Roswell, GA – As result of a search warrant executed last night at a residence in Roswell by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force and the Roswell Police Department, the GBI has charged Mark Twain Heaton III, 38, of 245 Alpine Drive in Roswell with possession of child pornography after numerous images of child porn were found on his computer.  Heaton has been a registered sex offender in Georgia since his 2002 conviction in Fulton County for child molestation.

The search warrant was obtained as a result of evidence developed by investigators with the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office of peer to peer sharing of child pornography images from a computer at Heaton’s residence. The Liberty County Sheriff’s Office, which is also a part of the ICAC task force, provided the evidence they uncovered to the GBI on January 25.

This investigation is part of the ongoing effort by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, housed within the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit,  to identify those involved in the child porn trade. The ICAC Program, created by the U. S. Department of Justice, was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the Internet, the proliferation of child pornography, and the heightened online activity by predators searching for unsupervised contact with underage victims. The Task Force consists of 118 affiliate Georgia law enforcement agencies.

In 2008, the Georgia ICAC Task Force made 109 arrests and in 2009 made 164 arrests. In 2010, the Task Force made 162 arrests. There have been 650 arrests in Georgia by the ICAC Task Force since it was established in 2002.

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Contact Information:

John Bankhead - 404-270-8330

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