers prosecution a success.

He said it is not uncommon at all to find that the perpetrator was actually abused as a child themselves. He said the majority of offenders know what they are doing is wrong, and they want to get caught; the other half are in denial.

Kjorness said some critics of laws against child pornography argue the images don't hurt anyone and that pornography, even ones with minors, should not be regulated. To which, Kjorness said, images can circulate for decades and can have devastating effects.

"It's a cancer," he said.

Kjorness said in one of the Lewiston cases, he found files dating back to 1973 on the man's computer.

He said while there is no hard scientific evidence to support it, some studies indicate offenders who look at child pornography have either abused, will abuse, or have thought about sexually abusing children. Kjorness said his own experiences with suspects support this theory.

Also, he said, the requesting and sharing of nude images by phone, especially rampant among middle school and high school students, is a problem. The pressure to send them is tremendous, he said. But in too many cases, a boyfriend and girlfriend will share nude photos, then break up and one will share the photos with others or on the internet. For the victim, that can be devastating.

Kjorness played a video that detailed the experience of a girl in her freshman year of high school who committed suicide after becoming a victim of this.

Fake social media profiles are becoming more abundant as well, he said. Predators use them to get nude images of a person and then extort them for more images, or money. Kjoness said this is considered sextortion, and warned against adding anyone as a friend on social media that you don't know in person.

Kjorness said that between 2014 and 2016 the reported sextortion cases in Idaho increased 150 percent. Still many go unreported because of the shame in admitting to sending nude photos.

"There are some bad people in the world and evil does exist," Kjorness said. "But there are at least 4,000 of us out there every day working to catch them."

The fourth "sexploitaiton" lecture on pornography will be held at 6 p.m. Feb. 20 at the Campus Christian Center at the University of Idaho.

Katie Short can be reached at (208) 883-4633, or by email to kshort@dnews.com.