- PANDEMIC - Pedos & Child Porn in the News - Equal Parenting-BC

By Samuel Bruchey
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-liporn0414,0,1578807.story?coll=ny-top-headlines
The school logo on the young girl's T-shirt had been intentionally obscured.
But on her orange wristband, investigators made out the name of an amusement park chain -- the first in a series of
unlikely clues that led them to the 6-year-old girl featured in one of the most violent child porn photo collections
online, and to the North Carolina man who abused her.
That man, Brian Schellenberger, 42, pleaded guilty in January to exploitation of children and child porn charges,
and is awaiting sentencing. The girl was placed in protective custody.
But most material of this kind -- including hundreds of photos and videos allegedly downloaded and shared by
Bruce Wernick, 47, the Valley Stream man now on trial on child pornography charges in federal court in Central
Islip -- features boys and girls investigators will never identify.
"Finding these kids is somewhat comparable to looking for a needle in a haystack," said Michelle Collins, leader of
an online child abuse unit at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va.
When police solve cases, it's because they have found items in the background of child porn images that offer clues
about where and when the molestation occurred.
Electrical sockets manufactured in the United States, for example, are generally square and have three prongs. In
Europe, most are round and two-pronged, according to Ruben Rodriguez, of the federally funded nonprofit center,
which has 200 employees.
Newspapers, magazines and television advertisements reveal language. Furniture, bedspreads and clothing can
suggest geographic region, Rodriguez said.
Still, untangling riddles from undated photos is difficult and most cases go unsolved. There are more than 50,000
victims online, but fewer than 500 who have been identified, said Det. Sgt. Paul Gillespie of the Toronto police
Child Exploitation Section, which investigated Schellenberger.
One reason, Collins said, is that technology now allows people to produce and upload videos onto the Internet
without anyone seeing the content. Once online, the images are viewed by people the world over, but seldom by
anyone who might recognize the child.
As the volume of online child porn has increased, images have become more violent -- "hurt-core" is the newest
sub-genre -- and victims have gotten younger, said Austin Berglas, of the FBI's Crimes Against Children unit.
"The demand has become so great, people have become bored with the normal child rape photo," Berglas said.
Two years ago, detectives in Toronto digitally erased a young girl seen lying on a bed inside a hotel, painted over
the space where her body had been and released the picture to the public.
Within a half hour, Gillespie said, a caller told investigators that the hotel was located near Walt Disney World in
Florida. The girl, however, is still missing.
Since February of last year, the FBI has teamed up with Fox's television program "America's Most Wanted" to
identify six suspects, four of whom have been captured.
Several organizations, including Interpol in Lyon, France, the FBI and the National Center for Missing & Exploited
Children maintain databases of child porn, known victims and investigators who can testify about individual cases.
Toronto detectives started their investigation of the 6-year-old girl with only photos, many of which had been
doctored by Schellenberger to thwart investigators. After magnifying the name of the amusement park chain, they
learned the company had eight locations -- two in North Carolina.
Detectives sharpened two digits of the girl's Brownie troop number, which Schellenberger had blurred, and
discovered that several troops in that state had similar numbers.
CONFIDENTIAL ---- Pandemic - Pedo & CP Report – April 17, 2005 - page 181 of 216