Child porn bust: The men who were charged

As part of Project Spade, hundreds of people were charged from all over the world, including Canada. They were teachers, doctors, priests . . .

By: Jennifer Quinn News reporter, Julian Sher Investigative News reporter, Published on Thu Nov 14 2013

The bedroom resembled that of a teenager: Hockey posters on the wall. A computer.

The man it belonged to was in his late 40s.

Police had a serious reason for being in the Chatham, Ont., home where Ronald Inghelbrecht lived with his mother: officers in Toronto suspected he was a customer of a website that sold child pornography, and the Ontario Provincial Police were there to look for evidence.

“I would describe his room as being adolescent — like he decorated it when he was 12, or 14, and he never changed it,” said OPP Detective David Beckon.

Police seized three computers and thousands of images and movies — and just one video was what the officers in Toronto were looking for. It, they say, tied Inghelbrecht to a website they were investigating as part of Project Spade. He was charged with possession of child pornography and accessing child pornography, and the Chatham-Kent police put out a news release on Dec. 5, 2011.

Three days later, they followed with another release — and Inghelbrecht’s legal troubles worsened.

“Since the original news release, a former Chatham resident has come forward to report being the victim of historical sexual abuse,” read the news release, dated Dec. 8, 2011.

“The accused in this matter was in a mentor position with children spanning a period of 10 years between 1984 and 1994.” Police said he volunteered as a hockey coach.

An additional 11 sex-related offences were added to Inghelbrecht’s charge sheet. He was sentenced to seven years in prison, where he remains.

Through a Corrections Canada spokeswoman, Inghelbrecht declined to speak with the Star.

He had volunteered for the Big Brothers organization to mentor children in British Columbia.

He had helped build an

and sponsored several children through the charity World Vision.

He eventually adopted a young boy.

But the 43-year-old man from the Lower Mainland — who cannot be identified because of a court-ordered publication ban to protect the identity of his victims — was also an accused child abuser.

When the RCMP’s Internet child exploitation unit in B.C. — acting on a tip from the Toronto police as part of the Project Spade investigation — raided his home in 2012, they seized his computer and other items and charged the man with possession of child pornography.

Five months later, the police returned to arrest him again, this time on far more serious accusations.

“We have evidence of what we allege is hands-on abuse of children,” an RCMP spokesperson told reporters at the time.

He was convicted of “being in a position of trust or authority” toward two minors and abusing them as well as “observing and recording” one child while he was nude.

“Possession of child pornography facilitates the seduction and grooming of victims and may break down inhibitions or incite potential offences,” prosecutor Andrea Ormiston told the Star. “Possession of child pornography increases the risk of child abuse.”

The man received “the equivalent of a 14-month sentence” for his crimes, according to the criminal justice branch of the B.C. attorney-general, after he was given credit for time served in jail while awaiting trial.

‘No pedophile wants to get caught’

“No one who is a pedophile wants to get caught and have their horrifying secret revealed to the world,” David Goldberg, a respected Montreal community newspaper editor and a popular former minor baseball coach, wrote in an astonishingly frank confession in an American magazine.

“For almost 20 years, I spent virtually every night of my life in the same manner: Sitting in front of my computer . . . trawling the Internet for child pornography,” Goldberg wrote in the August edition of the Atlantic. “Nothing would stop me from continuing this perverse pursuit.”

But something did: His arrest, in June 2012, as part of Project Spade.

He was eventually sentenced to 90 days in jail, served on weekends, followed by three years’ probation for possession of child pornography. According to court documents, his strict conditions include not being allowed to visit parks or use the Internet.

In addition to editing the Free Press, a local paper distributed in three west-end boroughs, Goldberg was a communications consultant for a crime prevention community group.

Goldberg, who declined through his lawyer to speak to the Star, wrote in his piece for the Atlantic — headlined “I, Pedophile” — that his family and friends have “stood by since my arrest and love and accept me, despite my sexual flaws.”

He insisted that “the majority of pedophiles do not molest but instead spend hours looking at child pornography” and asked: “Will the day ever come when we, as a society, reach out and offer them the help they so desperately need?”

Popular parish priest

By all accounts, he was a popular parish priest, a church youth leader and an active Scout organizer.

So when Daniel Moreau, 56, was arrested at his living quarters at a local church last March, there was shock and dismay in the town of Sorel-Tracy, about 100 kilometres northeast of Montreal.

Moreau was charged with seven counts of child pornography, part of a nationwide sweep resulting from Project Spade.

