Part 31 (1/2)

Sometimes I feel I've got a sort of double life going on. When I come to work, I'm in a completely different world. But I think that's actually a good thing. I love coming here. Because I'm seeing a world that I wouldn't be privy to otherwise.

Of course, I'm an outsider here. Most definitely an outsider. And I've thought a lot about that. Being a social worker for five years now, in the beginning I wrestled with that a lot and I've done a lot of work personally on it-I've done a lot of work on being white and being a social worker and coming into an environment which is mostly people of color and from a different socioeconomic cla.s.s. Sometimes it's painful because I just want to be a human being, but obviously there's differences. It's something I'm constantly conscious of, and I find I often have to do a lot of trust-building with my clients. Sometimes I'll get the sense that they're thinking, yeah, who's this f.u.c.king white lady? And I'll say, ”Listen, obviously I'm white. Do you have a problem with that? Do you want to talk about it?” Generally, that works to get things started.

If it doesn't work, I don't really get upset about it anymore. It's just the way it is. Sometimes clients just say, ”f.u.c.k you, I'm not working with you.” Or, on the street, someone threw a tomato at me the other day, and they were just like, ”You f.u.c.king white b.i.t.c.h.” It makes me sad. But I deal with it. You have to develop a thick skin. You have to learn to be like, it's nothing compared to what other people have experienced historically da-de-da-de-da. Still, of course, there's times when it really hurts. It's those few times when they get you in between the cracks.

But what can you do about it? I'm not going to stop just because I don't always fit in. Ultimately, I don't see how it changes anything. I mean, I really am seeing things differently here, doing this. I'm seeing people that have to make a living selling drugs, I'm seeing people who are incredibly mentally ill being locked up, I'm seeing a lot of pain and anguish. And from the courts, all I'm seeing in the courts is dehumanization. Everything about the legal process here is geared towards dehumanizing the defendants. At the most basic level, they are called ”the bodies” by everybody. They're never called by name. They're just ”the body.” Everyone uses that term and just accepts it. The judges say, ”the body this,” or, ”the body that,” ”the body got into trouble,” ”the body is in restriction.” It's horrible. And the cops, I'm scared of the cops now. I grew up with ”the policeman is your friend.” But now, the cops in the courtroom, I watch how they treat people differently-white people, black people. I notice it, and I'm offended by it. It makes me sad.

I read the paper differently now, too. Generally when they're presenting our cases in the paper it's from a very prosecutorial approach. There's a certain slant I never picked up before.

So I may be an outsider. I may always be an outsider, but I feel like I'm learning to translate for myself what my reality is. Just the different way the world is for different people. I know this sounds nutty, but I'm learning to look at things in what I think is a more real way, you know? It's not just a bunch of violent f.u.c.ked-up drug addicts up here. It's much more complicated. So I'm not always having these huge triumphs with my cases or anything, but I'm dealing with reality. Which, you know, as painful as that may be, once you start dealing with it, it's very hard to stop.

There are a lot more people out

there s.e.xually abusing children than I care

to think about.

FBI AGENT.

Allison Mourad.

I've been an FBI agent since 1991. My first seven years, I was investigating primarily bank robberies and white collar crime-fraud, embezzlement, that kind of thing. Then, starting in 1997, I began working on cases involving child p.o.r.nography and molestation on the Internet. I'm on a squad called ”Innocent Images”-it's a term that characterizes the essence of what's going on. The children in the pictures, they're innocent kids. We go after the people producing, distributing, and trading this stuff. I'm also involved in a lot of cases where we pursue what are known as ”travelers”-individuals who use the Internet to lure children into s.e.xual activity where either they or the kid has to travel across state lines for the purpose of having s.e.x with a minor. That's a federal offense.

Basically, what I do is I go online and pretend I'm a little boy or girl. [Laughs] I hang out in chat rooms. I'm not a techie sort of person. I don't know a whole lot about computers. But I've been a kid before, and I know how to do investigations, how to be creative. I'm good at studying these people and figuring out how they think, how they operate, and kind of what it is that they're looking for.

