Henry Daily Herald

Michael Batchelor

McDONOUGH — A Hampton man was arrested on child pornography charges Thursday, following an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI).

The GBI’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, and the Spalding County Sheriff’s Office, executed a search warrant at 7 a.m., Thursday at Michael Jeremy Batchelor’s home, located on Old Atlanta Road, in Hampton. ICAC agents and Spalding County deputies found images of child porn on Batchelor’s computer, said GBI spokesperson John Bankhead.

Batchelor, 38, is charged with one count of Possession of Child Pornography. He remained in the Spalding County Jail at press time Friday.

According to Bankhead, the authorities were alerted and obtained a search warrant of Batchelor’s residence as a result of evidence developed by the GBI of peer-to-peer sharing of child pornography images from a computer at the suspect’s home.

“Each image has a unique identifier with a number associated with it, like a fingerprint,” said Bankhead. “Pedophiles do this, they exchange child porn this way.”

During the on-site forensic preview of the computer, several files of suspected child pornography were discovered. A computer and several hard drives in Batchelor’s residence were seized as evidence.

“The investigation began within the last couple weeks,” said Bankhead. It is part of the ongoing effort by the ICAC Task Force, housed within the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit, to identify those involved in the child porn trade, he said.

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, according to Bankhead.

The Task Force consists of 182 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 and in 2011, made 173 arrests. There have been 52 arrests this year. There have been 820 arrests in Georgia by the ICAC Task Force since it was established in 2002, added the GBI spokesman.