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

after the hard-core pedophiles."
Their work has led them to darker corners of the Internet where pedophile parents swap children with each other. To
them, the Internet is a permanent warehouse of images of anonymous children being sexually abused.
"It just eats at you every time you come across one of these videos, Forrestal said. "Who are these children?"
Three months after Suffolk officially created its computer crimes unit in May 2001, investigators received a tip that
would lead them to a web of child-swapping, and a disturbing catalog of unidentified children.
The case began with an advertisement posted by a Dix Hills man in the "babysex" chatroom seeking "fantasy chat
with dads about swapping children for sex."
Posing as a curious father with 9- and 13-year-old daughters, Forrestal found the man online on Aug. 28, 2001.
"What does it all mean?" asked Forrestal, using a fictitious screen name.
"It means I have a daughter I want to swap for fun with another on long Island NY," responded DADswapDAUliny,
with imperfect spelling.
"4 is a little young maybe," Forrestal wrote.
But the man assured Forrestal she was ready for sexual activity.In September, after further investigation, they
arrested the man and charged him with sodomy. He pleaded guilty and also implicated Wernick. The Dix Hills man
is serving an 18-year prison sentence.
Stored on his computer were encrypted conversations that led investigators to Wernick, and two other men, one
from Westchester, the other from West Virginia. Wernick spoke openly online with all three about having sex with
other people's children, said Det. Sgt. John Cowie, the commanding officer of Suffolk's Computer Crimes Section.
"We were blown away to learn that this kind of thing was going on," Cowie said.
Many cases begin with a child telling a parent about an uncomfortable encounter online.
According to Parry Aftab, an Internet attorney and child safety advocate based in Paramus, N.J., the majority of
cases go unreported because children keep encounters secret.
For cops posing as children, it can take months to learn the identity of a person in an online chatroom.
Take, PIMPOFALLPIMPS692003, who presented himself as a 21-year-old man from New Jersey. He approached
Forrestal in the "$$Girls Who Need Money$$" chatroom and was intent on turning the conversation sexual.
"So what all are u into?" he asked.
"Um stuff," Forrestal replied, before asking for PIMP's age, sex and location.
"22m," he responded in shorthand. "You?"
"13 f."
"Too old for u," replies PIMP, "or no."
PIMP could just be engaging in fantasy chat, Forrestal said. He hasn't asked to swap pictures, or asked about
meeting in person.
Without leading them on, detectives have to keep potential pedophiles talking. If not, they will quickly move on and
find another target.
With hundreds of chatrooms on Yahoo, AOL and other online service providers, and an emerging genre of Web
sites enabling teenagers to post their profiles, there are countless potential victims.
CONFIDENTIAL ---- Pandemic - Pedo & CP Report – April 17, 2005 - page 65 of 216