Video: Foster Parent Arrested On Child Rape Charges

Sheriff's deputies raided a Key Peninsula home yesterday and arrested 41-year-old Ronald Harold Young. He was jailed with bail set at one-point-nine million dollars.

Six foster children -- all boys, ages five to seven -- were removed from the home in the raid. Sheriff's spokesman Ed Troyer says all are victims.

The man's wife was not arrested. Troyer says she left for work each morning, leaving the man with the boys.

The Department of Social and Health Services says the couple has provided foster care for eleven children since they were licensed by the state in July 2002. State officials are contacting the other five.

A Department of Social and Health Services official, Mike Tornquist, says workers are angered and outraged. He says the behavior should not discredit thousands of foster parents who provide homes to eight-thousand foster children a day.

The arrest came after tips that originated in England and Ireland.

Six foster children, all boys aged 5 to 7, were removed from the home.

"All are victims," Pierce County sheriff's Detective Ed Troyer said, adding "hundreds of photographs have been recovered showing the boys in sexually explicit poses and engaged in sexual acts with the suspect."

Tacoma police and U.S. Customs agents joined sheriff's officers in serving a search warrant at the home.

The state Department of Social and Health Services announced Thursday it had stopped placement of foster children at the home.

The man's 40-year-old wife, also a registered foster parent, is not considered a suspect, Troyer said. The woman was employed outside the home in the early mornings, leaving the man at home with the children, he said.

The couple have provided foster care for 11 children since they were licensed by the state in July 2002, DSHS said in a statement.

Detectives, working with DSHS and Child Protective Service officials, were working to contact those children, Troyer said.

Troyer said he wasn't aware the couple had any children of their own living at the home.

Ronald Harold Young was booked into the Pierce County Jail for investigation of 32 counts of first-degree child rape, 10 counts of distribution of images of children engaged in sexually explicit acts, 10 counts of possession of child pornography and two counts of child molestation, jail booking documents showed.

He was held on $1.9 million bail.

No formal charges have yet been filed. A joint investigation by Tacoma police and Pierce County sheriff's officers continues, Troyer said.

The case began when investigators received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on a child pornography arrest in New Westminster, England, Troyer said. A male suspect had been arrested for viewing photos posted to a news group from a location in Pierce County. A second tip was received from a watchdog group called Combating Pedophile Information Networks, based out of a university in Cork, Ireland. That group also found explicit photos and supplied information to investigators.

"This illustrates there are no longer any borders in policing," Sheriff Paul Pastor said in a statement. "This horrible crime originated here and was discovered in the Republic of Ireland and England, proving that criminals do not recognize borders."

DSHS said the home had "one valid licensing complaint" involving the supervision of children on a trampoline.

"Any time a child is harmed, we are all angered and outraged," said Mike Tornquist, director of the DSHS Division of Licensed Resources. "Those feelings intensify when someone uses the guise of protecting and caring for children to gain access to them for their own self-satisfaction."

Tornquist said state foster parents care for more than 8,000 foster children.