A Family Is Being Persecuted for Exposing High Ranking Pedophiles (2018)
The Great ReadFeature
Convicted of Sex Crimes, merely With No Victims
An online sting operation to catch child predators snared hundreds of men. What were they actually guilty of?
Jace Hambrick with his mother, Kathleen, earlier this yr. Like many men prosecuted in Washington State sex stings, he had no criminal history before his arrest. Credit... Jess T. Dugan for The New York Times
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Jace Hambrick worked as an apprentice laborer during the week, renovating homes around Vancouver, Wash., and at a neighborhood gas station on weekends. Much of the rest of his life was online. He was hard-core, amassing a collection of more than 200 games. People told him it wasn't smart to be and so cut off from reality, but his internet life felt rich. As a dungeon primary in Dungeons & Dragons, he controlled other players' destinies. As a video warrior, he was known online by his nom de guerre and was constantly messaging fellow gamers, particularly his best friend, Simon. Though the two had never met in person, over the terminal few years they paired up every bit teammates playing Rainbow Vi Siege and Rocket League and grew close.
At xx, Hambrick was notwithstanding living at home with his female parent to salve money for college, where he hoped to study game design. He was a voracious reader who could knock off a 1,000-folio fantasy novel in ii days. People liked him; he fabricated them laugh. When he and his mother lived in places that had board-game clubs, he was a regular. And his kindness could exist surprising. He would spend a morn handing out sandwiches to the hungry.
The trouble, he knew, was that he was a nerd. Sometimes he was too open with people. As a boy, he took medication for A.D.H.D. His female parent, Kathleen, describes him affectionately as her "introverted, sensitive, young, coddled, nerdy son." They are very close. She would prod him to get out more, just he wasn't someone who could meet women at a bar. Online, it was different. Starting when he was xviii, a few times a month, he clicked through the Casual Encounters section of Craigslist, looking for sex. In that location were so many listings, but when he tried messaging, it was rare to get a response. If people did respond, they often went dark after a few emails.
Users had to certify that they were 18 or older, but at the time Craigslist didn't verify users' age. People described their appearance in personal ads, then sent photos that didn't friction match. Some seemed to enjoy part playing. He in one case replied to a mail describing an attractive 21-twelvemonth-quondam, but when he arrived at the address she gave him, an old man answered the door. He got out of there fast. Every once in a while, information technology worked out: In the past few years, he had sex with v or half-dozen women he met this mode.
I Friday after work in February 2017, Hambrick came across a Casual Encounters "w4m" (woman searching for man) mail that seemed meant for him.
"Jus gamer gurl sittin' home on sunny day," it read. "nosotros can conversation equally long as im not lvling!"
Hambrick emailed back. "Sounds similar fun. What game yous playin?"
"i am HOOKED on Conflicting ISOLATION," Gamer Gurl replied.
"forget sex activity," Hambrick wrote. "Let me come up sentinel I haven't gottn that one yet," calculation that he was 20. 15 minutes later, Gamer Gurl replied that she was 13.
Hambrick was confused. "why did you post an advert in craigslist if your 13? You hateful 23?"
She asked for his cellphone number and they switched to texting, exchanging photos. Gamer Gurl was beautiful, he thought, if he wasn't being pranked: Big optics, cute white cap, soft smiling, gazing up at the camera serenely with a really dainty ready of headphones.
They exchanged a few texts about sex activity. "I can be real bad if your into bondage" he typed. Just he was already hoping for more than than just sex.
"I don't get out much," he texted. "I feel like if we got to talking it might become somewhere. You're beautiful and a gamer. I accept no problem hanging out with you.:)"
"that'south kewl," Gamer Gurl replied. "Wat bout that eatin out stuff :)"
"Aye, I will however do that:)"
"Oh my naughty boi."
Was this an elaborate game? Again she claimed to be 13. The photo seemed to tell a dissimilar story, and the gaming chair she was seated in looked too expensive for a kid. She used slang a 13-year-erstwhile probably wouldn't know, like "FTP" — "[expletive] the police" — that originated in '80s hip-hop. The vulgarities and snide tone seemed besides adult. Her texts were total of "lol"s. Was she an immature teenager? Or a sly developed?
Her driving directions seemed too specific for xiii.
Hambrick texted that he would be driving a cherry-red Prius — his mother'south — and Gamer Gurl replied she would exist wearing a gray sweatshirt and ripped jeans.