“We understand the distress that such an event can cause within the entire community,” diocese officials said in a statement, and announced Moreau had been relieved of his duties.

Most details of the case are under a publication ban, but defence lawyer Gilles B. Thibault told the Star his client was accused of possessing “an important quantity” of child pornography.

“It is not an isolated act, not a single photo or video — it is more than that,” he said.

Thibault confirmed his client was active in the Scouts in various places around Quebec for a “number of years.”

But, he said, “to date they have not found any victim in the Scout movement.”

Moreau’s case is before the courts.

South of the border

Many of the suspects in the United States are high-profile community leaders in education, medicine, child care and even law enforcement. Nearly 150 people have been investigated as part of Project Spade, and 76 have been charged to date. The U.S. authorities are continuing their investigation, said Insp. Brian Bone of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.

About 20 of those men charged have pleaded guilty, said Bone.

The others face trials — and under the stiff sentencing guidelines in the U.S. they could spend decades behind bars for child pornography and sexual abuse offences.

U.S. authorities say they rescued more than 330 children from sexual abuse and exploitation.

Among the arrests were the chief probation officer of San Mateo County in California, an Oregon state trooper, a Connecticut police officer, a Texas police officer and an FBI program manager.

Many of the other suspects had close access to children, including an elementary school teacher from Georgia, a New Jersey middle-school vice principal, a high-school basketball coach in Ohio and a senior executive with the Indiana Boy Scouts.

A medical director

For two decades, Dr. Richard Keller was the medical director at one of the most prestigious private high schools in the United States.

He had also been trying, and failing, to control his urge to look at child pornography. Legal documents filed in his case said he had a “long-standing sexual interest in adolescents since the early 1970s.”

As an alleged customer of Azovfilms, Keller was arrested by U.S. Postal Inspectors as part of Project Spade. He was charged with possession and receipt of child pornography.

According to legal documents filed with U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, Keller spent $2,695 on 50 separate titles, bought on 19 different occasions. The affidavit of an investigator describes one of the films he purchased: “we . . . bring you . . . action-packed discs of ooey-gooey slippery goodness.”

During a search of his home, police found 500 images, printed on high-gloss paper, as well as another 60 DVDs of child pornography.

As part of the plea agreement, Keller admitted he had a “long-standing sexual interest in adolescents since the early 1970s. Keller admits to viewing child pornography on the Internet, and that he has previously tried to stop, but failed to do so.”

Keller left the Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. — where alumni include former U.S. presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — in 2011. A spokeswoman for the school said he left for reasons “unrelated” to the case, and “at no time during his employment or during the subsequent investigation has anyone alleged criminal behaviour by Richard Keller relating to his former role with Phillips Academy.”

Keller left Phillips in 2011 and moved to Children’s Hospital in Boston, which is part of Harvard Medical School.

A sentence of between five and 6.5 years was recommended by prosecutors and Keller’s defence attorney. Keller also faces a fine and probation. He is to be sentenced early next year.

‘Totally broken man’

The pre-arrest photo shows a kindly-looking gent; bespectacled, and wearing a white doctor’s coat, he seems like the kind of old-fashioned GP who might make house calls.

The second picture, the one on the Ohio State Department of Corrections website, shows a very different Dr. Mark Shaffer: this one is a convicted felon, another man ensnared by Project Spade.

Shaffer was arrested after U.S. Postal Inspectors knocked on the door of his home in Aurora, Ohio, about 40 kilometres southeast of Cleveland, looking for films purchased from a Canadian site.

He was immediately co-operative with officers, and admitted to buying the material, prosecutor Steve Michniak said — and then Shaffer went further, telling investigators in a lengthy, voluntary interview, that he had also abused children. His victims included a 12-year-old boy and a girl who was 5 when the abuse began.

Michniak agreed to send Shaffer to prison on a charge of kidnapping with sexual motivation; the sentence is life, with a 10-year minimum.

“I am a totally broken man and full of remorse,” Shaffer said during his sentencing, according to the Record-Courier, the local newspaper. “I am going to beg for mercy from God and you and your court, your honour, but whatever sentence I receive, I will serve it with whatever dignity I have left.”

As Shaffer is about to turn 80, it is likely he will die behind bars, and because of that federal attorneys decided not to press child pornography charges against him.

In a statement to the court, one victim said they suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and regularly had flashbacks.

“There are times and, certainly in my case, lifelong negative consequences of what it feels like to awaken in terror in the middle of the night from an abuse-related nightmare,” they said, “shaking and crying from memories of events that occurred decades ago.”