The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced that a 29-year-old Cherokee County man who was already in custody at the Cobb County Adult Detention Center on separate charges has been charged with one count of Sexual Exploitation of Children, two counts of Aggravated Child Molestation, and two counts of Sodomy by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes (CEACC) Unit.
[The Cobb County Courier has a policy of withholding or redacting the name of suspects unless and until the person is convicted in a court of law or enters a plea of guilty. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty, and the internet has no effective way of removing reports of arrest if the person is exonerated. We do make exceptions in high-profile cases or charges against public officials where exoneration is likely to be as widely publicized as the initial arrest]
The GBI CEACC Unit investigated the man’s online activities “after receiving a cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) regarding the online sexual exploiting children via the internet and allegations of hands-on sexual abuse against children.”
A search warrant was executed on the man’s house, and GBI investigators were aided by the Canton Police Department and the Cobb County Police Department.
The public information release gave the following information about ongoing child abuse investigations by CEACC:
This investigation is part of the ongoing effort by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, housed within the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit, to identify those involved in the child pornography trade. The ICAC Program, created by the U.S. Department of Justice, was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the Internet, the proliferation of child sexual abuse material, and the heightened online activity by predators searching for unsupervised contact with underage victims.
Anyone with information about other cases of child exploitation is asked to contact the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit at 404-270-8870. Tips can also be submitted by calling 1-800-597-TIPS(8477), online at https://gbi.georgia.gov/submit-tips-online, or by downloading the See Something, Send Something mobile app.