TOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer
Megan DiPatri at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office: Years of work paid off last week.
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The U.S. agent who put away two sex tourists
Megan DiPatri, mother of two, built cases against men who preyed on children.
Agent Megan DiPatri took the stand and described how millionaire Bucks County businessman Andrew Mogilyansky traveled to Russia and sexually assaulted three young teenagers brought to him from an orphanage.
Even years after those violent encounters, DiPatri recounted, the girls still looked down in pain and shame while telling her how Mogilyansky stole their childhoods.
DiPatri, 41, a supervisory special agent with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Philadelphia office, then watched matter-of-factly as a federal judge last week gave Mogilyansky eight years - the longest prison sentence possible under his plea agreement - plus 15 years of supervised release.
Leaving the courtroom, DiPatri showed no sign of celebration that five years of hard work had locked away another international sexual predator - the second such high-profile triumph for ICE and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia this year. Besides, she had paperwork to file and was eager to get her son and daughter to soccer.
That night in her South Jersey townhouse, with her children and the case both put to bed, she accomplished something that had been elusive for most of the investigation.
"I slept like a bear, finally," DiPatri said.
Your ordinary soccer mom, she's not.
Working on sexual tourism cases immersed DiPatri in a seamy world of international crimes against children.
UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency, estimates that about 948,000 children are trafficked into the sexual-exploitation industry every year worldwide, including the United States.
Among the predators are tourists, often wealthy men who travel abroad to have sex with children.
Mogilyansky, a Hatboro resident, fits that profile: an entrepreneur with numerous businesses, including one that publishes the Russian Yellow Pages. A personal worth estimated at $5 million. Columbia University grad. Raised $1.2 million through his own charity to help children harmed in the 2004 Beslan school massacre in Russia.
About 25 percent of sex tourists come from the United States and Canada, according to End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT).
Sex tourism thrives on "the ease of travel and new ways of sharing information on the Internet," said Carol Smolenski, executive director of ECPAT's U.S. chapter.
Many sex tourists are parents who respect the law at home. Mogilyansky is the married father of three young children.
"But it feels like anything goes when they travel abroad," Smolenski said.
When the suspect is American, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), under the Department of Homeland Security, is the main federal agency that enforces the Protect Act of 2003, which makes it illegal for a U.S. citizen to sexually exploit a child on foreign soil.
"While these types of cases are extremely challenging to investigate and prosecute, we owe it to those young victims to take action," said Andrew M. McLees, acting special agent in charge of ICE's Philadelphia investigations office.
Under that law, DiPatri and her colleagues investigated Anthony Mark Bianchi, 47, a former Wildwood motel owner, who was sentenced in May to 25 years for sexually molesting or attempting to molest eight young teenage boys in Eastern Europe between 2003 and 2005.
DiPatri's skill, persistence and decency were praised by U.S. Attorney Michael Levy and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Morgan-Kelly, the prosecutors in the two cases.
"A lot of agents don't want to work these cases because they're so emotionally taxing," Morgan-Kelly said. "But Megan uses that to fuel her desire to bring this type of perpetrator to justice. She doesn't shy away from the incredibly dark side of child exploitation."
