What Do You Do when Your Husband is Busted by the FBI in an Internet Child Pornography Sting

Child pornography is nothing new. However, since the advent of the computer age illegal material that had been contained and accessible to only a few are now available to anyone with a computer or cell phone. Today you can barely go a month without hearing news of another man getting busted for the collection and exchange of child pornography over the internet.

In a report released by the Department of Justice, we learned:

"Since the Justice Department launched the Project Safe Childhood initiative in 2006, investigations and prosecutions of child exploitation crimes have increased dramatically. Unfortunately, we've also seen an historic rise in the distribution of child pornography, in the number of images being shared online and in the level of violence associated with child exploitation and sexual abuse crimes. Tragically, the only place we've seen a decrease is in the age of victims."

Attorney General, Eric Holder also outlined a three-step process designed to enable authorities to crack down on child pornography cases. These strategies include the hiring of thirty-eight new prosecutors and the establishment of a national data-base to facilitate cooperation throughout all levels of law enforcement agencies that investigate cases of child porn.

So, what do you do when your husband has been busted by the FBI in an internet child sornography sting? Well, first you go numb. Then you cry, a lot.

I will never forget that day. It was November 8, 2003. My husband and I had been together for twenty years and we finally made the leap to escape the bitter cold of Michigan. I made the move three months ahead of him. While I was establishing our new home in Florida he remained in Michigan to finalize the sale of our house and pack up the last of our belongings. I had a good job, I was living in The Sunshine State and I was happily removing wall paper in the kitchen of my new dream home. Everything was wonderful. Then the phone rang.

At first I thought it was a joke. The wife of a friend who had gone to Michigan to help drive the van to Florida was asking me what was going on. She said her husband just called from his cell phone, he was standing outside the house in Michigan and it was surrounded by police cars and FBI Agents. He was not permitted to go inside. She wanted to know what I had gotten her husband into and demanded I find out what was happening. Then she hung up.

That will be when you go numb. In those first empty seconds that come after, you can actually feel the life you had start draining from your body. Even in the heat of Florida, your skin will go cold, your fingers and toes prickling as if on the verge of frostbite. Everything goes quiet. It's a muffled, unnatural silence as if someone has just cupped their hands over your ears to help deafen you from what you do not want to hear next. Then you will feel the jolt to your chest.

I call this panic mode. It's the first moment you'll want to die in an effort to avoid the pain that's coming. But your body conspires against you, flipping the switch of some biological defibrillator, shocking you back and forcing you to stay in the hell from which you want to escape. Whrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... "Clear!"... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzap!

Reality starts to creep in. Like some sickening virus it invades your whole body. Your chest tightens, your pulse rate quickens and you start to feel faint. Nausea follows. Only then do you realize you have been holding your breath and you remember to breathe again. The alarm you feel is heightened to a terrifying state when you have children of your own. Now you must ask questions to which the answers might kill what little you have left.

In the days that follow, the foggy pieces of your nightmare will begin to take form and fall in place. I found out that my husband had been under surveillance by the FBI during his entire three months alone in Michigan. Evidence suggests he had been frequenting a certain chat room for quite some time but had only just drawn the attention of the FBI after I moved ahead to Florida. Once alone in the privacy of our near empty home, this was when he chose to strike up a chat room conversation with the wrong woman.

The name of the chat room was, "Parents of Pre-Teens Who Share". She went by the screen-name, "KittyKate", describing herself as a twenty-nine year old single mother living alone with her seven year old daughter. In reality, KittyKate was an FBI Agent sitting in front of a computer in Atlanta, Georgia.

Over the course of three months of surveillance the FBI recorded all of his internet e-mail, chat room conversations and his phone calls from both our Michigan home and the office where he worked. After they busted him on November 8^th they confiscated our computer and a notebook in which he had been keeping track of his own escapades. The notebook contained the names and contact information of his favorite fellow child porn collectors. On the computer the FBI found a hidden folder wherein he had amassed a collection of nearly three hundred child pornography photos. Some bore the images of children they estimated to be as young as five-years old.

In addition to the photos came more detailed revelations regarding his many conversations with KittyKate. Through e-mail he sent her photos from his child pornography collection along with some close-ups of his own anatomy. By phone he tried multiple times to talk KittyKate into letting him come to meet her to have sex with her and her daughter. One call he made at night instructing KittyKate to go into her daughter's bedroom as she lay sleeping and molest her for his pleasure.

