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Child Porn Investigators Suffer Stiffies, ooops, sorry ....Trauma, Study Indicates

Child Porn Investigators Suffer Trauma, Study Indicates

11/03/2009   Reported By: Keith Shortall

A new University of New Hampshire study has found that some
investigators who work on child pornography cases suffer mental health
problems that influence their work and home lives.

The study by UNH's Crimes Against Children Research Center found that
being constantly exposed to disturbing images of children being
sexually victimized can take a toll. The study surveyed more than 500
investigators across the United States. It found that about half of
the participants were concerned about the psychological consequences
of exposure to child pornography.

Senior Researcher Janis Wolak says this form of stress isn't well
understood, and she says it's not clear how it might differ from
problems created by the stress of police work in general. "That really
is the big question with this issue, and it hasn't been established,"
she says. "There hasn't been any detailed research done in this area
yet. It is a relatively new problem for law enforcement because these
cases have really mushroomed over the past ten years."

Wolak says there is some concern about the special stresses created by
the sheer volume of the images that investigators are exposed to, and
by the fact that the children are often unidentified. "I think another
issue that comes up in these cases too is uncertainty about the
offenders, because police, I think, feel very responsible for keeping
the public safe, and they're dealing with offenders who clearly have a
sexual interest in children, but often in these case you don't know
whether those offenders have actually molested a child."

Wolak says questions have been raised about whether some type of
special screening might be done for those assigned to work on child
pornography investigations, but she says that's not always practical.
"A lot of law enforcement agencies, and it's certainly true in our
area of New England, are fairly small, so you screen people to be law
enforcement officers, but beyond that you don't screen them to work on
particular types of cases, and in fact when cases come up you expect
people to be able to handle them."

Wolak says she hopes that more work in this area will be funded, and
that specific guidelines can be created for law enforcement agencies
that work in child porgnography investigations. And she says research
is also needed to help investigators deal with specific problems. "For
example, the impact on people's sexual lives, because it was clear
from the small amount of research we did that some people really did
have difficulty with images from pictures they'd seen intruding into
intimate situations, so I think we really need to have some research
that will help people find solutions to those problems."

The Crimes Against Children Research Center at the UNH recently
received over $2 million in funding through the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act to further its research into Internet Crimes Against
Children.

http://www.mpbn.net/News/MaineNews/tabid/181/ctl/ViewItem/mid/3475/ItemId/9631/Default.asp
x

"some people really did have difficulty with images from pictures
they'd seen intruding into intimate situations"

;)

WM

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