Replies

Interesting Fresno connection to the child porno ring, in light of tonight's kidnapping:

Parents held in child-porn ring Alleged leader Fresno chiropractor

Bill Wallace, Chronicle Staff Writer Saturday, August 10, 2002

Federal officials said Friday they had broken up an international child pornography ring, headquartered in Fresno County, in which parents molested their own children and traded pictures of that activity over the Internet.

The full scope of the child sex operation, under investigation since November, was made public for the first time when the U.S. attorney's office in Fresno unsealed a 16-page federal indictment that lists 15 of the suspects and details some of their activities.

Meanwhile, U.S. Customs Director Robert Bonner held a press conference in Washington and said the case was one of the most disturbing he had encountered in his career.

"These crimes are beyond the pale," Bonner said. "They are despicable and repugnant. . . . What is particularly disturbing is that the majority of the people who have been charged were actually the parents, who were sexually exploiting their own children."

The activities involved 45 children around the world, including 37 in the U. S. Eighty percent of the victims were molested by their own parents, according to U.S. Customs officials who investigated the case. The children have been placed in foster care or with another parent or relative.

The indictment says the defendants, who referred to each other as members of "the Club," would message each other on the Internet and ask for pictures of children engaged in "sexually explicit activity." In one example, cited at the end of the indictment, Lloyd Alan Emmerson, a Fresno chiropractor who, prosecutors say, was the central figure in the operation, asked his Danish friend Eggert Jensen for "an audio tape of a minor child (in Jensen's custody) so that . . . Emmerson could hear the child crying while the child was being spanked and otherwise abused."

10 AMERICANS ARRESTED

Emmerson, who is 45, was one of the primary organizers of the group's picture-taking and -sharing activities. He is one of 10 Americans arrested during a joint investigation, dubbed "Operation Hamlet," that involved the Customs office, the Danish National Police, Interpol, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and a number of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in California and 10 other states.

Ten other suspects were arrested in Denmark, Belgium, Germany, England, Switzerland and the Netherlands. One of the American suspects, Sean Bradley, who was arrested in Reno, committed suicide after police raided his house and before he could be formally charged with molesting several children.

According to the indictment, in addition to Emmerson, the ring's members included Paul Whitmore, 43, and Brooke Rowland, 41, both of San Diego.

Participating outside California were Tracy Reynolds, 40, of Texas; Leslie Bowcut, 28, Idaho; Michael Harland, 42, Florida; Harry Tschernetzki, 41, Washington; John Zill, 36, South Carolina; Craig Davidson, age unknown, Kansas;

Eggert Jensen, 44, and Bente Jensen, 34, Denmark; and Jean-Michael Francis Cattin, 36, Marcel Egli, 47, Dirk Van Prins, age unknown, and Peter Althaus, 63, all of Switzerland.

All the Americans named in the indictment are in federal custody. The 10 suspects from other countries were arrested abroad, but it was not clear Friday how many, if any, are in custody. Authorities said more arrests in the United States are anticipated.