St. Paul lawyer: If you even peek at kiddie porn, I'll find you and expose you
Updated: 05/26/2010 01:56:21 PM CDT
A St. Paul attorney has vowed to track down and expose people who so much as open a computer file with child pornography as part of a new initiative designed to stop the sexual exploitation of children at its source.
Jeff Anderson said he filed a civil suit in U.S. District Court this morning against former St. Paul schoolteacher and foster parent Gregg Alan Larsen and 100 as-yet-unnamed child pornography downloaders.
Larsen, 49, of Minneapolis was indicted May 19 and charged with production, distribution and possession of child porn.
"If you choose to download images of child pornography, we will find you, we will track you and we will expose you," Anderson said.
He said his office is working with police, specifically the Minnesota Internet Crimes Against Children task force, to trail the digital footprints of downloaded material ? whether it is viewed on a computer or a phone. He promised to send out press releases as the names of offenders who view and trade images are revealed and add their names to the lawsuit.
Larsen's criminal attorney, Joseph Tamburino, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are a boy, who was about 9 at the time of the 2006 abuse, and his parents. The child's mother provided daycare to Larsen's children and foster children, and the boy sometimes went swimming with Larsen and his children and spent the night at their home.
While at the home, "(Larsen) engaged the plaintiff
in sexually explicit conduct... (and) created visual depictions of the sexually explicit material," the suit alleges.
He then uploaded the images on his computer and distributed them to child porn websites.
The downloaders are people who received and viewed those images on their computers, the suit says.
"Right now, we have way too many primarily males who think there is nothing wrong with viewing pictures of child pornography," said Cordelia Anderson, a Minneapolis educator and advocate who chairs the National Coalition to Prevent Child Sexual Exploitation. She spoke at Anderson's press conference announcing his lawsuit.
"That feeds demand, and that is what we need to counter," she said.
Jeff Anderson said he is taking advantage of the federal Masha's Law, which provides that anyone who produces, distributes or downloads child pornography can be held civilly liable for damages of not less than $150,000 per download.
Child porn viewers often don't realize that their actions are not harmless and not anonymous, he said.
Police have collected information from Larsen's hard drives that will connect them to the users of the porn.
"Now we will have the ability to identify every single individual who has downloaded the image of this child or others," Anderson said.
Larsen formerly taught special education at Central High School. He resigned May 4.
Emily Gurnon can be reached at 651-228-5522. |