Prosecutors in the Mahoning Valley are talking about the outbreak of child pornography cases cropping up in area courts.

Assistant Trumbull County Prosecutor Gabriel Wildman says there used to be a handful per year, but now he has 20 to 25 cases before him at one time.

Wildman just in the last week had started a case against a Girard man in his early 20s accused of downloading nude images of children on his electronic devices. Another case out of Southington involved both child pornography and a man’s encounters with a 15-year-old girl in Nevada. Wildman said during the arraignment of Christopher Calloway, 37, of Southington, that four flash drives of child pornography were taken from his electronic devices.

“There always seems to be one (child porn) offender just around the corner,” Wildman said recently as he walked out of a courtroom.

In Mahoning County last week, a Youngstown man was sentenced in federal court to a prison term of more than 27 years in a case that included child pornography.

Jason S. Huffman, 50, of North Hartford Avenue, pleaded guilty in April to two counts of sexual exploitation of children, two counts of transportation of visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and one count of possessing child pornography. The case originally was investigated by the Mahoning Valley Human Trafficking Task Force in February 2021. The task force was helped by the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office and the Ohio branch of a federal task force based in Cuyahoga County.

Wildman, as a member of the crimes against children task force in Trumbull County, said he often works closely with the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force based in Cuyahoga County.

According to its website, ICAC is a federal anti-crime initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

The regional group is a collaboration of city, county, state and federal law enforcement authorities across Ohio. Its mission is to identify, arrest and prosecute individuals who use the internet to lure minors into illicit sexual relationships; and/ or use the internet to produce, distribute or solicit child pornography.

The website notes that child pornography is created worldwide and is readily available on the internet to those who actively seek it. Anyone can purchase a computer, gain internet access and immediately begin collecting and distributing child pornography. Once a pedophile possesses this contraband, he or she can contact children quicklythrough social media accounts and chat rooms.

The scope of this problem is significant: The research center also found that in 2010, approximately one in every 11 children using the internet received an unwanted sexual solicitation.

ICAC COMMANDER

ICAC Statewide Commander David Frattare said looking at the numbers of tips of suspicious activity regarding child pornography, he sees a 20 percent increase from 2020 to 2021 and the trend is continuing upward this year.

“We are about to eclipse our 2021 numbers by the end of (this summer),” Frattare said.

Frattare said a lot of these child porn offenders are not true pedophiles.

“A lot of them are married and have kids themselves,” Frattare said. “So they are not necessarily preying on children.”

A typical profile for a child porn offender is difficult to pinpoint in this internet age, he said.

“We see offenders from age 18 upward to 75 to 80 years-old. The internet has definitely perpetuated this abuse, and we see the age (of the offender) get younger and younger as the access to technology increased and likewise, the amount of child exploitation material on the internet. Today, we are seeing more teens exploiting themselves.”

Frattare said his task force is one of 61 nationwide, and they all work closely with the national Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va. He said the national internet servers such as Google, Microsoft and Facebook are required by law to report any suspicious activity regarding child pornography.

These tips from the servers, and from individuals, are then forwarded to local authorities. Frattare said he works closely with 380-plus law enforcement affiliates in Ohio, including the point persons in the Mahoning and Trumbull sheriff’s offices, and the Youngstown and Warren police departments.

Frattare said he and his staff of 15 full-time investigators, prosecutors and forensic analysts also help prosecute the internet offenders in Cuyahoga County. He said those electronic devices seized in raids in the Mahoning Valley likely will be examined by forensic analysts from his staff.

“Mahoning County has some forensic capabilities, and we do have a mobile forensic vehicle that occasionally goes out to the scene of the raids to assist,” he noted.

PANDERING CASE

Another Mahoning County case recently resolved in court involved the conviction and sentencing of Jason D. Jones, 42, of North Benton West Road in Smith Township. Earlier this month, Jones was sentenced by Judge R. Scott Krichbaum to 13 to 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, child endangering, corrupting another with drugs and two counts of pandering obscenities involving a child.

Court officials said the case involved coercing a teen boy into taking obscene pictures.

“We rely heavily on the local police and prosecutors to further the cases against these child offenders, and our goal is to not only make the arrest but to identify the victims and rescue them from further exploitation.” Frattare said.

Steve Irwin, a spokesman in Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s Office, said the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation has varying involvement in these cases, “so we couldn’t speak on them at this time.”

But Irwin also said the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is a “great partner” in BCI’s investigations and sting operations involving crimes against children.

In Mahoning County, Sheriff Jerry Greene said a recently organized human trafficking task force has gone after some of those who use the internet to exploit area children.

Meanwhile some liken pornography use to the addiction caused by drug abuse.

Steve Pokorny, a graduate of Franciscan University in Steubenville who founded the faith-based ministry called “Freedom Coaching,” said he broke free from the grips of a “compulsion to pornography” through the gift of the grace of God.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church shows pornography addiction to have spiritual influences that “steals a person’s ability to love and incapacitates them from forming bonds .. with others.”

“The effects of pornography on the brain have been well documented as mirroring the effects of a physical drug problem. The chemicals stirred up in the brain radically affect the way a person sees and interacts with others,” said Pokorny, who now lives in San Antonio, Texas.

Anything but harmless, pornography use can turn into an addiction that damages or destroys relationships, ends careers, and causes major legal problems, he said.

gvogrin@tribtoday.com