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Children not always 'pure'

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The FBI calls its anti-child pornography unit in Baltimore "Innocent Images."

That name, says retired agent Ken Lanning, is a misnomer because it feeds a common public perception of children as wholly innocent creatures.

"This kind of rhetoric is damaging," Lanning, a nationally recognized expert on crimes against children, said yesterday during a child porn seminar at Mercy Hospital. "The idealization of children denies the humanity of children. We think of them as little angels. It makes us feel warm and fuzzy. So when we find children who have the nerve to behave like human beings, we hold it against them."

Lanning, a consultant who spent 20 years with the Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., was the main speaker at a program called "Child Pornography in America," sponsored by Mercy for pediatricians, social workers, prosecutors and police. Mercy Hospital is a member of the Western Pennsylvania Crimes Against Children Task Force spearheaded by the U.S. attorney's office.

Lanning is known for being outspoken, and he didn't disappoint.

He gave an overview of the phenomenon of child porn that delved beneath the stereotypical image of creepy predators preying on sweet little kids. That kind of abuse certainly goes on, he said, but most child porn cases are more complex.

While the public perceives the typical victim of child porn as a sad 5-year-old girl holding a teddy bear, Lanning said, "the more typical case is a 12-year-old boy with a smile on his face."

He said adults have to realize that children, particularly early adolescents, are sexually developing young people with raging hormones who are often compliant with an adult who intends to use them for his own gratification. With computers so prevalent in the home, sex is everywhere online and many children are actively seeking it out.

Lanning said, for example, that by mistakenly typing in the Web address for a popular subject like the White House, kids can access a porn site. Many youths already know about the site because their friends have told them about it, he added.

"A lot of these kids are going online to find sex. They didn't go online to find the capital of Ethiopia. They're looking for sex. That's the reality."

After his lecture, Lanning said the local case of 13-year-old Alicia Kozakiewicz of Crafton Heights is an example of how the adult world is often misguided about children's emerging sexuality.

Scott Tyree is accused of enticing the girl online for sex, then traveling to pick her up and taking her to his home in Virginia. Federal agents found her restrained in his bedroom. Court records indicate he made a videotape of her engaging in sexual conduct.

The extent to which she may have cooperated hasn't been revealed, but she and Tyree had an online relationship and she posted pictures of herself on her own Web site.

Lanning, who lives in Virginia, followed the case in the Washington, D.C. media. He said when it first surfaced, the media portrayed it as an innocent victim kidnapped by a predator. By the end of the week, he said, the pendulum had swung the other way.

"But she was the same on Monday as she was on Friday," Lanning said.

Only the adult perception of her had changed.

Lanning said the case apparently fits the scenario of many such "traveler" cases in which the victims are at least partially compliant.

But, he said, they are still victims.