Taking down the most despised

A four-person team of SA cops investigates serious sex crimes against children. But that job – with the Child Exploitation Section – can leave officers with some of the most painful images in policing.

Detective Wally Conte once watched a videotape in which a merciless paedophile brutalized a defenceless little girl of about three on a bed. He had seen footage as horrific as that before – it was all part of his job as a Child Exploitation Section investigator. And, as a seasoned professional, he had always managed to respond with dispassion. This time, however, was different.

In the agonized face of the little girl, he could see his own then three-year-old daughter. She bore a striking resemblance to the child whose tragic image had broken through Conte’s emotional defences.

“I really felt like grabbing the computer terminal and just tossing it out onto Wakefield St,” he says. “But, you get the good and the bad and, regardless of how dispassionate you might consider yourself, it (the bad) sometimes gets through.”

Conte, 42, might have had a rare momentary battle with emotion, but he stayed focussed and professional. That, his job required of him; and, in reality, he and his small band of specialist colleagues have seen even worse images.

Detective Sergeant Peter Rodney, a father, speaks of seized child pornography that shows the sexual penetration of 12-month-old babies. But what image rates as the worst the Child Exploitation office has ever seen? Rodney, 49, and field intelligence officer, Michelle Bowe, 35, agree that it came on one particularly graphic set of CDs.

British police had discovered the CDs, onto which a paedophile had burnt the videotaped abuse of a young girl in Australia. No one had, until then, identified the abuser, victim or location.

So, after the CDs arrived at the Child Exploitation office in Adelaide, Rodney and his team had to make a thorough study of them. They saw a paedophile – who Rodney quietly describes as an “animal” and “absolute grub” – commit sexual abuse “in every sense imaginable” on a girl of about six.

As part of his brutality against the girl, he used a hypodermic syringe to inject a substance into her buttocks. “This little girl was screaming from the pain,” says Bowe, a mother of two. “He was saying: ‘I know this hurts, but I’m not going to apologize’.

“He had set up a video-TV in front of her and a TV behind, so she could actually see what he was doing to her. You could hear these squeals, and that’s what was really emotive about it.”

Rodney, too, remembers how the child sobbed “in extreme pain”. “It was very disturbing,” he says, “very disturbing. We agreed that it was probably the worst image of child abuse we’d seen in our whole lives. It will always stay in my mind.”

These aspects of the job – that occur in a Wakefield St office attached to the Major Crime Section – are clearly tough. But the work of the Child Exploitation Section’s investigators and intelligence officers comes with no less anguish in the field.

When evidence emerged of the sexual abuse of two pre-teen Australian boys on holiday overseas, Rodney had to break the news to their parents. From the boys’ father came tears and anger. He wanted to kill the offender.

The mother, too, felt anger, but also guilt. She had taken the trip with her boys, whom she felt she had let down by her failure to recognize signs of their suffering. As well, the abuser was a close family-friend.

Says Rodney: “We took statements from the family and did the investigation. They were absolutely traumatized by the whole thing: the boys having not told their parents and, then, suddenly having the police on their doorstep, saying: ‘We think this has happened’.”

In a case last year, Bowe accompanied Conte and others to the Fullarton home of a paedophile. The officers knew of his liking for bondage and had evidence that he had abused a mentally disabled boy.

Bowe’s purpose was to help search for other evidence of his atrocities, and gather intelligence. She noticed a bag, reached into it and felt that something had pierced her thumb.

Then, from the bag, she drew a heavily blood-stained length of leather, filled with thumbtacks. One of the tacks had indeed pierced her thumb. It later emerged that the paedophile used the device to wrap around his penis, which, when it became erect, the tacks would penetrate.

“We were all standing around,” says Bowe, “and it was like Silence of the Lambs. This horrible thing was covered in blood and had just gone through my thumb.”

Bowe underwent a blood test, but would not know for six months that she had not contracted any diseases. “That was a constant worry for me,” she remembers. “You just don’t know whose blood is on those sorts of things.”

Under the Child Exploitation Section charter, officers chiefly investigate allegations of paedophilia, and child prostitution and pornography. They also inquire into breaches of the Commonwealth Crimes (Child Sex Tourism) Act.

Their multi-faceted mission might sound simple, but is one of the most arduous in policing. Currently on investigators’ desks, for example, are complaints of sexual abuse that stem from as far back as the 1940s and ’50s.

Since the SA parliament last month repealed the 1982 limitation of time attached to sex offences, officers must investigate such reports. But Rodney likens inquiries into 50-year-old offences to the investigation of war crimes – from WWII.

“You have very little evidence,” he says, “other than anecdotal, so it would make it very hard to launch a prosecution.”

And, technology – now used extensively in the unseemly world of paedophilia – poses another set of challenges for Child Exploitation investigators. “The Internet’s become an absolute boiling pot for people to produce, disseminate and profit from child pornography,” says Rodney.

“We investigate about 150 reports per annum of child pornography. A lot of that comes from overseas, but a great proportion from within Australia.”

Child Exploitation investigations can begin simply enough: someone might call Crimestoppers with his or her suspicions of abuse. But that simplicity contrasts with the complex and sometimes years-long inquiries that follow.

