Nailing
Cybercriminals
Expert in crimes comitted via computer helps protect exploited children
by Angela Moore
While attending classes at the School of Law 20
years ago, Susan Kreston discovered her calling in life.
"I realized that the legal system as it existed was not set up for
prosecuting crimes of sexual violence against women and children,"
says Kreston. "So I decided to do whatever I could to level the field."
The Michigan native returned to the UM Law School in fall 2002 as an internationally
known expert in child sexual exploitation and cybercrimes -or crimes in
which the perpetrator uses a computer either to commit fraud or exploit
children. As counsel for national programs at the National Center for
Justice and the Rule of Law, Kreston continues to do whatever she can
to "level the field" and improve the way sex crimes against
women and children are prosecuted.
When Kreston followed in her father's footsteps as an assistant district
attorney in New Orleans in the late 1980s, detectives, prosecutors, doctors,
and social workers had just started to use a multidisciplinary team approach
to investigating and prosecuting sex crimes, working together early in
the investigation to form more solid cases. When she moved to the sex
crimes division of the Baton Rouge, La., district attorney's office, she
worked with police officers in the sex crimes unit on one of the first
multidisciplinary teams.
"Before, all the different players didn't really understand what
the others needed from them," Kreston says. "When people work
together on a day-to-day basis, they can tell each other, 'Here's how
you can help me build a stronger case.'" Later, as deputy director
of the National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse, Kreston lauded
this multidisciplinary approach to sex crime prosecution to authorities
all over the country and in South Africa, Thailand, Belgium, Brazil, Canada,
England, and Japan.
The widespread use of computers is also changing the way child exploitation
cases are prosecuted, teaming traditional investigators and prosecutors
with computer forensic examiners, Kreston says. "In a traditional
child abuse case, the prosecutor goes in with the statement of the child,
and when you're lucky, some kind of corroborating evidence. But in a computer
child exploitation case, you've got pictures, e-mails, and other evidence
straight from the source."
Through NCJRL and the National Association of Attorneys General, Kreston
coordinates a series of Cybercrime Training Conferences, bringing assistant
attorneys general from nearly every state in the nation to UM to learn
how to fight 21st century crimes committed using computers. Kreston, also
a visiting professor in the law school, will teach a Cybercrime course
and a Crimes Against Children course this fall.
"Susan is a nationally recognized expert in cybercrime," says
Thomas Clancy, director of NCJRL. "The broad knowledge that she brings
in that area adds another dimension to the Law School and gives the school
valuable national exposure. Her focus on prosecuting crimes against children
is an added bonus."
Angela Moore is a communications specialist in the
Office of Media and Public Relations.