I just arrested someone who appears to have been pursuing little boys most of his adult life. He was a teacher at a theater camp. He'd actually been a Broadway musical director and was once fairly well known, apparently, but he hasn't worked on Broadway for quite a few years because he earned a reputation for having a thing for little boys. And so he would pretty much volunteer his services and work for near nothing at these summer stock theater camps all over the country, because that was a great way to still have access to kids. It's like, here he comes to this obscure camp with all these great credits and these kids are in awe, they're thinking, ”Wow, this guy's gonna teach me the ropes.” So from the get-go they trust him and that's usually how it is. It's often an authority figure-a teacher, a Boy Scout leader, all of these stereotypes of people who have access to kids- they're the people that are molesting them. And that's primarily why they have access to kids. I mean, this guy, he made sure that he continuously found himself in these positions. And, you know, it wasn't Broadway, but it was getting him what he needed.

The local police around some of these camps knew about him- the investigation started, actually, because a local police department brought him to my attention-but the problem was kids won't usually come forward and give evidence, especially boys, because of the social stigma. What teenage boy wants people to think that he's maybe interested in other boys? So I came in and I pretty much tossed out some bait and he took it. I started communicating with him on the Internet-which he was known to use-pretending I was a thirteen-year-old boy.

The very first conversation that I had with him I said, ”Do you remember me?” And he didn't remember me, obviously, but he didn't care that he didn't remember me, what he cared about was that I'd said I was a thirteen-year-old boy and so now he's gotta know who I am. He was, like, immediately hooked just by that one fact. You know? I mean, after that, we just had some casual conversation and within minutes he was talking s.e.x. And that was it. I had an ongoing computer relations.h.i.+p with him for like a month, then we arrested him and he pled guilty.

I have very similar conversations with most of these guys. They all seem to want to know what your s.e.xual experience level is and they always kind of feel you out for your family situation. They're gauging how to manipulate you. So here I am, I'm a thirteen-year-old boy and I live at home with my mom. So now he knows I don't have a father figure in my life. Then comes a s.e.xual orientation-type question. So I'm like, ”I'm not really sure if I like boys or girls, I'm kind of having mixed feelings.” So now he has something else to go on. ”Oh, well, I like boys too, it's okay to like boys.” And so they kind of try to very obscurely extract information from you. They think you're not gonna realize that that's what they're doing and regular kids probably don't. 'Cause in a lot of these situations, there's a lonely kid on the computer and they're looking for someone to pay attention to them. They're just going to volunteer information. So these guys know that, and they try to figure out how to manipulate the kids and get them to sort of look up to them and trust them and turn to them for guidance about everything. And it kind of goes on from there.

When I first started doing this, it was just amazing to me how fast these conversations go into the gutter. I was like, I can't believe this guy just asked me this. I remember one of the first cases I had, I was being a little girl and this guy was asking, ”Where do you live? What do you look like?” And then flat-out he was like, ”Have you ever sucked d.i.c.k?” [Laughs] I was just shocked. I mean like totally stunned that this fifty-year-old guy would ask a kid something like that. Now I know that's the norm. I mean, sometimes they're a little more tender with you. But basically, they want to get to the s.e.x as fast as they can.

It's gross. With some of these guys, especially when I first started, I just want to reach through the computer and strangle them. But I can't, obviously, and fortunately, I've never even broken character. When something happens that offends me, I just do what I would have done at thirteen, which is respond like, ”You're disgusting.” Like I don't even know this guy and he's asking me stuff like this. And then, you know, they'll kind of back off and say, ”I'm sorry,” you know, whatever. [Laughs] Then usually they'll say like, ”Well, what are you wearing?” [Laughs] Like, okay, now that we've got that out of the way let me see how she'll respond to this. [Laughs] It's appalling, really. These people are doing one of the worst things you can possibly do to a human being-and they're clueless.

