The Worst Child Pornography Offenders and How the Internet Is Hindering Police

Former federal prosecutor and child protective advocate Francey Hakes discusses some of the biggest U.S. cases involving child pornography and sexual abuse, and also outlines how the Internet is making it more difficult for law enforcement personnel to apprehend and prosecute offenders.

The conversation delves into the disturbing case of Philip Gerry, an Atlanta, Georgia man caught using a file-sharing network and possessing tens of thousands of horrifying explicit images of children being abused and involved in sex acts.

Also found at the scene of Gerry’s home were printed pamphlets on how to molest children, stories about incest and child sexual abuse, documents on how to beat law enforcement, etc. But she says the most disturbing discovery was found in the basement, and agents on the scene called her immediately to report what they’d found.

“They told me that they had found a kiln in Mr. Gerry’s basement, and they also had molds that were in the shape of baby dolls. Mr. Gerry was single, he wasn’t married and he didn’t have kids.

“He had these baby dolls that were in various states of disarray, so there were pieces of dolls, some of them were burned, charred. There were arms in one basket, legs in another basket, pieces of the doll body and the head in another basket – and there were molds to make these baby dolls.”

When asked by investigators about the baby dolls, Gerry didn’t give a direct answer, but he did admit that he was using the molds to make tofu baby dolls to eat.

“They also found in his backyard a little mound of dirt, and on the mound of dirt was a stick, with what looked like an infant shoe on top of the stick,” Hakes said, adding that police at that point became suspicious that the marking could be a child’s grave. But no body was ever found and no other evidence pointing to homicide was uncovered. Gerry ended up pleading guilty to charges of possessing child pornography and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

“It’s one of the cases that haunts me, and I’m very happy with the great work of the Homeland Security agents that they caught him, hopefully before he could engage in any even more depraved behavior than he already engaged in.”

Hakes said the Philip Gerry case also highlights the ways the Internet has made it more difficult for police investigators. The cyber world makes materials geared to child sex offenders widely available, including manuals on how to molest children, how to find children and groom them for abuse, as we as detailed instructions for criminals on how to avoid online sting operations.

“These are things that the Internet has allowed all of these offenders to share amongst themselves - and with each other - to defeat law enforcement and make it a lot harder to catch them.”

On dealing with convicted of sex crimes against children, Hakes said the top experts in the field do not believe that pedophilia can be cured - a fact that concerns her given the light sentences handed to offenders in some countries.

“That’s one of the things that is the biggest concern to me, when I look around the world and see how other court systems – England for example and the U.K. – how they treat those who trade images of child pornography, who I believe have a clear sexual interest in children. Most of the time they don’t even go to prison.”

Hakes also discusses the case of James Bartholomew Huskey, a tennis coach for young girls who was eventually apprehended through some good police work by law enforcement personnel in Maine and was convicted of sexually assaulting his own daughter.

“The child he was abusing was very close to him and he was able to have complete and total access to her,” Hakes said. “He used a clown mask sometimes when he was sexually assaulting the child – it’s very creepy, it was a very serious case, the worst images I’ve seen in any case and there were hundreds and hundreds of them, of him molesting and sexually assaulting this child.”

She said one of the most frightening parts of the case was that during a debriefing session after Huskey agreed to plead guilty, they asked him to explain why he began molesting his daughter at age 5, what was it that brought the behavior on. “He said that he had been trading child pornography with others and he’d run out of ‘fresh’ child pornography. It’s like baseball cards to these guys, they want new, they want fresh, they want the latest, sometimes they want on-demand.”

The idea was that Huskey said by abusing his own child and providing those fresh images to trade with others, he was able to get more child pornography to consume himself.

Watch the full interview to also hear Hakes outline the typical timeline for capturing and punishing offenders, and to discuss the case of Wayne Cody Morita, who was taken down by the testimony of the girl he kidnapped, brutally raped and left for dead.