On August 22,2012, Robert Andrew Gozola (51,) of Minneapolis plead guilty to distributing child pornography in November of the previous year.
Today, Judge Donovan W. Frank sentenced Gozola to 20 years in federal prison, followed by a supervised release for the rest of Gozola's life.
As part of a sting operation, an undercover Minneapolis police officer conversed with Gozola online, and was subsequently sent child pornography images via the internet.
Gozola's computer was seized on January 19, 2012, revealing over 6,000 images of child pornography, including multiple images that were sadistic and masochistic.
This sting was conducted by the Minnesota Cybercrime Task Force, a coalition involving the Minneapolis Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice. This coalition is due in part to a program called "Project Safe Childhood," or "PSC." The program began in 2006 as an effort to deal with the ever increasing number of child sexual exploitation crimes. In addition to investigation and prosecution, this program also aims to educate the public in an effort to keep kids safe. For more information, see the following link.
The Justice Department is currently looking at the correlation between people who use child pornography and those who actually commit sexual acts against children. In the now famous "Butner Study" by Bourke and Hernandez, published in "The Journal of Family Violence," http://akidscoalition.com/uploads/3/0/0/8/3008529/butnerstudy_-_correlation_btwn_users_and_abusers.pdf, it was found that 80% of federal inmates who were found guilty of possessing child pornography also admitted to committing sexual acts against children. (This of course does not account for the inmates who did commit these acts but simply didn't admit it.) The study also found that contrary to prior theories regarding child sexual abuse, the inmates who did abuse children did not focus on only one gender or one age-group, but rather exhibited "crossover" in their exploitative practices. In addition, it was found that none of these practices were isolated incidents, none of these inmates violated just one child, but instead committed their crimes again and again.
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