After a two-month operation, the GBI announced Monday the arrest of six men in three metro Atlanta counties who have been charged with crimes related to the possession and distribution of child pornography.
The state agency, through the Georgia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC), received more than 11,600 cyber tips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 2020. With cyber tips increasing exponentially each year, the GBI expects to receive more than 15,000 cyber tips in 2021, spokeswoman Natalie Ammons said.
Although the operation went on for two months, it was during the span of four days that authorities obtained search warrants, knocked on doors, conducted interviews, analyzed data and images, ran digital forensic processing and eventually made the six arrests: food service worker William Calvin Babb, 20, of Hampton; butcher William Anderson, 55, of Porterdale; security guard Earon Everett, 42, Jonesboro; industrial mechanic David Hawkins Sr., 57, of Social Circle; food service worker William Tornez Lucena, 20, of East Point; and Julio Cesar Rangal-Caston, 33, of Riverdale.
The arrests were made after the investigation of numerous cyber tips from the NCMEC. Those tips involved the possession and distribution of child pornography, which resulted in the arrests in Newton, Clayton and Fulton counties.
Credit: GBI
Credit: GBI
During the operation, 10 search warrants were obtained, which resulted in 101 digital devices being viewed by GBI investigators, Ammons said. At least 17 of those were taken as evidence and 33 of those viewed were mobile phones.
“Investigators who work child exploitation investigations are increasingly seeing more mobile phones as the main instrument by which predators seek out child sexual abuse material and communicate with others who are like-minded,” Ammons said.
Mobile devices are also being more commonly used to contact children online. One man arrested was found to have been chatting online with children as young as 9 years old, Ammons said.
Ammons pointed out that there is a statistical correlation between those who are viewing child pornography and those who were sexually abused as children or are actively sexually abusing children. Crunching the numbers, Ammons said that in 2020, the Georgia ICAC Task Force found more than 90 children living with offenders who were viewing child pornography. Fifty of those were victims of sexual abuse by those offenders, Ammons added.
“We will continue to work with our partners across the state and the country to find, investigate and prosecute these predators and rescue children who are being abused,” said Debbie Garner, the GBI’s commander of the Georgia ICAC Task Force.
The task force made 307 arrests in 2018, 474 arrests in 2019 and 396 arrests in 2020.
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