Task force in Kane County working to combat child pornography, online exploitation of children
A task force created by the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Kane County Sheriff’s Office is working to combat what officials said is a “growing proliferation of child pornography and the online sexual exploitation of children.”
The task force was created in August 2022 after officials said that many tips involving the possible exploitation of children were not being investigated because of a lack of resources at most police agencies in the county.
After receiving an increase in funding from the Kane County Board, the task force, named the Child Exploitation Unit, has hired two specialized investigators and a computer forensics expert to help quickly analyze electronic devices for evidence of child pornography and other crimes.
Since August 2022, the Child Exploitation Unit has investigated 187 tips, created 55 criminal case investigations, served 91 search warrants, identified approximately 40 victims and arrested nine adult offenders, officials said.
“It’s important to note these are not victimless crimes and people forget that in order to do this, a child was abused,” Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser said. “This is why we’ve dedicated our resources to making sure the most vulnerable in our community are safe from these predators.”
From January through May in 2021, 48,000 images or videos of child pornography were downloaded in the county, prosecutor Bob Dore said.
Dore, an attorney with years of experience prosecuting internet crimes against children, came out of retirement to join the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office in 2021 to help with these cases.
He was tasked to figure out how more cases could be investigated and asked the DuPage County Sheriff’s Forensic Investigative Unit to look at data from the top five internet providers to see which cities in Kane County have the most activity concerning online child pornography. To Dore’s surprise, he said the Tri-Cities area, including St. Charles and Geneva, had the most activity in the county, rather than the much larger cities of Aurora and Elgin.
Elgin police have a very active unit investigating these types of cases and Aurora police have a forensic examiner tackling them as well, Dore said.
The county’s Child Exploitation Unit is housed inside the Kane County Sheriff’s Office and also uses the St. Charles Police Department’s cyber lab. Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain has also dedicated some investigators from the sheriff’s office to aid in the unit’s investigations.
Officials said an example of the cases being worked on by the task force involves a man from an unincorporated area near Elburn, who now faces federal charges of sexually exploiting children after the task force arrested him in December 2022.
Shaun W. Healy, 42, is accused of posing as a 13-year-old girl on Snapchat and contacting girls to obtain sexually explicit photos and videos, according to court documents.
In two of the cases, Healy is accused of threatening to publicize the images if the girls did not continue to send him photos of themselves, documents allege.
Alleged victims in the case have been found in the United States, Canada and England, officials said. Healy is due in federal court on Wednesday.
