Unsavory Web hits vex Utah

There are categories in which Utah ranks No. 1 in the nation, but certain results are not something state officials will be bragging about.

At the 19th annual Child Abuse and Family Violence Conference in Salt Lake City Wednesday, FBI Special Agent Jeff Ross pointed out that according to Google Trends, Salt Lake City is tops in the nation when it comes to Internet searches for words such as "Jesus," "chocolate" and "home recipes."

That may not be surprising. But what is a little more eye-opening is that the city also ranks No. 1 on the site for Internet searches for terms such as "nudity," "naked girls," "pornography" and "strip tease."

Furthermore, Salt Lake is No. 2 in the nation for Google searches of such words as "hot sex" and "naughty."

Ironically, the city also ranks No. 2 for "family values."

In other disturbing rankings, according to Google Trends as related by the FBI, the city is:

• Fifth in the nation for searches regarding "incest."

• Seventh for searches on "child pornography."

• Eighth for searches on "sex."

• Tenth for searches on "pedo," short for pedophile.

Utah also has more computers per capita than any other state in the country, according to Ross.

What all that data add up to is that the FBI and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force from the Utah Attorney General's Office are both very, very busy.

The Salt Lake office of the FBI, which also covers Idaho and Montana, is tops in the nation for the number of arrests, indictments and convictions, Ross said.

Ross gave a presentation Wednesday, before a group consisting mostly of law enforcers, about the continuing problem of child pornography in Utah and what parents can do to help combat it.

There are people who collect child pornography the way others might collect baseball cards or comic books, he said. They even file their "kiddie porn" based upon year, age or other more disturbing categories.

"If they have child pornography, they're fantasizing about having sex with children," Ross said. "People we arrest come from every walk of life. Homeless people ... doctors. The thing they have in common is they're sexually attracted to children. ... When we can arrest a homeless guy out of the library downloading child porn, that tells you how cheap it is."

In a recent FBI operation, agents shut off a Web site that had nearly 36,000 names of people who had purchased child porn. National statistics show 40 percent of people who possess child porn have already, or will eventually, molest children, Ross said. That means that with the Web site shutdown, there were potentially more than 14,000 child victims, he said.