The Globe: Local victim-turned-advocate fights for funding of federal task forces

Published Wednesday, Jan. 18, 2012
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As Alicia Kozakiewicz stood behind a podium in December, addressing a small crowd of reporters with cameras and notebooks, the courtyard of the Downtown Allegheny County Courthouse echoed with emptiness. While Kozakiewicz delivered a message intended for state lawmakers on the need for funding for police task forces to arrest child sex predators in Pennsylvania, the crowd appeared too small for such a large issue. But for Kozakiewicz, it is overflowing.

"In my speeches, I always say,‘I don't stand here alone, that beside me are millions of children whose voices have been silenced,'" said Kozakiewicz, a survivor of Internet luring and abduction. "It's true. I feel like they are next to me, holding my hand. I can feel them, I really can. They're there. They give me the strength to move forward."

In the years since her rescue, the 10th anniversary of which was this past Jan. 4, Kozakiewicz, 23, has undergone the emotional journey of not just transitioning back into her daily life in Crafton Heights, but also transforming into an advocate for Internet safety and legislative state and federal funding of police task forces cracking down on Internet predators.

"It was a miracle that I was rescued, and today it would be a miracle that my case was ever even investigated," said Kozakiewicz, a 2010 Point Park University graduate . "When this happened to me, the funding was there because this wasn't as prolific. But now, because there's so many cases and so many predators, and the Internet has grown into some uncontrollable beast, they're not able to contain it and they're drowning."

A bill proposed to General Assembly in Harrisburg on Dec. 5 by state Rep. Daniel Deasy, D-Westwood, who was at the press conference, focuses on instances of failure to report, such as those regarding 20,000 known child sex offenders in Pennsylvania and the recent Pennsylvania State University scandal. The bill makes reporting child sex abuse mandatory.

Camille Cooper, the legislative director for PROTECT, which has teamed up with Kozakiewicz to fight for funding, said formal discussions are currently underway in Harrisburg regarding the bill, and a briefing regarding action should be scheduled soon.
Kozakiewicz's abduction was one of the first investigated cases of Internet luring in America. Over the course of several months, then 13-year-old Kozakiewicz developed an online relationship with a man from Virginia in an Internet chatroom. The man arrived at her home on Jan. 1, 2001, abducting Kozakiewicz across state lines to his home in Virginia and holding her captive in his basement dungeon where he raped, beat and tortured her over the next four days.

Kozakiewicz continually describes her rescue as a "miracle, because it took another monster coming forward to basically tell on him, to snitch." Her abductor shared video and photos of Kozakiewicz's torture and violation with a friend via file sharing sites. After the friend realized the FBI was searching for Kozakiewicz and her abductor, in addition to the fact that the shared files could incriminate him as well, he alerted officials. Special FBI task forces were able to track the originating IP address of the files to the abductor's home within 12 hours of the tip, and Kozakiewicz was rescued on what she believes was the day she would have been killed.

"It never crossed my mind that rescue would actually happen," she said. "I had gotten to the point where I was so scared that I was hiding under the bed from what would be my rescuers … I just thought the people that were in the house were searching for me to hurt me more."

Since her rescue, Kozakiewicz created the Alicia Project, through which she speaks to school assemblies about the importance of Internet safety. The Project has teamed up with PROTECT and the National Organization to Protect Children to fight for the passing of Alicia's Law, a mandate of funding to police task forces responsible for arresting child sex predators – like the one responsible for Kozakiewicz's rescue 10 years ago – in all 50 states. Versions of the law already exist in Virginia and Texas, and she has turned her focus on her home state of Pennsylvania.

Kozakiewicz used her advocacy as a means of recuperation from her traumatic experience, but she feels the trauma will remain with her for the rest of her life.

"I feel like I was rescued, but I've never really recovered," she said. "You don't just snap back from something so traumatizing. That man killed that little girl, that little girl was murdered in that basement. And I feel that there are pieces of me that will forever be trapped there."

