Washington child-porn case had links to Cherokee Co.
By Liz Harold Sentinel Writer

Last week in Washington, 44-year-old Kevin Alan Hudson faced eight counts of distribution of child pornography by computer. Four of the offenses involved transmission to Cherokee County in May.

On Wednesday June 28, Hudson, also known as "kevin_hudson51", was indicted by the federal grand jury in Charlotte, NC for child pornography charges.

Sheriff Keith Lovin was one of five North Carolina officials who aided United States Attorney Gretchen C.F. Shappert in announcing the indictment of Hudson.

Hudson, who was arrested in his home in Aberdeen, Washington, on June 30, faces a maximum statutory penalty of at least five years for each count and a fine up to $250,000 for the distribution of video and image files depicting lewd, illegal acts against children. Last week Hudson was ordered detained pending trial.

Before the arrest, the accused was communicating with the FBI while agents led Hudson to believe he was talking to a 13-year-old girl. Hudson planned to meet up with the fictional girl in Washington.

"If you're a normal person, it's going to bother you," said Cherokee County Sheriff's Investigator Roger Williams, who investigated undercover in Washington, joining forces with the State and Federal Bureau's of Investigation to lead to Hudson's arrest.

"Child exploitation photographs are crime scene photos," explained Williams, while describing the material viewed by sexual predators like Hudson, "Pervert is a polite term for these people. They are sick."

Williams credits Lovin with being a driving force behind the growing defense of exploited children in Cherokee County and spoke highly of the sheriff's efforts in locating and locking up the most dangerous of sexual deviants.

"The sheriff had enough foresight to put funding into protecting children on the computer," stated Williams. "All we can do is look into the future and find out what it's going to take to combat these crimes." As reported by the reputable

research site, TopTenReviews, Inc., child pornography makes a total revenue of $3 billion annually. Evidently, with the market as far reaching as western North Carolina, the rapidly growing industry of child exploitation is a frightening realization.

A 52 year old Richmond, Virginia man, William T. Hollomon, recently traveled to North Carolina for sex with minor after soliciting and communicating with undercover FBI and local police agents.

"We are proactive in identifying who these people are," Williams explained.

"Parents need to be involved while kids are on the internet," explained Williams, who works undercover extensively to find and remove sexual predators from the internet.

Along with internet filters and site restrictions, Williams suggests that parents should surf the web with their children, constantly monitoring their net access.

Fortunately, on a national level the country's leading internet and computer software giants are now stepping in to sift sexual predators from the internet.

The non-profit organization the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children announced on June 27th that they will team up with AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Earthlink, and United Online to launch the most aggressive campaign against child pornography to date.

The usually competitive companies will form a technology coalition to disrupt the distribution

of child porn on the internet while protecting the privacy of it's users.

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