Child porn: Internet keeps hurt eternal

WALKER, Mich. (WOOD) - When State police raided a Walker man's home, they were not surprised by what they found.

The 39-year-old man had taken his defective hard drive in for repairs, and the computer technician discovered child porn -- video of a girl who appeared to be 10 and a man naked from the waist down.

The image haunted the repairman.

Was this girl still being molested? Or could this be an image taken a decade ago?

He called police.

MEGAN'S STORY

Megan has never heard of the Walker man.

She was 7 in the mid-1990s, in second- or third-grade, when another man -- Daniel Duane Brown -- started being nice to her.

Brown was in his mid-30s, a neighbor in the River Haven mobile home park in Grand Haven Township. He was a friend of the family, single, with a young son.

"He was a nice guy," Megan, now 23, told 24 Hour News 8. "He always had fun stuff that you'd want when you're a kid -- a trampoline and go-kart, and all that kind of stuff."

In fact, Brown's home became a favorite hang-out for neighborhood children in the 1990s. He gave them ice cream, took them camping, out on his boat, to Michigan's Adventure. He went on trips to Thailand, often returning with gifts for Megan -- toys and clothes.

He also kept dirty magazines and showed Megan adult movies.

The trap was set.

It wasn't long before Brown was molesting Megan and other girls in the neighborhood, and videotaping some of the attacks.

For Megan, the assaults continued for five years, ending only when she was 12, when her family moved from River Haven.

But she kept the secret.

"I was always told that I was never to tell, that what he was doing wasn't wrong, but I wasn't to tell anybody; that it was our secret," Megan said.

Megan was 13 in 1998 when federal agents launched "Operation Cheshire Cat." They arrested Brown and 106 other pedophiles in 12 countries.

They were part of a child porn ring known as the Wonderland Club. Each member had agreed to share at least 10,000 photographs or videos of child pornography through the Internet. They used KGB encryption in an attempt to stay a step ahead of police.

"One of the requirements to be in the club was...for them to produce, and they had to produce something original," said Peter Latham, the Grand Rapids-based U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent who investigated Brown. As it turned out, Megan was among several neighbor girls sexually assaulted by Brown. He also repeatedly raped a younger neighborhood girl. He is serving 25 years in federal prison for child pornography.

At first, Megan denied being assaulted.

"I felt guilty, sorry," she said. "I felt like I should have known better, and I was embarrassed, and I was hurt when I found out there were other people involved."

MEGAN IS NOT ALONE

Megan is among 1,600 Internet child porn victims identified by police across the United States through the federal Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Also among the victims is Kylie Freeman. She was 10, living in Richland, Wash., when her father -- a body-building former sheriff's deputy -- took her on an out-of-town trip to visit his mother on Mother's Day, 2000. It started then.

For nearly two years, Kenneth Freeman raped his daughter, videotaping the assaults and sending them out on the Internet.

Kylie was 16 when a scene from a movie -- Forrest Gump -- stirred memories in October 2005. She told her mother, leading to criminal charges against her father.

After her father fled to China, Kylie told her story to America's Most Wanted in December 2006, leading to his arrest in Hong Kong. He pleaded guilty in December 2008 and agreed to a 50-year prison sentence.

Still, despite the arrests and convictions, the Internet images of Megan and Kylie won't go away. And, there is nothing anybody can do about it.

The Internet movie of Megan has become known to police around the world as the "Meg" series.

Latham, the Grand Rapids ICE agent, gets a call whenever police identify Megan in a pedophile's video collection. Lately, the calls have come more frequently -- 15 to 20 a year, from places like Massachussets, Texas, Los Angeles, Japan.

Often, he is called to testify. The question is always the same: How old is the girl in the "Meg" video? Already this year, police have called him eight times, Latham said.

"Anytime those images are uncovered, she's revictimized, each and every time," Latham said. "Everyone knows the way the Internet works. This material is out there and it's never going to disappear."

Nearly a quarter of all cases investigated by the local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office involve Internet child porn.

Last month, more than a decade after the assaults, the stories of Megan and Kylie took another twist -- with a 911 call in the city of Walker.

