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Department of Justice Releases First National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction

U.S. Attorney’s Office August 02, 2010
  • District of New Jersey (973) 645-2888

NEWARK, NJ—Following an announcement earlier today by Attorney General Eric Holder, Paul J. Fishman, United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, reiterated his office’s commitment to the Department of Justice’s newly released National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction. The strategy provides the first ever comprehensive threat assessment of the dangers facing children from child pornography, online enticement, child sex tourism, commercial sexual exploitation, and sexual exploitation in Indian Country, and outlines a blueprint to strengthen the fight against these crimes. The strategy builds upon the department’s accomplishments in combating child exploitation by establishing specific, aggressive goals and priorities and increasing cooperation and collaboration at all levels of government and the private sector.

As part of the overall strategy, the U.S. Marshals Service is launching a nationwide operation targeting the top 500 most dangerous, non-compliant sex offenders in the nation. Additionally, the department will create a national database to allow federal, state, tribal, local, and international law enforcement partners to deconflict their cases with each other, engage in undercover operations from a portal facilitated or hosted by the database, share information and intelligence, and conduct analysis on dangerous offenders and future threats and trends. The department also created 38 additional Assistant U.S. Attorney positions to devote to child exploitation cases, and over the coming months will work to fill the vacancies and train the new assistants in this specialized area.

“Although we’ve made meaningful progress in protecting children across the country, and although we’ve brought a record number of offenders to justice in recent years, it is time to renew our commitment to this work. It is time to intensify our efforts,” said Attorney General Holder. “This new strategy provides the roadmap necessary to do just that—to streamline our education, prevention, and prosecution activities; to improve information sharing and collaboration; and to make the most effective use of limited resources. Together, we are sending an important message—that the U.S. government, and our nation’s Department of Justice, has never been more committed to protecting our children and to bringing offenders to justice.” United States Attorney Paul J. Fishman said, “This type of predatory activity justifiably outrages ordinary citizens and those of us in law enforcement in equal measure. As developments in technology have made it easier and faster for those who prey on children to find one another and potential victims, this strategy advances our ability to stay ahead of those determined to exploit the defenseless. There is nothing as important as the preservation of the safety and the innocence of our children.”

The strategy first analyzed the threat to our nation’s children and described the current efforts at all levels of the government against this threat. Since FY 2006, the Department of Justice has filed 8,464 Project Safe Childhood (PSC) cases against 8,637 defendants. PSC is a department initiative launched in 2006 that aims to combat the proliferation of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation crimes against children. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, PSC marshals federal, state, tribal, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. These cases include prosecutions of online enticement of children to engage in sexual activity; interstate transportation of children to engage in sexual activity; production, distribution, and possession of child pornography; and other offenses. In the District of New Jersey, at least 196 PSC cases have been filed against at least 204 defendants.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey is a leader in the prosecution of child exploitation cases, building cases not only against offenders within the district, but also initiating prosecutions that have nationwide and international reach. In pursuit of these cases, the office has worked closely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the United States Postal Inspection Service, and the United States Secret Service.

An example of a recent case with international import was the office’s successful prosecution, developed with ICE in Newark, of John Wrenshall, Wayne Nelson Corliss, and others for their roles in a child sex tourism ring. Wrenshall, who pleaded guilty in May 2010 to inviting adults to travel to his home in Thailand in order to abuse young boys, admitted that from at least as early as January 2000, he arranged trips to his home during which U.S. citizens and others paid him to engage in anal sex, oral sex, and other sexual acts with Thai boys, some as young as 4 years old. Wrenshall’s customers were allowed to videotape and photograph their abuse. Wrenshall also personally victimized the boys in order to “train” them for his paying customers.

Corliss, formerly of Union City, New Jersey, was the first of Wrenshall’s clients identified by law enforcement officers. In May 2008, Interpol released a sanitized photograph of a man sexually abusing young Thai boys to media outlets in the United States and abroad, and made a global appeal for information that could identify the offender depicted in the photo. Within 48 hours, and acting on information obtained from individuals who recognized the offender as Corliss, ICE, coordinating with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey and the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), located and arrested Corliss in Union City, New Jersey. Corliss, a local theater actor, had made seasonal appearances as an area Santa Claus.

Three of Wrenshall’s U.S. clients—Corliss, Burgess Lee Burgess, and Mitchell Kent Jackson—have already pleaded guilty and been sentenced on sex tourism and related charges. On November 19, 2009, Corliss was sentenced in the District of New Jersey by United States District Judge Joseph A. Greenaway Jr. to 20 years in prison. The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey referred Burgess and Jackson to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Alabama for prosecution. Each were sentenced by United States District Judge Kristi Dubose to 78 months in prison. Wrenshall awaits sentencing.

In just the past few months, this Office has also secured a number of guilty pleas from possessors of child pornography, including Everett Abney, a former New Jersey Little League coach, and Ronald Scull, a former Roselle Park, New Jersey police sergeant. Also, former school bus driver William C. Murphy was sentenced to three years in prison. Carl Timm, a Bridgeton, New Jersey man, was arrested in May for allegedly distributing child pornography over the Internet; tapes seized from his residence included a depiction of Timm fondling a pre-pubescent girl. A fact sheet highlighting developments in recent prosecutions is attached to this release. Despite successes in the fight against all aspects of child exploitation, the Department of Justice recognizes that more work remains to be done. To that end, the department’s strategy lays out goals to increase coordination among the nation’s investigators, better train investigators and prosecutors, advance law enforcement’s technological capabilities and enhance research to inform decisions on deterrence, incarceration and monitoring. The strategy also includes a renewed commitment to public awareness and community outreach.

As part of its public outreach efforts, the department is re-launching ProjectSafeChildhood.gov, PSC’s public website.

For more information regarding the National Strategy to Combat Child Exploitation, Prevention and Interdiction, please visit: www.projectsafechildhood.gov/docs/natstrategyreport.pdf.

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