WSP task force takes fight to child porn perps, arrests one of state's worst accused internet predators
Ronald Bethel, 65, owner of Affordable Appliance Repair is arrested after officers say they found evidence of child porn
LAKE STEVENS -- When it comes to catching child porn perpetrators the Washington State Patrol Missing and Exploited Children`s Task Force is on the front line of the fight. I was with the task force when it took down one of the state's worst accused internet predators -- arresting Ronald Bethel, 65, of Lake Stevens on April 2nd after officers say they found evidence of child porn linked to him. “Today we were doing an investigation on someone who was downloading and possibly sharing sexually explicit images of child porn,” explains Det. Sgt. Carlos Rodriguez. "There were approximately, nearing 200 images he had available to share. We were able to download some images while there, verify that they were sexually explicit in nature and then went ahead and got a search warrant.” Detectives say Bethel, the owner of 'Affordable Appliance Repair', traded child porn with undercover officers. He has no criminal record prior to his arrest but that’s no surprise to Det. Sgt. Rodriguez. “A lot of times in these cases we have people who are not registered as sex offenders, they do not have prior criminal history, they can just be the person next door and that seems to be the case with this gentlemen.”
This case is just one of thousands this specialized task force deals with every year. “We are extremely busy. I say it time and time again we are overwhelmed,” explains Rodriguez. With a total of three detectives in his unit they have to ration their time. He continues, “I wouldn’t say that one case is more important than the other, so it is really difficult to triage and prioritize but we have to go where we think there is more of a chance of someone being hands on with a child.” And in his experience that’s at least half of the people who download child porn, so that makes Bethel's arrest all the more important. Rodriguez says, “We do this because we want to protect kids and we want to get these types of people out of society so they don’t have the opportunity to offend on a child, or if they are offending on a child they cannot do it any longer.” To donate to this unit to help get more undercover detectives online and more predators behind bars, CLICK HERE and scroll down to the bottom of the page for donation information.