New Strategy to Combat Child Exploitation

BEAUMONT — East Texas is very much part of the picture after Attorney General Eric Holder announced the release of the Department of Justice’s first ever National Strategy to Combat Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction. That’s the word from U.S. Attorney John Bales, who oversees the Eastern District of Texas. As part of the effort, the U.S. Marshals Service announced plans to launch a nationwide operation targeting the top 500 most dangerous, non-compliant sex offenders. Additionally, officials say the Justice department will create a national database to allow federal, state, tribal, local and international law enforcement partners to work more closely together on sex offender cases.

Bales says 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. The Eastern District received a position and hired Christopher T. Tortorice in December 2009 to prosecute Project Safe Childhood cases exclusively. “A fair test of the morality of any society is how that society protects its children,” said Bales. “Child pornography, child exploitation, child sex tourism are present cancers in our body politic and they are a direct threat to our children. We will not rest while our children are at risk.”

Since FY 2006, the Department of Justice has filed 8,464 Project Safe Childhood (PSC) cases against 8,637 defendants. In the Eastern District of Texas, some of those cases include:

· Albert Slatter, Jr., a 59-year-old assistant band director for the Longview ISD, was sentenced to federal prison on Apr. 29, 2010, for possessing images of child pornography on his home computer.
· Patrick Sanders, a 52-year-old man, pleaded guilty on Apr. 22, 2010, to possessing child pornography on his computer at the Boys and Girls Club in Lufkin where he was the Director. Sanders faces up to 10 years in federal prison when sentenced.
· Thomas Alvin Boyd, 43, of Tyler, was indicted on July 14, 2010, and charged with using 3 boys to create child pornography from about 2001 to 2005. If convicted, Boyd faces up to 30 years in federal prison.
· Charles Orange, 45, a convicted sex offender from Longview, was indicted on July 14, 2010, and charged with possessing, receiving and distributing child pornography. If convicted, he faces up to 40 years in federal prison.

As part of its public outreach efforts, the department re-launched http://www.ProjectSafeChildhood.gov, the Project Safe Childhood (PSC) public website. Officials say PSC is a department initiative launched in 2006 that aims to combat the proliferation of technology-facilitated sexual exploitation crimes against children.