John Walsh’s hunt for predators comes to Vegas, with celebs in tow

In the past year, 600,000 tips were reported of kids being sexually solicited and harassed online — and that number represents cases from just one U.S. organization, the National Center for Missing &Exploited Children.

“America is the biggest offender, and biggest user, of children in sex trafficking. Everybody thinks it’s Cambodia,” said John Walsh, who co-founded the center, based near Washington, D.C., and who hosts CNN’s “The Hunt.”

“Thailand used to be the capital of it, but it isn’t anymore. America is,” Walsh said.

Federal agents use tips at the center to try to find children in peril and people who prey on them.

“The toughest thing they do there — the thing the marshals and the FBI don’t want to do — is look at the images of child porn, which is disgusting and debilitating,” Walsh said.

“They have looked at over 6 million images. They have a full-time psychiatrist there. I mean, it’s pretty tough to look at a 55-year-old man sodomizing a 2-year-old child, or 3 or 5.”

The reason I’m telling you these gruesome details is because, on Wednesday and Thursday, Walsh and celebrities (Richard Burgi, Alice Cooper, Patrick Warburton, Michael Pena, John O’Hurley, Roger Clemens and others) will converge on the Bellagio and TPC Las Vegas for the center’s annual fundraiser.

You can go online (MissingKids.com) to help this 16th Annual Canon Customer Appreciation Reception/National Center for Missing &Exploited Children Benefit Fundraiser and NCMEC Celebrity Golf Tournament.

The event raises money to help federal agents and center workers look for kids and predators.

Walsh and his wife, Reve, launched the center out of their Florida garage after their son, Adam, 6, was abducted in a Sears in 1981 and decapitated.

Adam’s killer confessed but was not convicted, dying of liver failure in 1996.

Walsh hosted “America’s Most Wanted” for 25 years, helping capture nearly 1,300 criminals and rescue 61 children. He worked to help pass laws and to coordinate federal agencies.

Last year, the center and the FBI led a nationwide sting, netting 281 pimps and 168 kids.

“We’ve done a lot of cases at the center that were very involved in Vegas,” Walsh says.

“There was a pimp I was after for years, who killed a 16-year-old girl, and he came in and out of Vegas. She tried to get out of the life. They found her legs in Illinois. She had a tattoo on her thigh of his name. They mark their girls, like people brand their horses.”

Walsh wishes states would work together better, because so many pedophiles move.

“Once they get these guys, they bond out and disappear,” he says.

“We have to identify and separate them from children. They’ll always say the same thing: ‘It’s a compulsion. I can’t help myself.’ But we let them out. We let them out all the time.”

Walsh said all states could use more tax dollars for child protective services and for cops who track pedophiles.

“What happens is, pimps come into Vegas, and they’ll bring girls from Guatemala, from El Salvador and Nicaragua. Many of them have been grabbed by ‘coyotes,’ who take them to Mexico; but now they give them to the cartels, who put them into sex trafficking in the States.”

Politically, this is an issue that is neither liberal nor conservative.

“I’m a child of the ‘60s. I had hair down to here. We protested the Vietnam war,” Walsh said. “But I have run across the dregs of society, and I’ve been doing this for 33 years.

“And whether it’s live-in boyfriends, Step-Daddy, Daddy, or the roving serial pedophile like the guy who killed Adam — they’re incurable. In their sights is one thing; they’re going to get to a child.”

It may seem like a non-sequitur that celebrities are coming to Vegas to have fun at the Bellagio and play golf to raise money for such a serious issue. But Walsh says the event is a model for fundraising.

And look at all the people who step up.

The Walshes turned tragedy into action. The center’s national headquarters building space was donated by Charles Wang, owner of the New York Islanders.

Here in Vegas, the fundraiser was started and maintained by locals John and Sheila Arnos. And John Arnos is a consultant for Canon U.S.A, which brings in the celebrities, and donates digital-imaging gear and tech to cops and to parents of missing teens.

“It is the average, working person in Las Vegas that puts this together,” Walsh said. “It’s a labor of love by the people of Las Vegas, by the Arnos family, and their friends and family.

“It’s wonderful.”

Doug Elfman’s column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Email him at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.