A SECRET REVEALED

"Yes, I need somebody here at my house," the woman on the phone told a Walker police dispatcher on Feb. 20. "My husband, he just twisted by arm really bad, and we're fighting."

The husband lived in a quiet

neighborhood of $200,000 to $300,000 homes in the city of Walker -- a father, an electronics salesman, involved in his church. He had no criminal past.

But he had a terrible secret.

Last fall, his computer hard drive froze. He took it to Best Buy, but technicians couldn't fix it. He took it to a repair shop on 29th Street SE in Kentwood, which sent it to a repair man in Fennville.

Charles Warren, the repair technician, opened a folder on the hard drive. He saw enough to know.

There was a girl performing a "strip tease," and a man naked from the waist down.

"I will be forever haunted by the look on the girl's face. Forever," he said. "I will never forget it as long as I live. There was the look like the walking dead."

It was clear, he said, that the girl had given up, that she just wanted the assault to end.

Yet, he was torn. He knew a call to police would ruin a man's life.

His call in November launched a state police investigation. Troopers raided the Walker man's home in late December. From a Gateway computer in his basement, they found 101 movies with file names referring to child porn, police records show.

The man had downloaded the videos through a file-sharing program known as Limewire , according to police. Eight of the movies ended up on his external hard drive. Police also seized photographs and his collection of pornographic CDs.

At first, the man denied viewing the images. He later admitted it, though he denied producing child porn. Police said it appears he was telling the truth.

A state police lab technician in Grand Rapids found that the videos and images on the hard drive had been deleted, but she recovered them using forensic software in a folder called "New Folder," police said in a report.

State police arrested the man on Feb. 3 on charges of child sexually abusive activity and using computers to commit a crime -- both felonies with maximum prison terms of 20 years. He was released from jail while awaiting trial.

Detectives sent his collection to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The question: Could they identify any of the girls in the videos?

Last month, they did.

The man's collection included pornographic movies of Megan and Kylie.

Megan didn't know her attacks were on the Internet -- until last week. Police had told her parents years ago, but they wanted to protect her.

"That made me literally sick to my stomach, that over 10 years ago, well over 10 years ago, all this happened," Megan said. "And, it's all still out there?

"I was an innocent child. I mean, I had no idea."

Megan has undergone counseling, but her therapist was a man, and she couldn't open up, she said. It didn't help.
She is married now, 23, but still doesn't trust men. She watches her 2-year-old daughter -- closely.

"What I went through, my little girl is not going to have a chance to be affected by any of this -- not going to have a chance," she said.

"I hate Dan for doing everything he did," she said of her attacker. "And I hate the fact that this is never going to go away, and it won't ever go away. My daughter will probably learn about it. As much as I want it to go away, I know it won't."

"Sometimes, I wish the Internet would just go away."

A 911 CALL

Back in Walker, the man who lost his porn collection was now facing charges, and up to 20 years in prison. He was out of work and drinking more than usual.

On Feb. 20, came the 911 call from his wife.

"We just had the police raid our house not too long ago because he had stuff on his computer," she told the Walker dispatcher.

"That stuff on his computer, was it pornographic in nature?" the dispatcher asked.

"Yeah."

"Child?" the dispatcher asked.

"I can't find out from anybody," the wife said. "No, I don't know. I think so."

With his wife inside on the phone, he walked out to the driveway.

"Now I just heard a shot," the wife said.

THE DARKEST MOMENTS

Megan had never heard of the man from Walker. She knows nothing of his background, his family life. She knows now that he watched the darkest moments of her life -- on a computer in his basement.

And, she also knows that he took his own life -- in his driveway.

"It's nice knowing he can't go out there and do it again," she said.

TIPS TO STOP PORN

Experts say there's no way to stop the thousands of pornographic images on the Internet.But they have tips on how to protect children from predators and how to keep porn from popping up on computers.

Parents: The best defense. Communicate with your children, ask questions, get to know who your children know. If it sounds suspicious, don't let it go.

Children: Know that when anybody touches you inappropriately, it is wrong. And, if something bad happens, know that it's not your fault. Tell somebody. If they don't believe you, tell somebody else.

Computer users: Take care when using Limewire or other file-sharing programs. Pedophiles can store porn, or anything else, on your computer without your knowledge. Some recommend against using file-sharing programs