Officer Surfs the Net for Sexual Predators

Sitting at his desk in the back corner of the Oxnard police station, Det. Mike Adair leans close to his computer screen to ponder the question.

“Will you be my cyberslave?”

The message is not intended for the 32-year-old detective, but for the 13-year-old girl Adair pretends to be while trolling for sex offenders on the Internet. It doesn’t take much to get their attention.

Minutes after Adair drops into a smutty chat room, his computer screen lights up with messages from anonymous older men eager to talk to a young girl. “It’s instantaneous,” Adair said. “You don’t have to type a word.”

For most people, the Internet is a tool for research and communication, but authorities warn that predators are using the same technology to seduce children and teens. And more and more law enforcement agencies are doing what Oxnard has done--set electronic traps for them.

Nationwide, about 1,500 suspects have been targeted by the FBI this year for alleged attempts to distribute child pornography online or to solicit sex from minors. That is more than double the number of cases opened last year.

In Ventura County, prosecutors have filed five felony cases in the last 10 months against defendants suspected of arranging sexual liaisons with minors or distributing child pornography over the Internet.

“I would say that we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg,” said Adair, whose undercover work led to one arrest. “It’s only going to get worse.”

So far, none of the cases filed by prosecutors has involved actual victims--a point that troubles defense attorneys who contend police are entrapping suspects. Other critics worry the police are squandering scarce resources to fight a crime with no victims.

But as more households are wired for online access, authorities say minors are placed at greater risk of being victimized by pedophiles.

And there are victims, they say. Take the case of Nicole Gutierrez, 15, of Santa Paula.

A prep-school honor student, Gutierrez vanished Sept. 12, 1998. FBI agents believe she ran away with a man she met in an online chat room for teens.

“Her mom dropped her off at her friend’s house to spend the night,” said FBI Agent Leane Blevins. “She had bags with her. She said she was going to take a walk, and she disappeared.”

Blevins and detectives with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department searched the girl’s computer and phone records, but turned up no solid leads.

“There were things we found in her room to show she was communicating with someone out of state,” Blevins said. “We followed that up vigorously.”

But Gutierrez was not with the man they suspected. Since her disappearance, Gutierrez has sent a Nevada postcard to her family and called from North Carolina. She is still considered missing.

A similar incident prompted the Oxnard Police Department to launch its one-man, cyber investigations unit a year ago--the first in Ventura County.

In April 1998, Fernando Almazan-Tirado, 35, of Oxnard flew to Grand Rapids, Mich., checked into a hotel and had sex with a 16-year-old girl he met online, authorities said. He later sent her an airline ticket to Los Angeles and the pair took off for Tijuana.

Almazan-Tirado was arrested by federal agents at a San Diego hotel months later and indicted by a grand jury for allegedly enticing a minor across state lines for sex. The girl was returned to her parents.

Although Almazan-Tirado faced up to 10 years in prison, Assistant U.S. Atty. Dick Murray said the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor when the girl refused to testify.

Almazan-Tirado later fled with the girl, Murray said. They are believed to be in Mexico.

For Oxnard police, the case was a wake-up call.

“It brought a lot of things to light,” said Det. Bruce Reed, who investigates sex crimes and remembers talking to the girl’s mother. “It was kind of frightening. She never thought having a computer in the house would lead to this.”

After that, Oxnard police assigned a detective to investigate computer crimes, including sex offenses and online scams. Adair was appointed in April.

So far, the department’s push into cyberspace has resulted in two felony convictions of men attempting to arrange sex with minors. In both cases, the minor was Adair, a square-shouldered man with a mustache, who keeps an elementary school calendar above his desk to remind him when young girls are likely to be visiting chat rooms.

For Adair, playing a 13-year-old of the opposite sex is mostly guesswork. He tries to let “Judy,” the department’s fictitious Oxnard seventh-grader who likes riding her bike, speak for herself.

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Ruben Ibarra, 32, a San Bernardino County civil engineer, was the first to take the bait. He was arrested after arranging to meet “Judy” at an Oxnard motel room.

Ibarra pleaded guilty this month to one felony count of an attempted lewd act with a child. He is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 15.

The second case involved John Simmons, 63, of Oxnard, who was arrested at a park after allegedly arranging to meet “Judy” for sex.

According to court records, Simmons, a former car dealership employee, told police he was addicted to Internet pornography and had engaged in online sex talk with other girls over the last three years.

Simmons pleaded guilty to six felony charges in August. He is serving an eight-month jail sentence and has been banned by court order from using the Internet.

Simmons’ attorney, David Shain, questioned whether police had entrapped his client. He concluded they did not, but remains troubled by the undercover tactics.

“Entrapment rules are drawn fairly narrowly,” Shain said. “It comes down to ‘was the action of law enforcement likely to cause someone to commit a crime they otherwise never would have done?’ ” Shain said that’s not an easy legal standard for the defense to overcome.

Further, Shain and other attorneys object to their clients being charged with crimes against minors who turn out to be adult detectives.

And the penalties can be severe. David Hensley, 38, a Thousand Oaks publishing company employee, is serving four years in state prison after trying to buy sex with a fictitious 13-year-old girl.

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Hensley was arrested outside a Camarillo motel after handing $350 to an undercover sheriff’s detective.

“It’s a difficult issue,” Shain said. “Obviously everyone is concerned that children are protected. But it is somewhat disquieting for a number of us that someone can be prosecuted for a crime that no one committed.”

Adair doesn’t see it that way.

If anything, he said, the tactics used by Oxnard police are conservative.

“I don’t ask them to send me child porn, and I don’t request that they drive over here and pick me up to have sex,” Adair said. “As a police department, we don’t want to put the idea of a sexual encounter in the person’s mind.”

As Adair speaks, a new message pops onto his computer screen.

“Judy” has talked with this man before and discussed a possible meeting. But the man is cautious.

There is a legal problem, remember? . . . I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to wind up in jail.

Adair chuckles.

“I bet he still continues to talk to me about sex.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Parent Tips

More than 10 million youths are now online, and the numbers are expected to quadruple in the next three years. Law enforcement officials say parental monitoring is the first line of defense in protecting children from Internet predators and offer these tips:

* Learn about the technology and available filtering and parental control devices.

* Keep the computer in a common area of the house, so parents can monitor online activity.

* Talk to kids about appropriate boundaries on the Internet, and warn them never to give out their phone number, address or other personal information in chat rooms or online bulletin boards.

* Encourage children to come forward if they encounter problems, including obscene or inappropriate material.

* Report the transmission of child pornography to online service providers and police.

Sources: FBI, Oxnard Police Department and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.