Rescuing Tara

Robin Bowles

Copyright Robin Bowles 2011

Published by Robin Bowles at Smashwords

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or be transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

ISBN 978-0-9871738-3-6

Unless otherwise stated, photographs in this book are from the author’s collection or from private collections and used with permission.

Sports professional James ‘Bart’ Huskey, and his wife and two children, once lived normal lives in an inconspicuous house on Highway 193, Lafayette, in Georgia USA. At least they appeared to, until a world of violence and perversion opened up in 2004.

That was the year one of their children – a daughter, now known to the world as ‘Tara’ – became the subject of pornographic films produced by her father and distributed world-wide through a secure cyberspace network.

This network was so impenetrably arranged that members did not know most other members; but all the users were involved in the prolific trade and distribution of child pornography. Deep encryptions ensured highly technical and advanced security. Techniques included: password protection to the group’s pre-designated newsgroup chat rooms; PGP encryption of text and binary files; and the swapping of file extensions which subsequently had to be re-swapped in order to successfully download a particular picture or movie file. Members were instructed never to communicate with each other using traditional email, chat, websites, or telephone. These cyber security measures were to protect the safety of the whole group.

Huskey, now 38-years-old, was one of the leaders of this group; and he made and distributed ever-more violent and degrading videos of his assaults on Tara. He took great care to film his abuse in nondescript surroundings: a home bedroom, a motel room and two different cars. His face was pixilated in these videos, but Tara’s pain and agony was graphically captured in detail – for all subscribers to watch.

She was only five years old.

Local sports personality and tennis coach James'Bart' Huskey before his arrest. Photo courtesy Rome News Tribune.Ga.

A Brisbane team of detectives headed by Detective Superintendent Peter Crawford, from Task Force Argos, the Queensland Child Safety and Sexual Crime Group, were working ‘Operation Achilles’ part of an international investigation into the activities of child pornography traders, when they first encountered the Tara series. Team members believed that the Tara videos originated somewhere in the USA. By June 2006 the Brisbane officers had been watching the Tara footage for almost two years, watching her as she grew; and, all the while, trying to identify her location and her attacker.

The detectives viewing these dreadful scenes faced the knowledge that with every new release in the so-called ‘Tara Series’ the little girl was not only at the mercy of her attacker but, if they could not find her, that the treatment would continue until she simply became ‘too old’ to titillate the audience.

Increasingly fearful for her safety, the Australians contacted the Innocent Images Unit of the FBI and told them of the international investigation they’d been conducting. Although several of the 48 subjects under investigation lived in various countries, they told the FBI that they believed the leader of this group, and several other members, probably lived in the United States.

The police on the Queensland task force had arrived at this likelihood following the arrest of a person for an unrelated child pornography offence. It was a stroke of luck that this individual also belonged to a ‘newsgroup’ that participated in the distribution of the Tara Series.

It was soon discovered that members of that group, in order to retain their status, followed strictly-enforced written security measures and standard operating procedures. Membership of the group was limited to personal invitation from an existing member; and new applicants had to pass a written test, timed to prevent them looking up material they should know. They had to demonstrate their knowledge of child pornographic material, such as the names and descriptions of child pornography series or scenes. The test was designed not only as a filter for members, but also to guard against the applicant being a law enforcement officer attempting to infiltrate the group.

Members were forbidden to reveal their true identities to other members. That way if a member was arrested he’d be unable to provide any specific information about others in the group.

Any investigation into the distribution of pornography is a slow, painstaking and often heart-breaking process. And, especially since the advent of the internet, just finding the source of the photos or videos is complicated.

Detective Superintendent Crawford told me that as long as people continued to prey on helpless children, his was an unpleasant job that had to be done. It was the occasional breakthroughs that made the hard slog worthwhile.

‘We see thousands of kids in this type of situation,’ he said. ‘And mostly we have no hope of identifying them. The perpetrators are clever and careful. An outcome in the Tara case was seen as very difficult to achieve, especially once we suspected the resolution would involve cracking into a network in the USA.’

Crawford believes most investigations rely on a bit of luck. ‘With such a high volume of images, you just need luck, fate, whatever you might call it, to get a breakthrough sometimes,’ he said.