It was a xx-minute drive to the house in suburban Vancouver. After stopping for condoms, he arrived at seven p.chiliad., iii and a half hours afterward their first emails. She came to the door just as she'd said, in torn jeans and gray sweatshirt, as beautiful as her photograph. She didn't look 13 at all, more similar she was in her 20s.
"You made it," she called out and waved for him to follow, court documents would afterward show. When he got inside, she disappeared downward a hallway. Of a sudden two constabulary officers wearing bulletproof vests appeared from a back room, ordered him to lie on the floor and handcuffed him.
"What's going on?" Hambrick asked.
"Nosotros're gonna advise you you're nether arrest."
"OK, why?" he said.
"We'll explicate it all in just a moment," one of the officers answered.
"Is information technology possible I could talk to my mom?" he subsequently asked.
"That'southward not possible right now."
Since 2015, about 300 men in cities and towns across Washington State accept been arrested in online-predator stings, most of them run by the State Patrol and lawmaking-named Operation Net Nanny. The men range in age from 17 to 77, though near a quarter are 25 or younger. As many as ii dozen take been rounded up in a single sting and charged with attempted rape of a kid, as Jace Hambrick was, even though no actual children were involved. The emails and texts offering sex are written past hole-and-corner officers. The "girls" in the photos are not 13. They are police officers, typically the youngest women on the forcefulness.
For police enforcement, stings are an efficient way to make high-contour felony arrests and secure convictions. In June 2016, John Garden, a State Patrol detective, emailed a boyfriend trooper about joining him on a sting in Spokane. "See if you can come play" and "chat some guys in," he wrote, co-ordinate to a court filing. The conviction rate in cases that go to trial is nearly 95 per centum, though virtually don't get that far. At that place is such shame associated with a sex law-breaking, let alone a child sex crime, that a bulk of the defendants plead guilty rather than face up a jury. At least v of the men have committed suicide, including a 66-year-old defenseless in the same functioning every bit Hambrick who then fled to California. Equally the police there moved to brand the arrest, the homo shot himself in the head.
An analysis of courtroom records in Washington State stings, as well as interviews with police and prosecutors, reveals that most of the men arrested have no felony record. A potent predictor of predatory behavior is an obsession with child pornography, but at the time of their arrest, according to the State Patrol, 89 percent have none in their possession and 92 per centum have no history of violent crime. They are nonetheless sentenced, on average, to more than than six years in prison house with no adventure of parole, according to my analysis of the 271 arrests I was able to ostend. (Country police force calculate the average is just over 5 years.) Once released, the men are listed on the state's sex-offender registry for at to the lowest degree ten years — and oft for life. Well-nigh all were caught upwardly in Operation Net Nanny, although the sting in which Hambrick was arrested was a joint venture betwixt the State Patrol and the Vancouver police.
Paradigm
The men caught in these cases can wind up serving more fourth dimension than men who are convicted of sexually assaulting and raping actual children. While there are no statistics comparing sentencing amidst dissimilar states in such predator stings, Washington's criminal code has some particularly callous provisions that issue in unusually lengthy sentences. The legal standard for making an arrest in police stings is not high. Washington police force allows cloak-and-dagger officers to use "deception, trickery or artifice." They can fake sympathy or friendship. The law need only demonstrate that their target took a "substantial step" toward meeting the undercover officer. In Hambrick's case, that step was following the officeholder into the house. It can likewise be stopping to buy condoms or even just parking almost the sting business firm.
Jurors who serve in Net Nanny cases frequently express surprise that the defense doesn't argue entrapment. In fact, an entrapment defense is almost never successful in sting cases, according to Jessica Roth, a professor of criminal police force at the Benjamin North. Cardozo Schoolhouse of Police force in New York. In most criminal trials, prosecutors present their version of events, and the defense lawyer tries to poke enough holes in their account to produce reasonable dubiety in jurors' minds. Just entrapment is an affirmative defence force that effectively requires the accused to acknowledge wrongdoing ("Yeah, I wrote those texts that talk almost having sex with a xiii-yr-onetime") while at the same time arguing that he was manipulated past the police into doing something he wouldn't ordinarily practise (engage in talk about having sex with a thirteen-twelvemonth-erstwhile). In entrapment cases, the accused often take the stand to requite their side of the story, which rarely works in their favor. "Fifty-fifty the most law-abiding person, subject to cross-examination, can await unreliable," Roth says. Of the nearly 300 Washington Land sting arrests, I was able to find merely one case in which an appeals court threw out the charges on grounds of entrapment.