Investigators, of course, make good use of IT and maintain relations with the community groups that paedophiles target. But the job also calls for the hard-slog side of detective work: knocking on doors, digging for evidence, analysing information.

With a lead on a suspect, detectives and intelligence officers have to “build up a picture” of who he is and how he operates. From victims and witnesses, they must discover his “seduction techniques”, and age and gender preferences.

But those who supply information, in cases of sexual abuse, are people on whom detectives “don’t put pressure to disclose”.

Says Conte: “There’s a lot of legwork before you can arrest someone, and you’ve got to be damn sure of your facts. A lot of our matters are historical; and we’re dealing with offenders who are generally composed, educated and quite skilful.

“You’ve got to go that little bit further and treat it (paedophilia) with the seriousness it deserves. We want to be 100 per cent certain that he’ll get convicted.

“You’ve got to really videotape your involvement. In that case (in which Bowe pierced her thumb), we videotaped the arrest from the first moment we knocked on his door.”

Rodney, too, can well explain the endless demands of the job. He helped build the case against disgraced former magistrate and convicted paedophile, Peter Liddy. For Rodney and his colleagues, the court outcome in 2001 marked the end of a two-year investigation.

And, in those two years, Rodney formed close relationships with three of the Liddy victims who, by then, were adults. From these young men, he had to draw all the details of the abuse Liddy had inflicted on them. To that end, he spent much time as a witness to their lasting agony.

At the end of the trial, Rodney and his colleagues went to a nearby bar to unwind with some drinks. By 9:30pm, they received word that the jury was about to return with its verdict. The detectives went back to the packed courtroom, where the atmosphere was electric and the emotion palpable.

“The charges were read out,” says Rodney, “and the first offence was not guilty. We went: ‘Oh, no!’ But, then, 10 of the remaining 15 were all guilty. It was just incredible. We thought: ‘Yep, we’ve done a very good job here’, and it was two years of intense work.

“The victims and families were just ecstatic. We got a result for them, and that was quite significant.”

But, for Rodney, the true high point of the two years was a moment in which he uttered eight words to the formerly respected senior magistrate. They were: “Mr Liddy, you can consider yourself under arrest...”

“It was probably the professional moment of my life,” he says. “This was not just knocking on someone’s door and saying: ‘You’re under arrest’.

“I was very proud to do it, because I knew we had some significant evidence, and that he was going to have to answer for what he’d done.”

But, when investigators confront offenders after months or even years of case-building, how do they stay detached? With intimate knowledge of paedophiles’ crimes, do they not have the urge to lash out?

The key for investigators, as distasteful as it might seem, is to show their suspects that they understand them. They know that paedophiles respond best to an empathetic approach.

So, to Rodney and his team, detachment – rather than anger – brings its own rewards: information and, ultimately, convictions.

“It (the understanding you show) may be false,” says Rodney, “you may actually want to strangle them. But the best way to get the evidence is to give this perception that you understand.”

The information does not flow, however, unless the approach works. And, according to Conte, “the hardest thing is trying to engage one of these child molesters in conversation”.

“We treat our offenders more like patients than crooks,” he says. “We are mature and educated enough to understand paedophilia. They (offenders) think they’re actually doing the kids a favour by having sex with them.

“We understand that mindset, and that allows us to act more professionally towards them. Anger towards paedophiles I don’t think serves our best interests.”

Bowe, in one of her roles, has to take a particularly measured approach. She and fellow intelligence officer, Karin Dayman, visit offenders in prisons’ pre-release centres. The pair tries to gather information about their post-release plans, and gauge how likely they seem to reoffend.

Some offer excuses for their actions, while others insist they had legitimate reasons for them. The ones who refuse to accept that they offended are those who Bowe expects to reoffend.

Surprisingly, these jailhouse meetings with society’s most hated do not faze Bowe. “I don’t feel that revulsion that a lot of people feel,” she says, “and I’ve read all about them prior to going there.

“It’s an opportunity to speak to them in a non-confronting manner. We haven’t had one refuse to talk yet, but I can’t say that we’re old hands at it.”

Some might strain to understand why Child Exploitation officers choose their line of work. Rodney speaks of a strong need to protect children, and his deep sorrow for those who become victims.

And to see the courts convict the predators they investigate brings all three officers great satisfaction. They know then that their efforts have helped bring “closure” and “healing” to those who once lived as prey.

But the officers also concede that their work has some impact on their personal lives. Bowe now finds herself ever on her guard. In the local park with her children, she can’t help but notice if “some guy looks suspicious”.

From the Conte perspective, it is as if he lives his life in two parallel worlds. “Your home life is one reality,” he says, “and when you go to work and deal with these offenders, you’ve got to adapt to this other reality.

“It can be very hard to do at times. It’s a matter of balancing positive input with negative, having a sense of humour and keeping things under control.

“It’s not the sort of job from which you can go home and talk to the wife and kids about what you’ve been doing all day.”

Rodney, for one of his current cases, has made himself available out of hours to a number of “angry young men” who have suffered abuse. They have his mobile phone number and call him regularly.

He accepts that his job does not finish at the end of the working day and will, indeed, flow into his private life. “I’m a detective,” he says, “and my job is to find out what has happened, and who’s going to pay the price.

“But, at the same time, you look at your family and think: ‘Thank God they are safe’.”