Police raid two Belleville homes in state-wide sweep
Young children molested and raped for the entertainment of others. That's what investigators say they've found in raids over the last two days in the Metro East.
The Illinois Attorney General says a task force is rounding up the worst of the worst when it comes to child porn offenders. And she says the deeper they go in their investigation, the pornography gets more violent and the victims get younger.
Thursday, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced additional arrests and major developments in her yearlong initiative to crack down on child porn traffickers in Illinois called "Glass House."
The focus, Madigan says, is the viewing and trading of child pornography over the internet.
Also on Thursday, investigators made their 26th arrest in a state-wide, year-long operation.
Police arrested 48-year-old Mike G. Telkamp Thursday in Belleville and 61-year-old Garold Lee Semelka Sr. on Wednesday.
Madigan says what investigators are finding are more violent videos with younger victims.
"The worst of these videos is of a middle aged man in a clown costume repeatedly raping what appears to be a six year old girl," said Madigan. "The details of this video are, quite frankly, unspeakable."
Madigan says the video was downloaded in Illinois close to 1000 times in the last year and more than 300,000 times nation-wide.
She also says the video was found Thursday morning on Telkamp's computer.
Telkamp faces ten felony charges on child pornography.
Wednesday's raid
Another Belleville home was raided on Wednesday.
Neighbors near the home of Semelka in the 1100 block of Lilac say several police cars were in the neighborhood around 10 a.m. Wednesday.
They also saw officers going in Semelka's home, and coming out with computers.
Police arrested Semelka and charged him with 10 counts of aggravated child pornography.
Neighbors in the area are concerned.
"I can't believe it," says Phillip Eschman who says he saw the police presence Wednesday morning. "That's just not right."
Both Telkamp and Semelka are being held on $1 million bonds.