It’s been a good week for the San Jose Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force. With an assist from the FBI and 11 other Bay Area law enforcement agencies, they arrested 11 South Bay suspects on child pornography charges, including a registered sex offender with a house full of toys, two bedrooms decorated for kids and wrapped gifts stacked beneath a Christmas tree in the middle of July. The suspect’s wife told police she’s in the process of adopting children.

The six-week investigation and subsequent raids demonstrated law enforcement’s emerging potential to protect kids from sexual abuse. Innovations in Web-crawling software and forensic cyber-investigation techniques are allowing ICAC teams to locate illicit images on the Web and follow digital trails that can lead to thousands of child victims who are literally waiting to be rescued.

Internet child pornography is a large global industry – worth perhaps $20 billion, according to one study – and law enforcement agencies say that hundreds of thousands of unique Internet addresses in the U.S., and tens of thousands in California, have been used to trade child porn images.

Investigators I spoke with in San Jose and the Fresno County city of Clovis say more than 90 percent of ICAC tips lead to viable investigations, and because ICAC cases produce hard visual and traceable evidence, conviction rates are high.

Detectives who examine the evidence are subjected to cruel subterranean horror shows. Children bound and violated, their faces locked in terrified expressions, totally aware of what’s happening to them, but not understanding why.

We’re not talking about baby-in-the-bathtub photos. A 2005 University of New Hampshire study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice examined evidence from more than 1700 arrests nation-wide for Internet crimes involving child pornography. Eighty percent of suspects had images depicting anal, oral or vaginal penetration of children. Eighty-three percent had images of prepubescent kids, and even infants.

While some argue that there is a bright line between looking at child porn and committing abuse, researchers in the New Hampshire study estimated that 40 percent of those arrested both possessed child pornography and had victimized children - with both crimes being discovered during the same investigation. Another 15 percent of suspects had attempted to victimize children, and more than 20 percent possessed images depicting bondage, rape or torture.

“We are talking about sadistic, demeaning, violent type of photography,” says San Jose police chief, Rob Davis. “And you can simply look into the eyes of the children who are being victimized in these photographs, and it turns your stomach.”

Kendra Nunes, an ICAC detective who worked on the recent San Jose operation, is the mother of three children. She says her first year in the unit left her shell-shocked.

“I think I had the same image as everyone else did about what child pornography might be,” she says. “Then I had to actually see it and hear it and stomach it. But somebody has to do this job, and so I can cope with the damage it does to me because it does far more to them.”

The U.S. Department of Justice created the regional ICAC task forces in 1998. Today, 61 teams operate nationwide, five of them in California. Congress passed a bill to increase funding for ICAC investigations two years ago, but allocated only a small fraction of the more than $200 million requested. Unlike most states, California ICACs receive some state funding, but task forces are lucky if they each receive $250,000 a year from Sacramento.

Nunes guesses that nationally ICAC teams investigate less than five percent of tips.

“I could sit at my desk all day and make case after case,” she says. “But then someone has to do the search warrant, someone has to analyze the evidence, go out and do the interviews. We just don’t have the resources to do that.”

Currently, the San Jose ICAC task force, which serves the entire Bay Area, has four detectives, two forensic investigators, and one Sergeant running the show. If you figure that thousands of Internet crimes against kids occur in their jurisdiction each year, and that it just took six weeks and 141 officers from 13 agencies to catch 11 alleged perpetrators…well, do the math.

“ICAC offices around the country are buried with these proactive cases,” says Sergeant Randy Schriefer, who heads up the San Jose ICAC unit. “We spend a lot energy and training and equipment trying to keep one step ahead of these guys, and frankly we’re treading water.”

It’s the same story all over California:

Detective Kevin Conde of the Marysville Police Department, near Sacramento, has been funding ICAC investigations out of his own pocket, spending more than $6,000 to date.

Clovis police Sergeant Matt McFadden, built his own computer forensic lab to facilitate child pornography investigations.

Activist Heather Steele heads up a San Diego nonprofit called Innocent Justice, whose mission is to raise money for underfunded ICAC investigators.

In San Francisco, the ever-shrinking SFPD Juvenile Division, which has lost at least three officers since November, has just one ICAC investigator. Lt. Mikail Ali, who heads up the division, says his unit depends on cyber-tips from the San Jose ICAC office, and does not have the resources to conduct pro-active investigations here in the city.

Meanwhile, San Francisco district attorney Kamala Harris, who is running for attorney general, sponsored a bill earlier this year to keep registered sex offenders from using social networking sites—sort of like Megan’s Law for the cyber world. The billed died in appropriations committee, but you have to wonder why Harris would get behind that kind of toothless legislation in the first place.

“We’ve I.D.’d victims off of social networking sites,” Schriefer says. “It’s a great investigative tool. But whether it’s going to stop a sexual predator, it’s not.”

Repeated attempts to ask Harris whether she would, as attorney general, support building stronger ICAC teams, which actually catch predators and locate victims, were unsuccessful. Either way, more of us need to start asking our law enforcement officials the same question.

The ICAC investigators are the front line of child rescue in the Bay Area and around the country, and it’s time to give them what they need to do their work. California is facing some tough budget choices this year, but this isn’t one of them.