Aurora father, son arrested on child porn charges

An Aurora man and his son are the latest suspects in an ongoing crackdown targeting the most active child pornography traders in Illinois, prosecutors said Thursday.

Thomas Babicki, 56, and Joel Babicki, 26, were arrested early Wednesday after police executed a search warrant at their home on the 1400 block of Crestwood Drive and recovered pornographic images and videos of children on two laptop computers, Aurora Police Sgt. Chris Whitfield said.

The father and son came under investigation as part of an initiative by the Illinois Attorney General's office to prosecute the most egregious child pornography traders in the state, authorities said. Their arrests brought to 13 the number of suspects caught up in the crackdown since it launched in August.

“Our aggressive effort to stop child pornographers will continue and more arrests will follow,” Madigan warned in a statement.

The Babickis were each charged with one count of child pornography possession and one count of aggravated child pornography possession, the most serious of which is punishable by up to seven years in prison.

Cara Smith, Madigan's deputy chief of staff, said the men were accused of possessing pornographic images of children younger than 13. She said forensic investigators were still searching their computers for images, and the case remains under investigation.

The crackdown involves the use of Internet protocol addresses, which are unique to individual computers and can pinpoint online file trading. So far, authorities have identified more than 8,000 such addresses trading illegal images.

“To earn your way onto our list, it's either volume of files or type of files,” Smith said. “We're looking at these IP addresses every day and adding new offenders.”

Neither Babicki appears to have a prior criminal history in Kane County, other than traffic offenses, according to court records. They're both due in court Nov. 4.