I've wanted to work for the FBI forever, like since eighth grade. I remember my cla.s.s took a trip to the FBI building in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.-and I was just amazed. I went back to school and cornered my guidance counselor and I was like, ”How do I do something like this?” And the guy had no idea. None at all. So I started going to the library and reading books. I was in eighth grade and I was hooked. And as soon as I reached the legal age to work part-time, I got a job at a funeral home. I figured [laughs] okay, dead people, you know, this is somehow related, you know? So that was my first job. Later, after I got my driver's license, I would drive the hea.r.s.e and pick up bodies at the hospital. [Laughs]

It's just been a lifelong thing for me. In college, my friends were working in restaurants, and I was out interning in state police labs and places like that. 'Cause, you know, that was stuff I could put on a resume for the FBI, and that's all I wanted to do. But, honestly, now that I'm doing it, it's hard. It's a difficult job. I mean, I'm still enthusiastic. I'm doing the type of work I want to do, which is a privilege, I know, that a lot of people don't have. And every day is different. It's never the same thing over and over again. It's really interesting and I think it's obviously really important that we're trying to catch these people. But it can be very frustrating sometimes, too, even a little bewildering. I mean, my squad is making an impact, but these people aren't going to stop. This is need-driven behavior. These guys, the pedophiles, they even know about us and they know we're looking for them. They talk about us in chat rooms. They share ideas about how to go about what they do undetected and how not to get caught. So a lot of them know they're taking risks, including the risk of going to prison, but their need to do what they do is greater than their fear of getting caught.

Some of these investigations get pretty involved, pretty weird. There was this one guy, we started out chatting on the Internet and after a while I was talking to him on the phone all the time. He really, really thought that I was a thirteen-year-old girl. I was ”Jamie.” And I felt that he was genuinely in love with Jamie and I would think to myself, this is me. You know? This is me, this is my personality, this is my voice, this is really weird. And he told me he loved me and I had to tell him I loved him-and it was very strange. Even though I was playing a role, it was still me talking, and it was still my experiences that caused me to say what I was saying. I mean, this guy is telling me, ”Hi, I love you,” and I'm telling him, ”I love you, too.” And that's coming from somewhere inside me. I know it's just a role I'm playing, but it got to the point where I just did not want to keep going anymore. I was like, ”Yuck, I don't love this guy!” But you can't do that. You just have to pretend with vigor that you love them and, you know, you have to be convincing.

So I kept it up. I was convincing enough that he traveled here and I arrested him. And that was very strange, too. Because again, here was this guy that I'd spent a very long time with on the computer and on the phone. Like four or five months, telling him I loved him and whatnot and it was like, oh, so this is who he is. I mean, just seeing him, it was kind of-it's kind of hard to explain-you look at this guy and think, G.o.d, I was telling this guy I loved him?

In the end, he was like all these others. He showed up at the meeting spot and I'm watching him walk up and he's very excited to be there. He's looking around for Jamie and I'm waiting there to arrest him. As soon as he gets there we're going to arrest him. He's just another pedophile. But it felt so weird.

When I arrested him, he was kind of like dazed. He didn't really understand, probably didn't think there was anything wrong with what he'd been doing. A lot of the guys are like that. It wasn't until a couple of days later in court that he realized that FBI agent Allison Mourad was the one who was telling him she loved him on the phone.

He was forty-two, divorced, lived alone at home. Lonely guy. When he realized there wasn't any Jamie, he was just very quiet. He had this very stunned look on his face, very embarra.s.sed, I think, because he knew that I knew all the things we'd talked about. And because he had been taken.

He pled guilty. He also had child p.o.r.nography on his computer and he pled guilty to that, too.

