Put Child Porn Suspect Pics On Net, Tube: FBI

The FBI wants to spread photographs of unidentified child porn suspects on the Internet and television, hoping someone recognizes them, after two such suspects were reportedly arrested following identification on America’s Most Wanted.

The FBI and the Justice Department are said to want “John Doe” grand jury indictments of these unidentified suspects, which is rarely done in child exploitation cases, in large part, they said, because of the concern about cases of mistaken identity.

Adult Sites Against Child Pornography executive director Joan Irvine said she hoped the new program would help stop things like a California man recently arrested for sex acts with a 2-month-old infant girl, acts he’s said to have videotaped and shown on the Internet.

“I hope that the new Innocent Images Task Force technology can prevent this from happening to another child,” she told AVN.com. “If they can provide realistic images of these criminals, we all need to participate in identifying these criminals. The Internet is a valuable communication tool.”

But she, too, warned against cases of mistaken identity, especially given that technology isn’t anything close to perfect, no matter how sophisticated. “Tech glitches and cases of mistaken identity can destroy someone’s life even if they’re innocent,” Irvine said.

FBI supervisory special agent Stacey Bradley told reporters the child porn problem online is growing, with “thousands” of images of adults and children found on computers, in chat rooms, and elsewhere in cyberspace during investigations. The new initiative of posting photos of child porn suspects is part of a program called “Innocent Images,” and is based out of the Baltimore FBI field office.

Even before adding the John Doe indictment program, Innocent Images was said to be responsible for over 3,000 arrests since it began in 1995. The two images shown on America’s Most Wanted resulted, the FBI told reporters, in the February arrests of Scott Hayden, a prisoner already doing 30 years on another child exploitation crime; and Thomas Richard Evered, who surrendered in Montana after he was identified by one of the most unimpeachable of sources: his sister.