"We allow them to bring up any talk of sex first," says Peachtree City Police Corporal Heather Lackey.

In a miscellaneous teen chat room, Lackey logs on as a 13-year-old girl. Men, all of whom tell her they are over 18, ask for private chats.

"You can be chatting with them—which has happened, and the person was later arrested—and all of a sudden a screen will pop up to the right and it'll actually be their webcam and you're watching them masturbate or fondle themselves in front of you! It happens that quickly," Lackey says, snapping her fingers, "that a child can be exposed to a nude male or a nude female."

Within months—or even days—of his first conversations with this "girl," a man finds himself under arrest when he comes to meet the "child" for sex. Lackey remembers one encounter in a local parking lot.

"He pulled around, looked at me, and then as I walked close to the car, physically reached out and tried to get me into the car...very, very aggressive. Had I not been a police officer and I'd really been a 14-year-old girl, there's no doubt in my mind had she not been willing to have sex, she probably would have been raped," says Lackey.

On her office's "Wall of Shame" are the mug shots of the 18 men who've been arrested in these stings, the men who proposed and planned sex with a young teen girl. She remembers each case, and one by one, taps each picture with her finger, rattling off each man's profession. They are often well-educated. Several are married; some are fathers.

"Architect. Engineer. Computer salesman. Superintendent for a school district. This guy worked for a very big lighting facility--sold lighting fixtures and things of that nature. Owner of his own business. Golf pro. Youth minister. Youth minister—two of 'em. A web designer for a board of education, for a school district. This one, in school to get his Ph.D., here on a student visa going to Georgia Tech..." she continues.

Most of the suspects who pled out were sentenced to 60-120 days in a diversion center, which allows them to continue working. All go on the sex offender registry while on probation.

Some observers have criticized the police investigations as entrapment, noting that the men haven't actually touched the "child" in these cases, or for that matter, aren't actually talking to an existing child online. But Georgia's law is strict and simple. Solicit a minor—or someone you think is a minor—for sex, and you're risking jail time.

"The law that we operate under is the Computer Pornography and Child Exploitation Prevention Act of 1999," explains Peachtree City Police Chief Jim Murray. "On the computer, where a subject believes that the person that he's talking to to be under the age of 16, when they talk sexually to the child, that is the criminal violation. The meeting is just a convenience for us."

Lackey is aware of the need to make an airtight case to guard against such entrapment arguments, so she gives the men plenty of opportunity to rethink their conversations with a "child."

"They are made fully aware that the person they are talking to is a child," she says. "And when they talk about, 'Well can you meet me at 10:00 at night?' 'Well no, my bedtime's 9:30.' Tell 'em things like that, so there's never a doubt that this person they're talking to is a kid."

A lot of work goes into being able to identify the suspect to make sure he can't claim someone else was falsely using his name, e-mail account or computer to launch the chats.

"Most do send a picture. Most do exchange a phone number—they want to talk to you before they meet you. When they show up for that meet, there's no doubt that that is the person you were talking to on the other end of the computer," says Lackey.

When some chats alert police to the fact that the suspects are actively or potentially violent, or have provided pictures of themselves with other children, or authorities fear that children near the adult could be in danger, they move in to make the arrest without the convenience of having the men come to meet.

"In the school superintendent case, once we had that contact and we knew that that appointment was going to be set up, the agreement was made between us and the district attorney's office that leaving this individual in an area where he could have any contact with children would be dangerous, that we needed to go get him," says Murray.

Chief Murray has been active in each investigation and arrest, and notes that the Internet has given old pedophiles new tricks. He remembers the case of Robert Michael Tidwell, who has a 30-year-old conviction for exposing himself to a 12-year-old girl at a bus stop. In March, he was sentenced to two years in prison after his 2005 chats with Lackey, during which he exposed himself using a webcam and tutored her on how to have sex with her dog so she'd have some experience before he and she met. Tidwell, 53, also faces pending charges in Forsyth County relating to his possession of films—probably Ukranian, Murray guesses—of girls approximately nine to 11 years old, having sex.

"When you put all that together, it's very disturbing to me," Murray says. "For all these years, God knows where they were at, but he's in possession of child pornography, he's online exposing himself and committing a sexual act to what he thinks is a child. It was actually very bizarre."

Thursday, 14 December 2006
Friday: 'They All Stay With Me'