The FBI announced a new effort Wednesday to disseminate photographs of unidentified child pornographers on television and the Internet in hopes they will be recognized.
The first two suspects arrested were identified after their photos aired recently on the “America’s Most Wanted” television show. The FBI also will post images on its Web site and possibly through other TV and print media, officials said.
Stacey Bradley, a supervisory special agent in the Baltimore FBI field office, said thousands of images of unknown adults and children are found on computers, in Internet chat rooms and elsewhere during child molestation investigations.
“It’s still occurring every day to our children in the United States,” Bradley said at a news conference. “They’re all over the Internet.”
The initiative is part of the FBI’s “Innocent Images” program, which is based in the Baltimore FBI office, to combat sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. Since the program began in 1995, more than 3,000 people have been arrested.
'John Doe' indictments
What’s new about the initiative announced Wednesday is that the FBI and Justice Department are seeking “John Doe” grand jury indictments of the unidentified suspects. That has rarely been done in child exploitation cases, partly for fear that a lookalike could be mistakenly arrested.
Use of “America’s Most Wanted,” the FBI officials said, brings these suspects’ images into millions of homes.
“These people think they have had a leg up for years, that they can get away with this,” said John Walsh, host of the show. “This is the future.”
On Feb. 21, the show profiled a suspected child pornographer known only as “John Doe Jared.” He was later identified as Scott Hayden, a prisoner serving a 30-year sentence in Michigan City, Ind., for another child exploitation crime.
The second suspect’s photo aired last Saturday. Thomas Richard Evered surrendered a short time later in Missoula County, Mont., after his sister spotted him on the show, FBI officials said.
