The search warrants carried out last week lead to the arrest of 11 people on felony child pornography charges including the arrest of one registered sex offender. The ages of the people arrested range from 17 years old to 65 years old.
Investigators say each suspect was viewing or downloading hard core child porn.
"These are not titillating images of young girls. These are sadistic, they are vicious, they are evil," San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis said.
Thirteen law enforcement agencies teamed up for the operation which was orchestrated by a federal program called Silicon Valley Internet Crimes Against Children or SVICAC.
Detectives scoured the public files on the Internet looking for child pornography and tracing the IP addresses to various computers in Santa Clara County.
One of the IP addresses traced back to 65-year-old Roger Schultz. He is a registered sex offender living on Aberhaven Court. We were surprised to find he was already out of jail and back to his normal routine.
He refused to talk to us but his wife of 26-years admitted to her husband's recent pornography viewing.
"Listen, listen, he is not touching anybody. What he did he is regretful for," she said.
Detectives who work on exploited child cases say that explanation sickens them because it is the demand to view child porn that leads directly to the victimization of children. In this operation, the task force focused on victims ranging in age from two to 12 years old.
"I always keep in mind although I'm just looking at the image, there's a child that's in that image that's being sexually abused or has been sexually abused so they deserve to have someone investigate and rescue them," San Jose Police Department Detective Kendra Nunes said.
Police say it could take months to analyze the child pornography they collected to determine if any of the children are recent victims or live in the Bay Area.
If you have any information about internet crimes against children, you can go to www.missingkids.com or call 1-800-843-5678.
