Anyone want to complain about government intervention?
Predators who target children sexually have become the prey
BY M. DANIEL GIBBARD
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO - (KRT) - A U.S. soldier who traveled from Italy to Naperville, Ill., allegedly to have sex with a 14-year-old girl he met on the Internet, found police waiting for him instead.
A school principal from Chicago was arrested after investigators linked his credit card to child pornography Web sites. Agents who seized his home computer say they found thousands of sexually explicit pictures of children.
And in Seattle, a 69-year-old man picked up in Cambodia for having sex with two boys became the first American convicted under a new law that allows U.S. citizens to be tried for child sex crimes committed abroad.
The three men were among more than 3,200 people nabbed in the first year of Operation Predator, a federal program launched last July by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to turn child sex predators into prey.
Educators, doctors, lawyers and at least one police officer and firefighter are among those who have been stung in Chicago and the suburbs.
"A pretty good cross section of society, unfortunately," said Customs agent Ron Wolflick, the group supervisor for cybercrime investigations in Chicago.
"A few years ago you'd get recluses, people who were cut off from society, but we're seeing a change. Now we're getting doctors, which is scary. I've seen a definite increase in (arrests of) professionals with access to children."