The Land Patrol bespeak to the conviction rate as confirmation of Net Nanny's success: "Those numbers point a well-run functioning that is legally and structurally sound and very effective in apprehending and prosecuting those intent on causing harm to children." The online stings have had widespread and positive media coverage throughout the state. News conferences are well attended. News releases are reprinted verbatim, particularly by small-town papers. A KOMO News story said the men faced kid rape charges, though the charge was actually attempted kid rape. A headline in The Lakewood Patch read, "22 Kid Sexual practice Predators Nabbed." Washington Land Patrol news releases depict the men arrested as "unsafe sexual predators," though they have yet to be bedevilled of a sex crime. Statistics provided by the state police can also be misleading, creating the impression that hundreds of children were on the verge of existence raped. When the police say half the cases of arrested men involve "children eleven years of historic period or younger," the reality is that half the fictional children in the scenarios written by the police were xi or younger.
In a December 2015 email to his superiors, a state police captain, Roger Wilbur, wrote why they should do more than stings: "Plea bargains start at 10 years in prison. Compared to other criminal cases that tin accept a year or longer, may result in a few years in prison, costs hundreds of homo-hours and nonetheless only event in a single arrest, this is a significant return on investment. Mathematically, it just costs $2,500 per abort during this performance! Considering the high level of potential offense, in that location is a meager investment that pays huge dividends."
Yet well-nigh men caught in these raids pose a low risk to the public, according to Dr. Richard Packard, a by president of the Washington Country chapter of the Association for the Handling of Sexual Abusers, and Dr. Michael O'Connell, a member of the state'due south sex-offender policy board, who take examined about three dozen men arrested in cyberstings effectually the state. They say that relatively few — maybe fifteen percentage of men they saw — pose a moderate to high risk. Many have addiction problems, endure from depression or feet, are autistic or are, as O'Connell described them to me, merely "pathetic, lonely people." He went on: "Some are in marriages where things aren't going great. They're socially inept, but this is the style of having sex and having a relationship. They're just stupid and making not very well idea out decisions. They weren't looking for kids, but in that location was this 1 advertizing that defenseless their attending." And a sizable percentage of those arrested are themselves in their belatedly teens and early on 20s and may, co-ordinate to current scientific research, exercise poor judgment because the regions of the brain that control risk taking are non yet fully adult.
During his forty-yr career, Packard has worked for both prosecutors and defense lawyers. His testimony was instrumental in preventing the release of Robert Lough, convicted of strangling and raping a woman, stabbing her a dozen times in the vagina and leaving her for expressionless. He has also washed an evaluation of Joseph Nissensohn, who murdered iii girls and is now on decease row. Packard is, in short, well acquainted with the human capacity for evil, but that is not what he says he sees in most Internet Nanny cases. "The vast majority don't need to be in prison to proceed order safe," he says.
In a national study from 2017, 87 per centum of 334 men convicted in such stings had no record of prior, concurrent or subsequent convictions — data in line with Packard and O'Connell's estimates. Currently, near 150 men convicted in Washington State stings are withal incarcerated. If the psychologists' estimates are correct, as many equally 125 of them may not be sexual deviants and pose a low hazard to the community.
Some caught in stings are violent predators. Accept Curtis Pouncy, lx, whose history of fell sexual practice crimes included raping a 13-year-old girl he picked upwards from a bus station too as a nineteen-year-one-time at knife point. In August 2018, later a long term of civil commitment, Pouncy was released under supervision and only half-dozen months later arrested in a Cyberspace Nanny sting for attempted rape of a kid. He is at present serving life in prison. The law, all the same, doesn't distinguish between the truly dangerous and the low-risk. Without alternative sentencing — which might be a mix of customs supervision past a parole officeholder, mandated therapy, a curt jail term and, in some cases, waiving the registry requirement — there is no heart basis.
In April, every bit Covid-nineteen spread through the nation's prisons, Washington'southward governor, Jay Inslee, granted early on release to some ane,100 inmates. Anyone convicted of a violent criminal offense or sexual practice offense, however, including the men doing time in Net Nanny cases, did not qualify.
After Jace Hambrick was arrested, the police checked his criminal history. He had none. He gave them permission to examine his phone for child porn. They found none. He consented to a search of his vehicle. That didn't turn up annihilation either. He waived his Miranda rights and answered all their questions.
They asked how often he masturbated and what he idea of when he did, what his fetishes were and what blazon of woman he preferred.
