By ERICA ESTEP
6 News Reporter
KNOXVILLE (WATE) - The National Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is in the spotlight thanks to former child victim Elizabeth Smart, and Knoxville police say they appreciate the focus.
Smart became a household name after she was kidnapped in 2002 at the age of 14, and held captive for nearly a year.
Smart is now an ABC contributor, and is speaking out for child victims of sexual abuse.
Thursday on "Good Morning America," Smart talked about her new mission. "Elizabeth Smart Foundation is really pushing to support and help the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force as much as possible," she said.
Knoxville task force investigator Tom Evans says he is pleased Smart is talking about the work he does every day.
"Anytime you draw attention to the investigations or the work that you do in protecting children and rescuing children from child predators, that's got to be a good thing," Evans said.
Smart showed a U.S. map covered with red dots on GMA, explaining the depth of the problem.
"It's taken of 500,000 cases of the worst child pornography circulated on the Internet and the darker the color is, the more, the worse it is," Smart explained to GMA Anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Evans has a similar map of Tennessee. When he clicks on Knoxville, the red dots explode like fireworks.
"Represented here is a number of individuals locally that are engaged in the trafficking of child sex abuse images or videos," he explained.
There are hundreds in Knox County alone, and the Knoxville unit works cases all over the state.
"The issue of Internet crimes against children just continues to grow, and we have said many times that if we had a hundred investigators here at our department, they could stay busy," said Knoxville Police Capt. Monty Houk.
"We have been very successful," Capt. Houk added. "Our investigators that we have here at the Knoxville Police Department are some of the most well regarded investigators, not only in the state, but in the country. They have received a lot of the state of the art training to do the investigations that they do, and we have had a lot of success in this area."
Since bad guys far out number the investigators, they prioritize the most severe cases trying to make a dent in the overwhelming problem. They are focused on the task at hand, but the nature of the crime gets to them, too.
"I think as a parent, when you see children that are being victimized, it just tears at you," said Evans. "You can't understand how an individual would look at a child in a sexual manner. So we use it as a driving force, as fuel to come in and work hard every day and do the best we can do to rescue those children and identify our suspects."
Elizabeth Smart shared a concern over federal funding being cut to programs that target child sex predators, and her efforts to keep that from happening.
Capt. Houk says in Knox County the program has continued to grow each year, and so has the funding for it.
"Funding is always a concern. However, we have been very fortunate that funding has been a priority not only at the federal level, but at the state level as well," said Houk. "Our state leaders, our legislators, have recognized this as a huge issue that continues to grow daily."
Knoxville was the first and is still the lead agency over Internet Crimes Against Children Task Forces in Tennessee, but now there are 33 affiliate agencies across the state.
Knoxville investigators help train officers all over the state, and say it helps them have more ammunition in the fight against child predators.
