Adult Web Searches High in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY - In a hypocritical twist of fate, it was reported that Utah—the state of God-fearing Mormons, Republican ideology, and famous home recipes for chocolate—may not be as upstanding as it seems. According to the FBI, Salt Lake City ranks No. 1 for Internet searches for adult-related content. During the recently held Child Abuse and Family Violence Conference, FBI Special Agent Jeff Ross noted that, according to Google statistics, searches for terms like “naked girls,” “nudity,” “strip tease,” and “pornography” are especially high among Salt Lake City residents, while the city ranks No. 2 for searches for “hot sex” and “naughty.”

Additionally, the state ranks fifth for searches for “incest”; seventh for searches on “child pornography”; eighth for searches on “sex”; and 10th for searches on “pedo” (pedophilia).

Those results are in striking contrast to the state’s other top-ranking Google search, “family values,” for which Salt Lake also is No. 2.

During a presentation he gave before a group consisting mostly of law enforcement agents, Ross noted that Utah has more computers per capita than any other state in the country. He also spoke of ways that parents can help to combat the continuing problem of child pornography, adding that people collect such content the same way they may collect baseball cards.

“If they have child pornography, they’re fantasizing about having sex with children,” Ross said. “People we arrest come from every walk of life. Homeless people, doctors. The thing they have in common is they’re sexually attracted to children. When we can arrest a homeless guy out of the library downloading child porn, that tells you how cheap it is.”