"My type is tall, redheaded, sophisticated, educated, bookworm, spectacles," he answered, "outdoorsy, simply non, you know, too outdoorsy."
They pressed him on why he wanted to accept sex with a 13-twelvemonth-old. He answered, repeatedly, that he didn't believe she was 13: Her picture didn't look like she was xiii; he thought she might be a grown adult female engaging in role play; people online lie all the time, so he went to run across for himself; when a woman who appeared to be in her 20s opened the door, he followed her within for sex activity.
"I do not believe that you came here to verify if this daughter was 21," the detective said. "Yous couldn't assist yourself."
"If she was 13, I was going to plough around and walk abroad," Hambrick said.
Subsequently the arrest he lost both of his jobs. During the 15 months he awaited trial, he rarely left the house. It was all but impossible to explain to people what had happened.
In May 2018, Hambrick had a demote trial and took the stand on his ain behalf. Amid the witnesses were surreptitious police for the Vancouver Constabulary Section. Detective Robert Givens, a centre-aged man, testified that he had written all the Gamer Gurl emails and texts. Officeholder Heather Janisch, dressed in her police compatible, told the court that she had posed for the photo and invited Hambrick into the house. At the fourth dimension of the photo, she testified, she was almost 24 — four years older than Hambrick.
Hambrick and his mother were so confident that he would exist acquitted that the two celebrated over java during a court recess. When the judge announced the verdict, they went numb: guilty on both counts, attempted rape of a child in the second degree and advice with a minor for immoral purposes. Based on the emails and texts, the gauge institute, "the defendant clearly expressed by words and conduct that he intended to have sex with a 13-yr-old."
Hambrick's first thought was, He'south joking. "For the first fourth dimension, it really dawned on me, I was going to prison house," he said later. "I looked around, and I saw my Aunt Maureen crying. And my Aunt Sally crying. I saw my mom crying. And I simply broke." Before beingness led away, he was permitted to give his mother a hug. She rubbed his dorsum, as if he were a little boy, their sobs filling the courtroom.
He was transported to the Clark County jail, strip-searched and dressed in an orangish jumpsuit. "I sat in the corner of the prison cell, knees to my chest, hugging them, and I couldn't stop crying."
The approximate later sentenced him to 18 months to life and a minimum of x years on the sex registry. Nether Washington constabulary, the parole board has the pick of extending the incarceration of offenders like the Cyberspace Nanny defendants indefinitely.
Inside weeks, Kathleen Hambrick, at present 55, rented her house and purchased an R.V., which she paid a family to keep parked in their lawn minutes from Washington Corrections Center in Shelton. She is fiercely protective of her son and rarely missed a visiting mean solar day. "I chose to have Jace," she says. "I was thirty, I wasn't married, I didn't have a boyfriend, so I picked a man to father a child." Kathleen has made a career as a computer programmer, a job she has been doing for 35 years and could do from the R.V. She has been married and divorced 3 times. Mother and son traveled together to Morocco, Primal America, Mexico and all over Europe. Though not religious, she preached kindness.
Subsequently Jace'due south trial, Kathleen started a blog she calls Lady Justice Myth, writing about the unfairness of the legal system, linking to court cases and news stories. Many of her weblog entries bluster against prosecutors and the police. Others beg, "Please practice not ruin my son'southward life with lifelong registration and prison." After more than two years, the blog had 141 followers. The just voice for change has come from a pocket-sized band of eye- and upper-middle-form parents of young men arrested in Net Nanny stings. They share legal information and attend the trials of 1 another'southward sons. Kathleen Hambrick met Dan Wright on a Florida website dedicated to challenging the state'south sex-offender laws. Wright, an engineer, and his wife, Joylyn, a nurse, are one of at least six families of young soldiers stationed at Joint Base of operations Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash., who were arrested in the stings. All faced discharge from the military and years in prison house.
The Wrights' son, Ezra, was a 20-year-former Army private when he was caught in a sting in 2016. "Ezra is a proficient person, but he's non a leader," his father told me. "The military needs people who are good at following." Wright followed the underground detectives' texts to the sting house and in January 2019 was convicted of attempted first-degree rape of a child.
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Citing his clean tape and military service, his lawyer asked the judge to grant him an alternative sentence that could take included suspending a prison term in favor of probation. In Washington, in that location are several criteria to qualify for an alternative sentence, and Wright easily met four: He had no previous conviction for a sexual practice crime; no previous conviction for a violent crime; the offense did not result in substantial bodily harm (in this case, no bodily impairment); he qualified for a judgement under 11 years. The stumbling cake? To be eligible for the alternative sentence, defendants must too have "an established human relationship with, or connection to, the victim."
