Caught in the Net

With that bust, the Internet operation's arrest record rose over forty; Jeff Beebe -- convicted of felony enticement of a child and given an "indeterminate" sentence of between three years and life -- was number 35. "Last year was a slow year," Harris says. "The rebirthing case took up a lot of our time." The death of an eight-year-old girl at the hands of her therapists made headlines across the country.

But Cassandra and Mike Harris have made plenty of headlines, too. This spring they took their cause to the Sally Jesse Raphael show, where they warned the audience that pedophiles trolled the Internet. The show's producers had set aside four hours of film time to see if Harris could log onto a computer as Cutie2kewl and have an adult make sexual overtures within that time frame. It took ten minutes.

The Harrises hope the media exposure will remind parents to pay more attention to what their children do on the Internet. They also hope that it will plant a seed of doubt in a sex offender's mind, so that the next time he logs on, Harris says, he'll wonder: "Is it really a fourteen-year-old boy he's talking nasty to, or is it that crazy Mike Harris, and am I headed for a fall?"

For every child they save, they know many more are at risk. Even if the Jeffco team were able to work on their Internet operation full-time, the Harrises estimate they would make three arrests a week -- a good haul, but just the tip of the iceberg. And they're still squeezing the sting into their spare time.

On a national level, the government has funded regional task forces charged with protecting children against sex crimes over the Internet. A two-year federal sting operation culminated earlier this month in a hundred people being charged with receiving child pornography from an Internet provider. In a good month, Landslide Productions Inc. took in as much as $1.4 million; its Web site counted more than 250,000 subscribers.

The same day that sting broke in the news, Randall Ankeney, a member of the governor's economic development office and a volunteer coordinator for Bill Owens's re-election campaign, was taken into custody on suspicion of sexual assault. He'd met a thirteen-year-old on the Internet, authorities say, then took her home, plied her with alcohol and marijuana and sexually assaulted her. Every week, there are stories about other kids -- real kids -- violated by adults they met online.

While many local jurisdictions still have no proactive Internet operation, a few police agencies around the state have started programs modeled after Harris's Jeffco operation.

Two years ago, when the Douglas County Sheriff's Office decided to form its Internet Crimes Against Children unit, investigator Keith Penry was the first to be assigned to the job. He was aware of how the Internet was being used by pedophiles, and of some police attempts to go after suspects by posing as young teens. But after he ran into his first victim -- who'd met two men on the Internet -- he turned to Mike Harris for advice on how to catch her perpetrators. Both men are now in prison.

Penry has since logged more than eighty hours of training with the Center for Missing and Exploited Children; this year his unit was awarded a federal grant to beef up its operations. But despite his growing expertise, Penry says he still turns to Harris. "A lot of other investigators, myself included, have a lot of respect and admiration for him," he says. "He's been doing this for a long time. It takes a lot of dedication to do this -- it's a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job. And if there's anyone who's dedicated to this, it's Mike Harris. He does it for the kids.

"Mike will bend over backwards to help anyone trying to help these kids."

Harris recently returned to an old stamping ground to help the Littleton Police Department with an Internet case. Harris is helping Littleton "prepare for the future of computer crime," Commander Bob Brandt says. "We know it's going on, and a lot of it isn't being reported. The problem is that it's very personnel-intensive, and unless you have someone to whom you can say, 'Okay, this is your primary area of focus,' it's difficult to be proactive like Mike and Cassandra."

But being too active has its drawbacks. This past spring, military police in another state spotted a cheerleader picture being used as a screensaver on a perpetrator's computer; an FBI agent recognized the photograph as Cassandra and contacted the Jeffco team.

Cassandra was simply becoming too well known. The risk that she could be set up was growing with every picture of Katie, Kendra, Tommy, Tigger and the others sent out over the Web. So Jeffco decided to retire her face, as well as the Cutie2kewl moniker.

Although Cassandra still works on Internet cases, she now stays behind the scenes. In recent weeks, the team has found three volunteers to take her place on the front lines.

"It'll be strange watching from another viewpoint," she admits. "I used to get so hyped up and into these roles, knowing I was replacing some kid. But it was time."