I didn't feel any sympathy for him, but he wasn't the worst person we ever arrested. Not by a lot. In fact, he was one of those guys who was a little sensitive, he was trying to be very understanding of young Jamie's situation, and although it was pretty much said what they were going to do when they saw each other-which was they were going to make love, it wasn't like he was very vulgar. He was interested in her s.e.xually, but wasn't an in-your-face kind of vulgar guy. And you know he definitely was in love with Jamie. He was in love with an imaginary thirteen-year-old.

I don't think I contributed to that sentiment. I think it was something inside him, you know? Something we can't really understand. You wonder what makes a forty-two-year-old guy want to pursue a little girl? It just doesn't make sense.

This job has definitely affected my thinking about having kids. I mean, I like kids, I really do. But I don't know how you could do this and have kids unless you just stopped working and I'm not ready to do that. I mean, with what I know about people who hurt kids, I don't think I would ever trust somebody to just take care of mine ten hours a day. I just can't imagine doing that and feeling safe about it. If I'm going to have kids, I want to raise them myself. And I'm not sure how that'll ever happen.

Before I got in the FBI, I never thought people robbed banks, I thought Bonnie and Clyde robbed banks. Then I became an FBI agent and realized that every hard-up drug dealer goes out and robs banks. And now that I work this kind of stuff I realize that there are a lot more people out there s.e.xually abusing children than I care to think about. We've arrested people actually having s.e.x with little kids in addition to their escapades on the computer. Some of them are having s.e.x with their own kids. It happens quite often. And it's all men. I haven't encountered any women hanging out in these chat rooms.

It's shocking sometimes. I mean, the guys who try and meet little boys are often kind of stereotypical-single white males, unmarried loner types. A lot of them live with their mothers and/or have never been married. They lack social skills. They're basically what you'd expect. But mostly the guys who are going after little girls are married and have their own children. They are white men between the ages of twenty-five and forty-five, well educated, upper-middle to middle cla.s.s. They have good jobs. A lot of times, their wives have no idea they're interested in having s.e.x with little girls. They're shocked when they find out. I was shocked at first, too.

This is a very pervasive crime. Incredibly so. There is a whole underworld of these people. And catching them and bringing them to justice is very challenging work, it's a huge commitment, it's very time-consuming and it's not a job that you leave here at the office when you go home at night. You have very complex cases, you don't really take vacations. I've gone like ten months at a stretch without even taking a day off.

Thankfully, I'm married to another FBI agent, so we have a great deal in common. He doesn't do child violence, but, you know, we understand each other and the nature of this kind of career. That's very comforting and nice, really. But our life outside work is kind of spare. [Laughs] Just because we're working so much.

I should go home earlier at night so that I'd have more time when I get there, but I don't. There's just too much to do. It's hard for me to relax with so much in front of me. I mean, a lot of times I come home and it's like eight-thirty at night and I'm exhausted, I don't want to do anything else, I'm done. So I tape soap operas. I like General Hospital. I used to watch it with my mom growing up and now I tape it every day. Chances are I won't watch it, but sometimes my husband might work really late, you know, he might come home at like two in the morning and I'll stay there all night watching soaps and I'll unwind. It'll be my way of vegging out. It's kind of funny to watch. [Laughs] And I definitely need the relaxation.

I don't care what gender you are,

what color your skin is, what religion

you are, it makes no difference to me.

If you break the laws, I arrest you.

BORDER PATROL AGENT.

Rob Smith.

I'm a very patriotic individual and I love my country. I would do just about anything for it. I think it is the greatest country in the world, and I think that the only reason that it is that way is because we have people in the military who are willing to sacrifice some of their own personal gain-such as money or time or whatever-to protect the freedom that this country enjoys. I went into the army when I was twenty-two, right after I got out of college. That was ten years ago. Today I'm a United States Border Patrol agent located here in San Diego. I protect the borders of the United States against illegal immigration. I believe we have the right and we have the need to protect our borders. And as a GS-9 Border Patrol, I'm contributing significantly to that right and need. And I think that the nation overall is better because of it.