Unfortunately for Wright, there was no victim in his case, or in whatever of these cases. In Washington, a man could exist caught fondling his niece and potentially qualify for an alternative sentence, but if he sends lewd texts to an undercover detective, he does not. The guess in Wright'southward case noted that while the law might exist problematic, it was up to the Legislature to modify it. The alternative-sentencing police was last amended in 2009, long earlier Operation Net Nanny. One high-ranking land prosecutor told me that information technology might well be that "if it was brought to the attention" of the Legislature at present, "they might do something about it." Coreen Schnepf, a county prosecutor based in Tacoma, sees information technology differently. She says people who are willing to victimize children unknown to them are more of a danger to the community than those who victimize children they know.
The Wrights are conservative, religious people. Their pastor saturday with them for part of the trial. While the jury deliberated, female parent, male parent and son waited in a nearby park. "Nosotros hugged Ezra before we went back in," his father wrote in a note to himself, "and prayed for forcefulness."
The jury found him guilty. Ezra was sentenced to 50 months to life and volition spend a minimum of x years on the sex-offender registry.
Subsequently his son's arrest, Wright scoured the internet for court records, building an Excel sheet that documents well-nigh of the nearly 300 Washington State sting cases. Wright was the first of the parents to figure out how long the average prison judgement was.
The story of how Washington toughened its torso of law targeting sex offenders goes back more than 30 years to a homo named Earl Shriner and an appalling crime. Shriner had an I.Q. in the 60s, and from a young age he exhibited the earmarks of a violent sadist. When he was xvi, the country declared him a "defective delinquent" afterward he choked a 7-year-former daughter and led authorities to the torso of a 15-year-old girl who disappeared months before and had been tied to a tree.
In 1977, Shriner was convicted of kidnapping and assaulting two teenage girls and sentenced to ten years in prison house. He once told a cellmate, according to an business relationship in The Los Angeles Times, that he fantasized virtually customizing a van with cages then he could pick up children and molest and kill them. In 1987, having served his entire sentence, he was released from prison. Some government all the same considered him as well unsafe to live in the customs and attempted to accept him confined on a locked psychiatric ward. State officials noted that he had violent fantasies and planned to behave them out. But he did not meet the legal criteria for involuntary commitment, which required a diagnosis of mental illness. Shriner went domicile and lived with his mother.
On May twenty, 1989, 7-year-old Ryan Hade was establish in Tacoma standing in the woods virtually his domicile. He was in shock, naked. Shriner had raped and choked the kid and cut off his penis.
Less than a year subsequently Shriner's arrest, in a unanimous vote, legislators passed the Community Protection Act, creating one of the first sex activity registries in the country. It included a ceremonious-commitment law that made it possible to continue offenders similar Shriner confined to a psychiatric ward even after they completed their sentences. Washington became the offset land to pass a three-strikes law, mandating life sentences later a tertiary conviction for sure felonies. A few years later, information technology was reduced to two strikes for some sex activity offenses. Over the next decade, a series of new laws and revisions to existing law significantly reduced the likelihood that sex offenders would authorize for lighter or alternative sentences. At the same time, it expanded the number of sex crimes that could effect in a life sentence. Offenders were spending more time in prison, and the number of offenders on the sex registry increased.
In Florida, sentences are frequently shorter. Peter Aiken, a Florida defense force lawyer, has represented 45 men arrested in stings. In 23 cases, he was able to get charges reduced to a non-sex law-breaking, like unauthorized use of a computer. His priority is keeping these men off the sex registry: "Once they're on the sex registry, landlords won't rent to them. They tin't get jobs. For all practical purposes, their lives are ruined."
Only a handful of people arrested in Washington sting cases accept been acquitted at trial. Prosecutors take used a criminal code that stemmed from the desire to contain an Earl Shriner to win long or even life sentences and lifetime registration for men picked up in Internet Nanny operations. Schnepf, the prosecutor in Tacoma, says that in cases involving existent children, she volition sometimes settle for a lesser plea rather than gamble further trauma by having them testify. Operation Net Nanny cases are unlike: The witnesses are all adults, more often than not undercover officers, and the evidence they collect makes it easier for her to have a case to trial and secure a longer judgement. "Where nosotros don't have a victim," Schnepf says, "it allows us to exist able to prosecute kid predators in a dissimilar fashion."
