The study by UNH's Crimes Against Children Research Center found that being constantly exposed to disturbing images of children being sexually victimized can take a toll. The study surveyed more than 500 investigators across the United States. It found that about half of the participants were concerned about the psychological consequences of exposure to child pornography.

Senior Researcher Janis Wolak says this form of stress isn't well understood, and she says it's not clear how it might differ from problems created by the stress of police work in general. "That really is the big question with this issue, and it hasn't been established," she says. "There hasn't been any detailed research done in this area yet. It is a relatively new problem for law enforcement because these cases have really mushroomed over the past ten years."

Wolak says there is some concern about the special stresses created by the sheer volume of the images that investigators are exposed to, and by the fact that the children are often unidentified. "I think another issue that comes up in these cases too is uncertainty about the offenders, because police, I think, feel very responsible for keeping the public safe, and they're dealing with offenders who clearly have a sexual interest in children, but often in these case you don't know whether those offenders have actually molested a child."

Wolak says questions have been raised about whether some type of special screening might be done for those assigned to work on child pornography investigations, but she says that's not always practical. "A lot of law enforcement agencies, and it's certainly true in our area of New England, are fairly small, so you screen people to be law enforcement officers, but beyond that you don't screen them to work on particular types of cases, and in fact when cases come up you expect people to be able to handle them."

Wolak says she hopes that more work in this area will be funded, and that specific guidelines can be created for law enforcement agencies that work in child porgnography investigations. And she says research is also needed to help investigators deal with specific problems. "For example, the impact on people's sexual lives, because it was clear from the small amount of research we did that some people really did have difficulty with images from pictures they'd seen intruding into intimate situations, so I think we really need to have some research that will help people find solutions to those problems."

The Crimes Against Children Research Center at the UNH recently received over $2 million in funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to further its research into Internet Crimes Against Children.