A Harvard man recently accused of possessing 217 videos depicting child sexual abuse is among a growing number of such defendants charged or convicted recently in McHenry and Kane counties.

Jeswin Hiteroza, 20, has pleaded not guilty to 15 counts of possessing images of child sex abuse involving children younger than 13, a criminal complaint and indictment in McHenry County court show. The most serious among them are Class X felonies, which can result in 30 years in prison upon a conviction.

The chief investigator for the McHenry County Crimes Against Children Task Force, created by the county’s State’s Attorney’s Office in 2023, credits “more aggressive and advanced techniques” for the uptick in related cases.

“The crimes are not new. Law enforcement has gotten better,” Keith Von Allmen said.

There was a time when possessing and sharing images of child sex abuse was committed via Polaroid pictures and 35-mm film. Now it’s “digital images being transmitted wirelessly,” said Von Allmen, the former Johnsburg police chief with 30 years in law enforcement.

The evolution of how such crimes are perpetrated has prompted change in how they’re investigated.

“It is a growing problem,” Von Allmen said, adding that it involves expanded accessibility and stealth, first through the internet, and then through the dark web, social media and sharing platforms.

Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser said she’s “definitely seen a big rise in arrests” involving images of child sex abuse. She attributes that to a collaboration forged in 2022 with the Kane County Sheriff’s Office.

That involved creating a team dedicated to investigating crimes involving child sex abuse materials, with three investigators and a forensic analyst in Mosser’s office working with detectives in the sheriff’s office, she said.

In 2022, there were three arrests for child pornography, as it’s still known under the law, in Kane County, Mosser said. But with the full team in place the following year, there were 30 cases, and this year that number is already higher, Mosser said.

It was ‘not being investigated’

“The issue is [the crime] was not being investigated,” Mosser said. “It was happening – we knew it was happening – but the smaller departments don’t have dedicated detectives able to do these investigations. They are really complex. It involves a lot of [steps, such as search warrants and subpoenas], so we can determine where the porn is being downloaded and the individual downloading and sharing it.”

Mosser said that although there are cases where investigators have located an IP address that links to a home, there may be several people who live there.

Aurora and Elgin have dedicated detectives with the training to investigate these crimes, but Mosser said, “frankly, a lot of the downloading was happening in the Tri-Cities – St. Charles, Geneva and Batavia, but mostly in St. Charles."

Perpetrators use platforms such as Kik and Snapchat, likely because the messages and images disappear after being viewed, officials said.

But the technology to catch online predators and those sharing child sex abuse images has advanced along with the capacity to commit such crimes, including artificial intelligence image recognition, data mining and geolocation tools, Von Allmen said.

The education needed to keep up with such offenders is ongoing, said McHenry County Assistant State’s Attorney Margaret O’Brien, deputy chief of the criminal division.

“People are becoming sophisticated” at hiding the images with tools such as encryption software, making it harder to track where images are uploaded and shared, O’Brien said.

There also are more detectives in chatrooms, and federal laws requiring companies such as Google, Facebook and Dropbox to report any suspected child exploitation materials to authorities, Von Allmen said.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force also use AI to investigate, reporting suspicious behavior to the Illinois Attorney General’s Office, which then notifies local agencies, Von Allmen and McHenry County Assistant State’s Attorney Elizabeth Vonau said.

Better tools, cooperation to catch offenders

New technology also is speeding up the time it takes to locate sex abuse images. Rather than a detective combing through thousands of images on someone’s phone or laptop, software can now be used. The faster illicit materials are discovered, the faster subpoenas can be written, search warrants obtained, charges filed and arrests made, Von Allmen said.

The ability to identify and arrest more child sex offenders, including some in other states involving local victims, also is a credit to cooperation between local, state, federal and – at times – international agencies, Von Allmen and Vonau said.

Such cooperation and filtering of information to local agencies results in “some good accountability ... checks and balances,” Von Allmen said.

Hiteroza’s arrest was the result of a social media user reporting to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force that someone was uploading inappropriate material. The task force then told Harvard police that someone with a local IP address was uploading the images.

A Harvard detective obtained multiple search warrants for the IP address to pin down the person behind the account and what was being distributed. Then, an arrest warrant was issued, and Hiteroza was taken into custody, said Vonau, supervisor of the McHenry County task force.

Vonau pointed to the case of Robert Nolan, 36, of McHenry, a registered sex offender who was on probation for a previous child sex abuse charge when he was arrested twice in June and charged with reproducing and possessing images of child sex abuse. The new charges followed a cybertip, Vonau said. A judge on the case said Nolan disseminated 42 “significantly disturbing” videos depicting children, including babies.

Vonau said Nolan shared images on Kik. Someone on the app reported the images to the Illinois Attorney General’s office, which notified McHenry police, who used advanced technologies to trace the images back to Nolan, the prosecutor said.

More than 100 images were then found on his phone, leading to the second case against him, Vonau said. He also was detained in jail after his second arrest, records show.

Serious cases get ‘more serious time’

Vonau’s role on the task force is to prosecute cases involving child victims. In cases having identifiable victims, her job allows her to get to know them, “to give them continuity of care from our side.”

She’s allowed a lower caseload to “give these more serious cases more serious time,” she said.

The task force includes two full-time investigators and one part-time investigator, as well as two full-time assistant state’s attorneys specialized in these crimes. Some police departments, including Woodstock, Algonquin, McHenry and Crystal Lake, have detectives with specialized training to investigate them.

“Unfortunately, we have seen a dramatic increase in these types of cases in recent years,” Algonquin police Sgt. Nate Stenger said. “We do our best to equip our detectives with the training and resources they need to effectively handle these investigations.“

Vonau said the work “takes a team, and it’s a team I’m really proud to be a part of.”

Those who work on cases involving child sex abuse images stress they’re not “victimless crimes.” They said people who view and share such images are feeding the need for more to be produced – and, thus, more children being abused and exploited.

Hiteroza has been detained in the McHenry County jail since his June arrest. A judge said the videos he allegedly possessed showed “sexual violence against children” ranging in age from toddlers to teenagers.

An attorney for Hiteroza could not be reached for comment.

For police and prosecutors who must view such disturbing materials, the work can be emotionally and mentally difficult. But it also is “so meaningful,” Vonau said. “I know what I am doing is so important.”

Von Allmen said he works these “heartbreaking” cases “because no child should ever have their innocence stolen.”

“Walking away isn’t an option,” he said. “Every victim deserves someone in their corner fighting for justice, someone who refuses to look away. ... These predators count on silence and fear. My job is to make sure they’re met with accountability and justice instead.”