In 2017, David James Wallace of Lopez Isle, Launder., pleaded guilty to 2nd-degree rape of a child, for sexually assaulting a 13-yr-old over the course of a yr. He besides admitted, during a psychological cess, to molesting two siblings. The judge sentenced him to a minimum of vii and a one-half years. That aforementioned year, Schnepf took Kenneth Chapman of Tacoma, a 32-year-old with no previous felony convictions, to trial in a Net Nanny case. Chapman had been arrested after sending texts well-nigh having sexual activity with an 11-yr-erstwhile to an secret officer posing equally the girl's mother and then driving to the sting house. While the star prosecution witness, Sgt. Carlos Rodriguez of the Washington State Patrol, had extensive documentation of the text messages, he failed to tape phone calls with Chapman and a fundamental role of his testimony was contradicted by a fellow trooper. Yet, subsequently deliberating for only a few hours, the jury found Chapman guilty of attempted first-caste rape of a kid, attempted commercial sexual practice abuse of a pocket-sized and communicating with a minor for immoral purposes. He was sentenced to a minimum of 10 years.
Schnepf declined to comment on the Chapman case but said a 10-year sentence in these situations is appropriate. She said that the people rounded up in Internet Nanny stings were just as dangerous as the ones charged with assaulting children; they just hadn't been caught yet. Children may be afraid to speak up, she said, and when they exercise, adults often don't believe them. "When you lot look at the criminal history, it really doesn't give a full moving-picture show of who these people are." A State Patrol spokesman said in an e-mail that Performance Cyberspace Nanny represents the work of serious professionals: "Our undercover personnel must pretend to be a part of a dangerous, reckless and uncaring customs of sexual exploitation to affect legally grounded, ethically executed, and morally imperative arrests."
Rodriguez, a 27-year veteran of the Washington State Patrol, brought the thought for Operation Net Nanny to country-police officials in 2015. He wrote many of the texts used to "chat the guys in" to sting houses, scheduled stings, organized logistics and coordinated with local law enforcement. In court, he was often the main prosecution witness. He was repeatedly featured in the media and invited to speak at police-enforcement symposiums. When interviewed by reporters, Rodriguez oft struck a somber tone. In July 2016, after xiii people were arrested on charges related to attempted sexual activity crimes in stings in Spokane County, Rodriguez told a reporter, "At that place'southward actually only one way to say it: They're raping children."
1 of the reasons many of the men were arrested in sting operations in and around Tacoma was considering Rodriguez had his part at that place. "Information technology's easy for them to practice operations here," Schnepf says. The country-police officials may have approved Functioning Net Nanny, but they did not initially allocate a lot of resource to it. At outset, Rodriguez was ane of just two or three total-time detectives involved. Washington law, however, permits the country police to solicit donations to underwrite sting operations, and Rodriguez, in addition to running them, was a fund-raiser. Most donations came from local residents and were in the $25 to $100 range. But ane donor stands out. In 2015, Rodriguez approached Operation Underground Railroad, a nonprofit group based in Utah and California. O.U.R. describes itself as an anti-kid-trafficking system fabricated up of one-time "C.I.A., Navy SEALs and Special Ops operatives" who travel the globe rescuing young victims and assisting local authorities in prosecuting predators. O.U.R. has a full-time staff of 17 and claims 4,122 rescues since it was founded in 2013. Critics take described it equally a cowboy rescue operation that often takes along media, as well as celebrities — Tony Robbins, the "Walking Dead" star Laurie Holden, Chelsie Hightower of "Dancing With the Stars" — on international rescue missions. Much of the O.U.R. website is devoted to fund-raising activities: invitations to bring together the Abolitionist Club (a minimum of $v a month); a habiliment line; news of the annual golf tournament and of glory galas.
Between 2015 and 2018, O.U.R. donated more $170,000 to Washington Land Patrol'due south Net Nanny operations, co-ordinate to the most recent public tax records. The Washington State Patrol is the only country-police agency in the country that O.U.R. has given to. The O.U.R. donations paid for additional detectives, hotels, food and overtime. Rodriguez helped suit positive media coverage for the arrangement. Yet O.U.R.'s strong religious and political bent make it an odd partner for a public agency like the Washington State Patrol. The founder, Tim Ballard, who earned more than $343,000 in 2018, is a former special amanuensis for the Department of Homeland Security and a practicing Mormon. He once told a reporter that he started O.U.R. subsequently God told him, "Find the lost children."