Kozakiewicz suffered from amnesia following her experience, and aspects of her capture are still a mystery to her. Turning advocate and speaking out for her cause seemed like a natural step in her journey to recovery, she said.

"It started getting a bit easier because I started remembering my story," she said. "As I was telling it, there would be new pieces coming together, and I would be like ‘oh my God,' and I'd start crying in front of these people because I didn't even know that part of this. I was able to piece together what happened to me through talking to these kids. I think if I hadn't started speaking out, I wouldn't be strong. I think I would have let other people put me down … Instead of standing up and finding my voice, I think I would have been swallowed up by their thoughts."

Kozakiewicz's resiliency is somewhat of a phenomenon for the psychologically traumatized, said John Carosso, a child clinical psychologist from Community Psychiatric Centers in Greensburg. While he does not suggest Kozakiewicz's public recovery, he believes speaking out about a situation can lead to a level of empowerment few in similar situations can reach, although it is on the rise.

"For a case with amnesia, it can be very dangerous," Carosso said. "It can wreak havoc on a person when it resurfaces, so we want it to resurface in a controlled way. For the resilient, for the people that speak out, it's how they take the trauma. What do they do with it? They channel the energy and master it in a controlled way."

According to Carosso, mastery of a situation for someone who has experienced trauma takes practice. Flashbacks can easily be triggered by simple objects or feelings in the person's everyday life, and recognizing those objects and controlling those feelings is what leads to recovery.

"You never fully recover," he said."There are still residual feelings of the trauma. It's about adjusting to your still fragile life, that those feelings will be with you until you die. You have to be well on the road of recovery to master those feelings [and begin speaking publically]. And that can be truly empowering."

Cooper believes it takes a certain type of personality to conquer and overcome situations like these.

"There's something special about Alicia," she said."She has a certain kind of chutzbah. She's had a lot of press; it's a lot of work. It must be nerve-wracking, but she does great."

Kozakiewicz's recent motivation comes from the knowledge that the same technology responsible for her rescue has been used to track roughly 20,000 known instances of images of child pornography across the state of Pennsylvania, according to a 2008 Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) law enforcement database. Kozakiewicz and Cooper describe the images as crime scenes and say that all 20,000 are cause for arrest.

"Only 2 percent are being investigated [through the ICAC task force]," Kozakiewicz said. "Imagine if just 4 percent were being investigated, or just one more child came home. It's about the one child."

"Not one more child" has become the war slogan for Kozakiewicz's campaign, which has since spawned similar branches of initiatives, like the Not One More Child Coalition. Her current efforts are focused on passing a report mandate for the state of Pennsylvania regarding child sex abuse cases.

Kozakiewicz and Cooper claimed those 20,000 offenders have knowingly been overlooked by Pennsylvania Attorney General

Linda Kelly and other state officials because of lack of funding for resources to make arrests.
Additionally, statistics suggest one of every three homes sharing child pornography is also a site for child sex abuse, according to Cooper. Kozakiewicz and Cooper hope to have a state of emergency declared in Pennsylvania to accomplish these arrests.

"A state of emergency would open up the resources and would be able to focus them on rescuing these children," Kozakiewicz said. "And they could cut through the red tape and all the funding issues and call in all the first responders, and they would have available boots on the ground to go rescue these children."

As the Christmas decorations and holiday reminders are removed from homes, Kozakiewicz finds this time of the year to be especially trying. The holiday season in particular triggers crippling flashbacks for the survivor, and yet she would not trade in her experiences for a different outcome knowing the progress and impact her story has made.

"There's a lot of people that say, ‘Why did this happen, why me?'" Kozakiewicz said. "And at some point, I realized maybe I was the one that could survive through it, who would get the chance to speak out and really help people. I hate to say it, but maybe this is all part of some sort of plan."

WHIRL Magazine: Go Glam

Published January 2012
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