You will be afraid. You will feel violated. The sense of utter betrayal and humiliation will feel unbearable. Your anger will be immeasurable. The very nature of this deviant offense will make you afraid to talk to anyone. Who would understand? Will they blame you, abandon you? The answer to all is, some.

In the aftermath of an event like this the process of emotions you will go through are not unlike the Five Stages of Grief. After the death of someone dear you will have to pass through many emotional gates. According to the famed Kubler-Ross Model, those gates are called; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. However, unlike death, crimes of a sexual nature involving children are unnatural, unacceptable. They are unforgivable. Sexual crimes involving children so go far beyond the boundaries of wrong and immoral that rapists and murderers will exact their own form of justice when the perpetrator joins them in jail. For you, just as it is when you lose someone you love, you will have to pass through the same emotional gates when someone you loved kills your soul.

Denial:

At the gate of denial you shut down, you go numb and in the silence that follows your head begins to fill with thoughts like; "This has to be a joke", "this can't be happening", and you plead to God or anyone who will hear to shake you from this horrid nightmare. But there are times when reality can be unforgiving, even brutal, especially when you refuse to accept it. No matter how strong your attempts of denial may be they are no match against the brick wall of reality. Therefore, passage through this gate will be unavoidable yet brief.

Anger:

As the inevitable evidence of truth begins to emerge you will soon be moved to stand before the anger gate. In my case, it was the painful discovery of the child pornography collection, the molestation phone conversations and his efforts to meet this woman to have sex with her and her child that lit the fire of rage. However, unlike the gate of denial, through which the unforgiving hands of reality will shove you quickly, the gate of anger is more like a maze of hallways. You will wander these lengthy, dark tunnels for a long time, searching for answers and a light at the other end. How quickly you emerge depends on how long you need, or choose to stay.

For me, anger lasted many years, primarily because my husband was permitted to remain free until determination of his sentencing. During that time, as most pedophile/child porn/sociopaths will do, he spent his free-time not making amends for his crime but in blaming others (particularly me) for its cause. The FBI, the police in Michigan and government prosecutors were simply out to get him. It was a conspiracy. He "never hurt anyone". Fabricated tales of my infidelity were used to elicit sympathy from those who never learned the truth of his crime. It was easier for most to believe that I had been involved in an affair between consensual adults than to accept that someone they trusted was a sexual pervert who had an affinity for young children. He became adept at creating a series of distractions which to this day enable him to avoid responsibility for his actions.

Anger is a natural, even reflexive, response to feelings of injustice or personal violation, In cases such as this anger is a healthy, even necessary component required for emotional survival. While our world crumbles around us, anger is what motivates us to keep moving, to endure the chaos. It drives out determination to reclaim, to take control and to restore the stability of right that some horrible wrong has kicked off balance. In cases like this there will be days where anger is your only friend. But do not be afraid. Hold the hand of your anger and let it lead you to the next gate.

Bargaining:

At the gate of bargaining you will find yourself saying strange things and making odd promises that you hope will make everything go away. At this stage we have convinced ourselves that this horror came about due to some action of our own and to change our behavior or make some other sacrifice will somehow make it right again. We start questioning our value, believing we need to alter our self to be a "better person," as though who we are had anything to do with what happened. Convinced we are guilty, we walk willingly through the gate of depression.

Depression:

For the wives left standing in the aftermath of what is left when their husband has been busted for child pornography is a very lonely place. Either immediately or in the days that pass as reality forces your friends and families through their own gates, doors will begin to close. As neighbors find out, and they will find out, you will become the subject of whispers. They will no longer wave to you but rather point at you. Conversations in which they find themselves forced to face you will be guarded and superficial, especially from parents with small children.

In your private world, the sickening virus that invaded your body begins to infect and destroy your sense of self-worth. You feel old, unattractive. You feel unclean. Just the thought of having another man touch you makes your skin crawl. You become paranoid. The sound of every siren floods your heart with fear and every time you talk on the phone you wonder if someone is still listening. You feel like you're being watched, followed. I even recall seeing one garbage bag going missing one night before the others were picked up by the morning collectors.

