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Two Effingham men arrested in child porn sweep
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Johnny Jordan - photo by Photo courtesy of the Chatham County Sheriff's Department

Two Effingham County men have been arrested as part of a statewide crackdown against child pornography.

Carl Owen, 68, was arrested by Effingham County Sheriff’s deputies and GBI agents Tuesday as GBI agents and local law enforcement officials carried out Operation Restore Hope. Also arrested Tuesday was Johnny Jordan, 42, of Rincon. Jordan was booked into Chatham County Jail by the Port Wentworth Police Department.

Owen and Jordan were charged with sexual exploitation of children.

In all, authorities executed 88 search warrants across the state to track down the distribution of child pornography. Images and videos were being shared across peer to peer computer networks.

Across the state, 88 search warrants were served and 40 arrests were made, said Special Agent Micah Ward with the GBI’s Statesboro office.

More arrests are expected after GBI technicians go through seized computers and grand jury actions.

“There is a certain amount of searching we can do on the scene,” Ward said. “There’s more we can do when we get the computers back to more specialized equipment and personnel.”

Ward said that in a briefing at the beginning of the operation, GBI director Vernon Keenan told the agents that Georgia does not have the most child porn being shared — but it leads the nation in arrests.

“We’ve got some very dedicated people we work with, particularly in the local agencies,” Ward said. “This is the kind of crime the law enforcement community says, ‘we’re not getting put up with.’”

The investigation began in October and was coordinated by the GBI’s high technology investigation unit, based at the GBI’s headquarters in Atlanta.

“They specialize in any investigation involving computers,” Ward said. “One of the things they get involved in is child exploitation and child pornography.”

Cracking that dark world of online child pornography is no easy task, according to law enforcement officials. If a person has or wants to obtain child porn, they have sharing software to trade videos and images.

“It’s commercial software out there that can be used to share anything,” Ward said. “It just so happens they will use this to share the child pornography images as well.”

The GBI monitors such traffic constantly to track the images and videos being shared. Some of the individuals, both victims and suspects, can be identified in the material, Ward said. Material where the individuals cannot be identified are sent to the National Missing and Exploited Children Center.

“They are constantly trying to identify these photos,” Ward said. “We have had some luck in the past identifying these photos and prosecuting these cases. It’s just so widespread.”

On one search warrant, material discovered had been in the child porn underworld for at least 15 years. The victim in the photos, now an adult, has been identified and has testified several times in court about the photos.

“That’s just an amazing amount of courage and strength of character,” Ward said.

The investigation was coordinated by the GBI and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. The ICAC Task Force was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the Internet, the proliferation of child pornography and online activity by predators searching for unsupervised contact with underage victims. The operation also involved 24 local agencies, four federal agencies, the state attorney general’s office and all three U.S. Attorney’s Offices in the state.

Ages of victims in the material discovered in Tuesday’s raid ranged from toddler to pre-teen, according to authorities.