Child Porn Find Sparks Urgent Victim Search
Police seek four women for help finding numerous suspected child abuse victims.
Jan. 6, 2008— -- Police are on a desperate search to find kids depicted in child pornography images discovered on the computer of a man arrested on forgery and identity theft charges, and also are seeking four women pictured on the computer.
Puyallup, Wash., police believe the computer's owner, Andrew F. Kowalczyk, 33, may have been abusing the children shown in hundreds of images.
There were also images of four women and a hotel room on the computer of Kowalczyk, who was arrested at a hotel in Puyallup on Dec. 27, police said.
"They went through the computer and found several hundred pictures of child pornography, leading them to believe there are several children who are endangered, and we need to locate those children," Puyallup police spokeswoman Lorri Ericson told ABC News affiliate KOMO-TV in Seattle.
Officials have asked the public for help identifying the hotel room and locating the four women, who they believe may know the whereabouts of the endangered children.
"We don't know where motel room is, but we believe it might be associated with some of the abuse," Ericson said. "So if we can identify the motel or the city that might also help us find where the children might be."
The children in the pictures are apparently very young -- believed to be between 2 and 8 years old, police said.
Investigators do not know the names of the four women in the photographs, who are not considered suspects, but investigators believe they could be the key to finding the children, police said.
"So that we can talk to them and see if they can help us identify someone who might know who these children are, or maybe by chance they know who the children are," Ericson said. "One minute is one minute too long for these children, so we're in a hurry to identify them and find out who they are."
They do not know where the women or the hotel room are, but believe they could be anywhere on the West Coast. Police said they believe that the abuse most likely took place in Seattle, Los Angeles or Portland, Ore.
