Disturbing insight into the world of pedophiles
Edmonton detective featured in book detailing his part in breaking global child porn ring

By ANDREW HANON, SUN MEDIA
June 2007

The Internet doesn't create pedophiles. But it sure makes life easier for them.
That's according to Montreal-based investigative journalist Julian Sher, whose new book, One Child at a Time, the Global Fight to Rescue Children from Online Predators, features Edmonton police Det. Randy Wickins and his role in taking down an international ring of sickos who collected, traded and sometimes produced child porn.
The privacy and anonymity of the Internet, Sher told Sun Media, "takes the darkness lurking inside somebody and fuels it."
The 'net provides pedophiles with what Sher terms the three As: anonymity, access and acceptance.
It can create a borderless community of pedophiles, who normalize and reinforce each other's deviant thoughts and behaviours, in some cases emboldening them to deeper and deeper depravity.
One case Sher recounts was of a middle-class North Carolina man who abused his six-year-old daughter and took photos for his online pals.
His behaviour got sicker and sicker until finally he plotted the murder of his wife and two sons, who were totally unaware of his double life.
He told the potential hit man that he could do as he pleased with the boys - kill them, sell them into slavery or keep them for his own pleasure - he didn't care.
But he insisted that his wife be tortured to death.
And, as she took her last breaths, he instructed the killer to show the woman pictures of her husband abusing their daughter. He wanted the last thing she ever saw to be the most unimaginable horror.
The man was arrested before the plan was carried out, thanks to brilliant and frantic work by police on two continents.
The book focuses on the police and the emerging techniques they use to catch these vermin.
A prime example was the 2006 arrest of Carl Treleaven, who ran a porn-sharing group out of his home in Edmonton. Cops, led by Wickins, had his home under surveillance, watching him as he worked obsessively at his computer.
They waited until Treleaven went to get a cup of coffee, then burst in, grabbed him and assumed his identity on the computer. Through this ruse, they gathered enough evidence to arrest pedophiles around the globe.
For his part, Treleaven was sentenced to three and a half years in jail in March 2006.
Sher said that cops who investigate Internet child porn pay a heavy emotional price.
"Imagine having to come to work every day and look at these pictures," he told Sun Media. "Sometimes it takes years to track these guys down, and in that time they sometimes see the same kids growing up in front of them."