You will also face the uncomfortable yet inexorable moment when you must inform your employer of the events unfolding. Legal matters will require unpredictable hours and days off and you will be informed of the possibility that the press may discover the story. Fortunately for me my supervisor and the owners of the company I worked for were extremely empathetic and supportive. I will always remember one of the owners interrupting my professional and oddly emotionless outline of what was going on and the efforts I would employ to prevent the forthcoming absences from jeopardizing my job performance...

"Wait... stop," he said suddenly and he scooted his chair closer to mine. He leaned close, a total violation of standard HR Policies. "Do you mean to tell me that during the six months you've been working here, coming in early, staying late and handling everything we throw at you with a smile, you have been dealing with this?"

I went blank for a minute. I was terrified and embarrassed and not anticipating this response. The single word, "Yes," was the best I could manage.

He sat back, looked at his partner and then to my Supervisor who sat in the chair by my side. Then he said something that turned out to be the start of my healing process.

"Look," he said. "You take whatever time off you need to get through this, even if it has nothing to do with legal things. If you just wake up one morning and you just can't bring yourself to get up and deal with people, you call and we'll understand."

The dead air-time continued in my head. It took a moment to sink in. But like an injection of a much needed antibiotic his kind words began to kill the virus that had all but crippled my self-worth. I was incapable of stopping the tears that welled up in my eyes. It felt so good to be valued, to be recognized and even admired for the strength he saw in me during a time I felt nothing but weakness.

"Thank you," I said, to him as well his partner and my supervisor. "I appreciate that. But unless it is because I have to miss work because of a legal obligation I will be here early and will be staying late as always. Right now I need your respect more than I need your pity."

Acceptance:

The gate of acceptance is where healing begins. It will come, I promise. Once the dust has settled and time has passed the doors once closed by some friends, family and neighbors will begin to open again. Those who remain gone were never real in the first place. Those who remained and returned are true.

Eventually my husband went to prison. In spite of his denials and lies the evidence against him was so overwhelming he pled guilty in order to receive a lighter sentence. He served almost seven years. In the divorce settlement I took only the house, the house in which I was removing wallpaper when the phone rang to herald the destruction of the world I once knew.

For those of you who have walked the path of these five gates, although it may have felt that way, you are not alone. If you have just arrived at the first gate of denial, it may be difficult for you to believe you can emerge from this experience with a strength you never knew you had. But I promise you, you will feel empowered, able to handle anything that comes after.

Where you once assumed the loyalty of those closest to you was true, now you will be certain. Those who were simply there to take something from you will have long since departed. With those who remain you may realize the sources of support you have always but beforehand had taken for granted. You will gain a sense of independence, a realization of firm boundaries of which you will enthusiastically defend. As for your future romantic possibilities, they too will come. But I suggest you keep no secrets. When you meet someone who again makes you feel safe to love again, tell them the secret. It will be best for them to hear it from you than from someone else, especially if they have young daughters.

For those who have not had interest to read this far into this story, my guess is they have not had to face this challenge and have no interest in what it feels like. For those of you who are still reading, I imagine you are much like me when I first arrived at the gate of denial. In your search for answers and guidance in what to do and what to expect when your husband has been busted in an FBI Internet sting for child pornography, the resources are scant if any. There are support groups who meet in private, keeping you and this topic safe behind closed doors. We are the forgotten victims. It is time to come out of the shadows of shame, to find strength in our growing numbers today and to be there for those who have yet to realize they will need our guidance tomorrow. At whatever stage you are in when you came to read this story, feel free to forward your comments or questions. I will be glad to listen. In spite of the absence of resources or studies dedicated to the struggles you are going through as the wife, child family or friend of someone convicted of a child pornography crime, you are not alone.

In closing, I will offer this last thought:

I have heard that of all of the passages in the Bible the one that is most repetitious is this; "And it came to pass." Perhaps God felt a need to say "it came to pass" multiple times to remind us of something very important. No matter how bad or painful something seems in the beginning, although the effects of it may never go away, the belief that you are not strong enough to deal with it is never meant to stay.

Sources:

US Department of Justice, "The National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interation", Project Safe Childhood

Judy Bear, "Stages", Cancer Survivors.Org

Dan Savage, "Gold Star Pedophiles", The Stranger

Molly Edmunds, "How Anger Works", Discovery Fitness & Health