When Burke resident Diane Beatty learned in 1999 that her father had been arrested for e-mailing child pornography to a police officer posing as a child, she decided it was time to speak out. She told police that her father had molested and raped her as a child.
In 2000, a Fairfax County judge sentenced Beatty's father to 12 years in prison for the child molestation and the Internet charges.
But for Beatty, that was not the end. Before her father's sentencing, she asked the police how many other pieces of child pornography he had on his computer. She also wanted to know whether he'd communicated with other children and whether he would be monitored once he leaves prison.
She was shocked by the police department's answer.
"They said they didn't have the manpower to [find out] because they didn't have the funding," she said. The police also said no one had asked them to for this type of information before. So she decided she'd be the one to ask.
Those questions led Beatty, the president of a national nonprofit group, SafeChildNet, Inc., to partner with the Police Department to raise money for more detectives thanks to a new program, the P'CASO Alliance (Protecting Children Against Sex Offenders), which was formally launched Monday.
THE IDEA CAME to her about two and a half years ago when she started looking at how other jurisdictions went after sex offenders.
"Dallas, Texas, had a Sexual Offender Apprehension Program that focused on monitoring sex offenders who'd been released back into the community," she said. "And in Operation Blue Ridge Thunder in Bedford, Virginia, the police department aggressively goes online, posing as children to lure pedophiles on the Internet. So I took those two concepts and married them into the P'CASO Alliance Project."
Under the terms of the program, ChildSafeNet will attempt to raise $10 million over five years to fund 16 new police positions to better monitor the 130 registered sex offenders in the county. The nonprofit group hopes to raise most of the money from local Internet companies said Anne Miniter McKay, the executive director of ChildSafeNet, Inc.
"We've received a lot of positive response from them," she said. "A lot of the people who work with the Internet companies live here too."
This is the first program of its kind, said Fairfax County Police Chief Col. Tom Manger. "We're so proud and so pleased that they've chosen Fairfax County to be a partner in this effort," he said.
The program will fund 16 new detective positions who will monitor the Internet, posing as children and help parole officers keep track of registered sex offenders in the county. No public money will be required until 2008 when the county takes over the cost of the new positions.
"There is not a neighborhood or community that is immune from a registered sex offender. It's just frightening," said Manger. "Many of these folks, if not monitored properly will victimize children again."
McKay said that even when released from prison, many sex offenders still pose a threat to the community.
"We know statistically speaking that these types of predators are not really rehabilitatable," she said.
The number of registered sexual offenders in the county will also grow considerably, she added, as about 1,900 convicted offenders are due to be released from state prisons in the next five years. Many of them will likely settle in Northern Virginia, she said.
"It wipes out the delusion that these guys don't live near me," she said. "A lot of people want to say, 'it's not my problem.'"