The number of child-abusing predators in Wyoming continues to grow as tips to law enforcement and arrests continue to mount.
Chris McDonald, commander of the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, told Cowboy State Daily that he and his team have never been busier.
In 2023, arrests increased by 45% compared to the previous year. Last year, the agency received 817 tips and made 58 arrests. In 2022, McDonald’s staff received 783 tips, resulting in the arrest of 40 suspects.
These tips come from a variety of sources, including social media platforms, gaming sites, internet platforms, and reporting agencies like the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
So far in 2024, the agency has seen a 60% jump in the number of tips reported in the first three months of the year, with 256 tips reported compared with 160 in the same period last year.
Despite the increase in tips, McDonald said his team is doing a good job due to efficiency and skill.
In addition to himself, the ICAC team includes six full-time investigators, one forensic investigator, one part-time investigator, and a network of affiliates across the state that are aligned with the agency’s mission.
“We’ve never been busier,” McDonald told Cowboy State Daily, “but we have a truly talented staff with the perfect combination of experience and enthusiasm.”
That includes young, talented investigators and the former head of the Independent Commission Against Corruption from Montana, McDonald said.
repeat offender
What’s most troubling to McDonald’s is the trend of repeat offenders over the past year.
“I’m not sure why that is, but it’s really concerning for us because we have people who are already on the sex registry who are re-offending and the recidivism rate is quite high,” he said.
He and his team have no answer as to why, except that sometimes perpetrators are trained to become better predators.
He also wants to see more consistency in sentencing between state and federal courts, especially in cases involving suspects traveling or attempting to have sex with children.
Under the Child Sexual Exploitation Act passed by the Wyoming Legislature in 1999, offenders who commit sex crimes against children under 18 may be punished by up to 12 years in prison, a $10,000 fine, or both.
By comparison, federal law is much stricter, he said, pointing to the conviction of the 29-year-old Cheyenne resident Cody Lee FosterIn March, he was sentenced to 60 years in prison for raping a child and possessing pornographic videos depicting young children and babies.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, under federal statutes, first-time offenders who produce child pornography face at least 15 to 30 years in prison.
native
Also disturbing to MacDonald is the number of crimes committed against children by family members or friends. He said that so far this year, his team has seen several cases of child pornography produced by Wyoming people who exploited Wyoming children.
This requires images and videos of child sexual exploitation to be taken and traded on the internet and dark web.
“There’s a lot of content distributed and available,” he said. “It’s hard to keep up with, it’s like the worst game of whack-a-mole ever.”
On a positive note, the number of teens experiencing sextortion appears to be declining. Sextortion occurs when a predator tricks a teen, often pretending to be a teen of the opposite sex, into sending sexually explicit videos and images and then demands money not to share the content with family and friends.
McDonald attributes this to public awareness and the fact that teenagers seem to be becoming more aware of these types of phishing scams.
Are teenagers smarter?
Part of the National ICAC’s mission is to educate parents and youth, and MacDonald and his team educate students and parents about the dangers of online predation and other topics.
Terri Markham, executive director of Sheridan Human Trafficking Nonprofit uprising The group, which provides education and training to teens, parents, law enforcement, first responders and others, said it has also seen a drop in the number of teens being approached by strangers online in ways that make them uncomfortable.
At a recent student training in Green River, Markham said fewer teens are disclosing uncomfortable conflicts, which she hopes means teens are getting smarter about sextortion.
That said, the high number of whistleblowers reported illustrates an ongoing problem that Markham describes as “shooting fish in a barrel.”
family trafficking
Markham noted that McDonald and his team are working hard to combat the ongoing torrent and warned against panicking about the high rates of reports and arrests. In her view, this means the ICAC has become more effective at catching these predators, including having better technology to do so.
“I can’t say enough good things about Chris and his team,” Markham said. “They’re like a well-oiled machine and they’re getting better and better at catching it.”
She also said that based on her personal experience, the crux of Wyoming’s sex trafficking problem remains familial, although there’s no hard data to support that.
“What I found was across the board, although it was usually the parents who were exploiting their children,” she said. “I think the two main reasons are either money or drugs.”
She said they were either trying to find the next solution or trying to put food on the table for their families.
This type of trafficking is particularly difficult to catch given the complex relationships between family members and the many ways these children may be exploited without disclosing it to friends, teachers or the police.
She praised MacDonald and his team for the “hard work” they do to catch the predators, and said her team regularly sends them gift baskets with handwritten notes to let them know how grateful they are.
grew up on pornography
In terms of addressing the broader issues of sex trafficking and crimes against children, Markham believes it boils down to a larger social problem, namely the rampant prevalence of pornography that is easily accessible to children of all ages on the internet.
“No one wants to talk about it, but I feel like that’s where the demand comes from, and if we can suppress the demand we won’t have a problem because there won’t be traffickers trying to meet that demand,” she said.
The numbers are shocking, she said, citing a recent survey by Cultural Reconstruction, a national nonprofit that provides educational resources to parents about the sexual harms of pornography to children and teens.
The survey shows that the average age of most teenagers’ exposure to pornography is 12 years old, and another 15% of children aged 10 and under are exposed to pornography for the first time.
Markham said this exposure not only teaches them that violence is a healthy part of sexual behavior and leads to many other emotional and developmental problems, but it can also lead to porn addiction and, in many cases, to purchasing sex in person.
In her conversations with sex buyers, each one without exception admitted to having a porn addiction, many of whom had been addicted since childhood.
“This is one of the most taboo topics that parents and adults are afraid to talk to their children about because it’s weird and uncomfortable,” she said.
She knows this firsthand as a mother of three daughters with whom she has to have these uncomfortable conversations.
She encourages parents and guardians to visit the following websites for curriculum and training materials: cultural reconstruction Start talking to your children before they are exposed to pornography for the first time.
More Human Trafficking Training
Uprising will also host the third annual Greater Rockies Exploitation and Trafficking Immersion Training (GRIT) Meeting May 6-8 in Laramie. This year’s theme will be labor trafficking, which Markham said is a growing problem across the state.
The meeting is open to anyone in the community who may be involved in identifying or responding to human trafficking cases, including members of community task forces, church groups and other professionals.