If someone isn't "comfortable praying," he said in a 2015 interview with Foreign Policy, "they're non going to exist comfortable working with usa." In early on 2019, when Democrats in Congress were fighting President Trump's plans for a edge wall, Ballard repeatedly appeared on Fox News, including shows hosted past Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, to defend the wall as a manner to reduce sex activity trafficking, citing his experience as a former federal agent. And at a February 2019 White House conference aimed at shoring up political back up for the wall, Ballard was seated beside Trump.
In February 2016, according to a court filing, a Justice Section official cautioned members of the Cyberspace Crimes Against Children Task Force, or I.C.A.C., a national network of federal, state and local police-enforcement agencies, against "beingness involved in, assisting or supporting operations with" Ballard'southward grouping. Capt. Michael Edwards, the commander of the Washington branch of the task force, relayed the message to state and local police in an email. According to Edwards, the Justice Department official stressed that O.U.R. had no affiliation with the job force and that no task-force grouping should partner with O.U.R. or provide O.U.R. with "any resources, equipment, personnel, training."
Ballard's representatives repeatedly pressed Rodriguez for news coverage. In a 2016 email, one asked for "a more than firm commitment that we volition exist able to exercise joint news releases and media appearances." Rodriguez replied, "I do not see there being a problem whatsoever with the media." A few weeks afterwards, in an interview with The Spokesman-Review of Spokane, he urged the public to donate to O.U.R. A Justice Department official cautioned Rodriguez'south superiors, according to the court filing, but he told them he had been misquoted. If and then, he never requested a correction, says Chad Sokol, the reporter who wrote the story. In August 2019, Rodriguez was transferred to one of the State Patrol'due south aristocracy units, running the personal security detail for Gov. Jay Inslee. "Sgt. Rodriguez has performed honorably, admirably and legally in his development coordination and support of Operation Cyberspace Nanny," a patrol spokesman said in an email, adding that he gave "27 years of exemplary service to the state of Washington and to the crusade of justice."
In June, Rodriguez retired from the State Patrol and a few weeks afterwards went to work for O.U.R. every bit the domestic coordinator. O.U.R. continues to annunciate its connection to the state constabulary, posting news releases on its website that are credited to the Washington State Patrol but are actually reworked by O.U.R.'s spider web editor. They characteristic a articulation logo with the emblems for O.U.R. and West.Due south.P. linked, urging people to donate to O.U.R. An O.U.R. spokeswoman told me in an e-mail that "there was some initial caution on the part of I.C.A.C., only once they saw how O.U. R. operated, they became partners in the fight." In 2017 and 2018 O.U.R. donated more than $470,000 to the Utah branch of the federal task force.
It was not possible to independently verify O.U.R.'south merits of 4,122 rescues or the 31 by the State Patrol. The identities of children are protected in sex-offender cases. Amid the 271 Net Nanny arrests I was able to verify, all the same, none involved physical contact with a real child. Martina Vandenberg, the president of the Human Trafficking Legal Eye, a national organization that trains lawyers to provide pro bono services to victims of real-life traffickers, is critical of operations like Net Nanny. "These stings are tricking guys into showing up," she says. "Police force enforcement can get dozens like a conveyor belt, and when yous encounter who's arrested, it's kind of pathetic. In states where prosecution numbers are low for actual human being trafficking, what a godsend! Merely you have non helped release one victim or child. My feeling is they should be doing real cases with real children."
The number of men who take gone to prison, however, is measurable. Of the 193 Net Nanny cases resolved to engagement that I was able to document, 137 ended in guilty pleas. Of the 42 that went to trial, 40 resulted in convictions.
If one reason the men take guilty pleas in such cases is to avert most-certain conviction, another is the expense. Jace Hambrick's female parent spent $l,000 in legal fees, emptying her savings and borrowing from family. Brenda Chapman, whose son Kenneth received the ten-year sentence in 2017, is a manager at Boeing. While most of the men and their families rely on public defenders, she sold her Boeing stock, borrowed from her 401(k) and mortgaged her home to rent a trial lawyer, Myles Johnson, whom the judge praised for doing a great job, and a top individual appeals attorney, Jason Saunders. In March 2019, a state appeals courtroom dismissed the two nearly serious charges on which Chapman had been bedevilled, writing in their opinion that he should take been allowed to argue entrapment, a kickoff for a Net Nanny example. The judges noted that even though Chapman cut off all contact with the fictional woman proposing an incestuous run across with her fictional xi-year-former daughter, Rodriguez, who was writing the texts, kept going dorsum to try to lure him.
