Cody Brown hadn’t yet been elected as the Warren County District Attorney when he announced the creation of the WRATH Unit last September.

But the Affidavit of Probable Cause filed in a recent case involving an area man accused of disseminating videos showing alleged child sexual abuse materials shows the value in having such a unit. No one knew quite what to expect when Brown, who was then the first assistant district attorney, announced a Web Response Against Traffickers and Harmers Unit to be housed within the District Attorney’s office. Specifically it will target offenders who attempt to victimize children through online communication or by possessing and distributing child pornography. The new group will also work in partnership with other law enforcement agencies across the commonwealth and is formally associated with Internet Crimes Against Children, a nationwide program of task forces dedicated to combating the sexual exploitation of children online.

That sounds great in theory. Now, we’ve gotten a glimpse into what these investigations entail. Documentation filed with the court as charges filed last week against a Sugar Grove man show the difficulty of these investigations. The investigation took months and included contact with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, search warrants filed to compel information from Meta and Google, subscriber records, device identifiers, location data, phone number attribution and communications while sifting through CyberTipline reports for multiple aliases.

We had supported the creation of the WRATH unit last year in part because of its ability to be proactive in these investigations. A glimpse into the way the unit works doesn’t dim that enthusiasm.

These types of units can be important because it has proven so difficult to deal with internet companies whose technology allows child sex abuse materials to proliferate. Just last week a U.S. judge dismissed a proposed class action accusing Apple of failing to stop the dissemination of child sexual abuse material through its iCloud data storage platform, saying the company is broadly shielded from ‌the claims under a federal law protecting online services from liability for user content. The British Broadcasting Company reported earlier this year that more than 70 million warning messages have been sent to people attempting to access child sexual abuse material over a two-year period, according to the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. The messages are sent as part of a partnership between the foundation, Google, TikTok and Meta.

The Warren County District Attorney’s office can’t clean up the internet all by itself. But it can make a difference in Warren County.