GBI: Child porn 'major problem' in Ga.

ATLANTA - A GBI agent says child pornography is a "major problem" in Georgia.

John Whitaker made that assessment in an update Thursday on the massive child porn crackdown this week that has now resulted in 53 arrests all across Georgia as a result of 80 raids during which nearly 300 computers were seized in what is being described as an all-out effort to stifle the illegal business.

The statewide bust called Operation Restore Hope began Tuesday, the culmination of a three-month effort to track the spread of online child pornography. It is a follow-up to an operation last year in which 27 people were arrested and more than 100 computers seized.

It homed in on computer users who share child pornography online for free, using peer-to-peer software, said Whitaker, who led the operation.

His office has so far pinpointed 50,000 separate IP addresses - the Web equivalent of a street address or phone number - that are trading child pornography. He said Georgia's tally is the fifth-highest number in the nation.

"Even though we have other problems in Georgia, this is a major problem here compared with other states," said Whitaker. "And we're trying our best to move forward with this operation with as many resources as we have."

The operation involved 24 local agencies (including, in the Gainesville area, the Gwinnett County Police Department and the Hall and Forsyth county sheriff's departments), federal prosecutors offices and the state Attorney General's Office. It also included the FBI, the U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Postal Service.

The arrests spanned the state. In southeast Georgia's Effingham County, for instance, two suspects were arrested on child pornography charges. And authorities in west Georgia's Paulding County said the sting netted them two arrests as well.

Two of the raids were in Hall County, according to Mike Ayers, the agent in charge of the Cleveland GBI office, who appeared on WDUN NEWS TALK 550's The Local Hour Thursday. The names of the suspects have not been released because, Ayers said, not charges have been filed pending an analysis of the information on the computers that were sized.

Whitaker said one of the more disturbing cases was in DeKalb County, where authorities found a child who said she had been sexually abused for the last eight years. The suspect, John Kemker, was charged with child sexual exploitation, incest and aggravated child molestation, DeKalb County Police spokeswoman Mekka Parish said.

State investigators, meanwhile, are already beginning to shift their focus to the next raid.

"It took us three months to gather our target list and now we're moving forward," Whitaker said. "We're going to wrap this one up and we'll start right on another one."

(AccessNorthGa.com's Ken Stanford contributed to this story.)