Chapman was released after having spent two years in prison, but the Kitsap Canton prosecutor's office said information technology would retry the instance. Afterward nine months of pretrial advocacy from the Chapmans' defense team, the prosecuting attorney's office reversed its position, agreeing to driblet the two most serious charges. The tertiary charge, however — communicating with a small for immoral purposes, which carried a 3-calendar month jail term — stands. Chapman must still register equally a sex offender for at least 10 years. To date, Brenda Chapman has spent $160,000 in legal fees.
In Washington State, new inmates carry processing papers identifying them by their crimes. Sex offenders have what are known every bit "muddied papers." They are shunned, threatened, beaten, sexually assaulted. Gang leaders make no distinction between "attempted rape" and "rape." They don't think "police sting" when they meet "attempted rape of a child." Equally new prisoners are led into the Shelton land prison, Jace Hambrick recalled, inmates lean against the gate at the front of their cells and yell. "You're hazed," he said. "You hear 'fresh meat.' They holler questions from the tiers. Information technology's like an inquisition."
When Hambrick faced the other inmates, he panicked and said he was in for "Assault 1," a mistake. His sentence wasn't long enough for an Assault 1 conviction. The other men shouted, "Suspect, suspect!"
"My cellie said, 'Is your paperwork make clean?'" Hambrick recalled. He told him he'd broken a beer bottle over a guy's head and and then stabbed him. He said that his sentence wasn't longer because of "mitigating circumstances," mentioning his A.D.H.D. The cellmate asked to come across his papers. "He said, 'The only people who don't show their papers are murderers and sex offenders; which one is it?'" This time, Hambrick told the truth, recounting the Gamer Gurl sting. "For some reason, he believed me," Hambrick said. "He understood I was an idiot, but anybody has their moments."
Hambrick acclimated. He earned a certificate in carpentry, joined the Toastmasters guild, read voraciously, played lots of Scrabble, made friends and did not become a single infraction. When a white nationalist stole his headphones, he kept placidity. His get-go Christmas in prison, he gave each homo on his tier a packet of instant coffee and two fireball candies. Last fall, he finally met his best friend of 5 years, Simon, who traveled from Indiana to visit him in prison house.
Hambrick says it was his female parent's visits that saved him. "They made the week go past fast, they made the time more than bearable. Oh, my God, without them, I probably would have got into fights, been more than agitated. Just to exist with someone you actually care most or someone merely not in prison, a connection to the outside." He went on, "My mother was the light in all the darkness."
In January this year, Hambrick was released afterwards serving almost two years, i of the lightest sentences among the 177 convictions that I was able to confirm in these cases. His mom took him to IHOP for his get-go meal as a free man. She'd bought him a new fleece coat, and he pulled off the prison sweatshirt, leaving it outside on a paper box.
"Should we donate it?" she asked.
"Someone will take it," he said.
Sure enough, when they came out after breakfast, a homeless man was wearing it. "This all right?" the human being asked.
"That's why it was at that place," Hambrick said.
The next day, he was upward well before dawn; on the tiers, the lights came upwards early on for the morning count. The start guild of business organization was checking in with his new parole officer.
As a paroled sex offender, Hambrick had a long list of restrictions. He couldn't be anywhere children congregated. No malls, no moving-picture show theaters, no ballgames. He wasn't allowed to walk the family dog in a park. He was not allowed to drink a beer, even at habitation. Earlier kickoff "romantic relationships," he has to get permission from his parole officer, and before having sexual practice, he is required to inform his partner that he is a sex offender. Each month he is required to pay a $twoscore fee to cover the cost of his parole officeholder'southward work and upwardly to $200 more than for state-mandated counseling. If he follows the rules for the next x years, he can apply to be removed from the registry.
Hambrick's appointment was for 9 a.thou., but he got there at 7:45 to be prophylactic. Subsequently, he went to the local sheriff'south role to register and exist fingerprinted. When it was his turn, he walked through a door with large black letters that read: Sex Offenders Monday to Friday.
Hambrick has appealed his convictions. In March, he enrolled in an online software-coding course. After months looking for piece of work, he was hired for a weekend laborer's job. Other than that, he rarely leaves the business firm.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/magazine/sex-offender-operation-net-nanny.html
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