British Columbia police launch investigation of school psychologist charged in U.S. for child porn

May 16, 2014

Delta police are looking into whether children here may have been victimized by a school counsellor charged in the United States with possessing child pornography.

In a case reported earlier this week, Point Roberts resident William Brook, who works as a psychologist for the Delta school district, was arrested and charged with possessing hundreds of images and videos of child porn, including scenes of children being sexually assaulted. He is alleged to have downloaded the material at his home.

Delta police spokesperson Sgt. Sarah Swallow said U.S. Homeland Security notified police here and the investigation by Delta police is still in its early stage. So far, it doesn't appear there is any indication Brook was involved in criminal conduct on Canadian soil.

Swallow said police are working with the school district to notify parents, asking them to contact police if they learn anything inappropriate may have taken place.

Although police and the school district are not saying the schools Brook worked at or the ages of the children he dealt with, Swallow said the investigation must be handled carefully, so as to not place any suggestions to students that something happened when it may have not.

The Seattle P.I. reported earlier this week that acting on a tip, Homeland Security stopped Brook's car May 7 as he attempted to cross the border into Point Roberts. Officers seized his school district-issued laptop he had in his possession, but no illegal images were found on that computer.

According to federal charges filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, investigators in a subsequent search of his home found 334 files believed to be child pornography on his laptop, as well as a four-gigabyte thumb drive filled with additional videos.

Those images and videos allegedly included the rape of very young children.

Brook was scheduled for a bail hearing Friday.

The charges against him at this point involve possessing child porn but don't involve luring or abusing kids.

An article in Bloomberg Businessweek last month noted that since 2002, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Virginia, which analyzes photos flagged as potentially abusive, has reviewed 105 million child sex abuse images, including 24 million last year.

An article in this month's edition of the Times Record, on-line news for Fort Smith, Western Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma, reported that not only has the Internet made it easier for people to find and distribute child pornography, but the nature of images has changed in the Internet age.

"Way back, it was still images of a child lying on a blanket with their bottom exposed or (the photo was) focused on their genitals. Now there are actual videos of infants being raped and young boys being sodomized by adults. Those are so heinous and so shocking relative to what it used to be," said Kyra Jenner, assistant U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, quoted in the article. "They're crime-scene photos."

Source: "Delta police launch own investigation in school psychologist charged in U.S. for child porn," Delta Optimist, May 15, 2014.