Updated June 28, 2018 at 7:11 p.m. 
 
 General Studies student Joel Davis was arrested Tuesday in Manhattan on charges of child pornography and attempting to sexually exploit children as young as two years old. 
 
 Davis spent years as a sexual assault prevention activist both on and off Columbia’s campus, helping to found Youth to End Sexual Violence and serving as the chairman of the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence. 
 
 After being arrested, Davis allegedly confessed to officers that he had sexually abused a thirteen-year-old boy in the past, and that he kept child pornography on his phone. 
 
 Davis was a columnist for Spectator in 2017, writing on topics including being a survivor of sexual assault (like most Spectator columnists, Davis was an outside contributor who was not a member of Spectator’s staff). In a 2014 op-ed in the Huffington Post, Davis condemned the sexual exploitation of children. 
 
 Justice Department officials said that over the course of several weeks, Davis exchanged text messages with undercover officers, repeatedly asking that one officer send Davis sexually explicit photos and videos of his nine-year-old daughters. 
 
 The Department’s criminal complaint also alleges that Davis described in detail the explicit sexual acts he intended to engage in with both the officer’s nine-year-old daughter and the two-year-old daughter of the officer’s girlfriend. 
 
 “Having started an organization that pushed for the end of sexual violence, Davis displayed the highest degree of hypocrisy by his alleged attempts to sexually exploit multiple minors,” Federal Bureau of Investigation Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney, Jr. said in a statement. 
 
 Davis and the Youth to End Sexual Violence did not immediately respond to Spectator’s requests for comment. He could face up to 70 years in prison. 
 
 Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Davis was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2015. In fact, the Nobel Committee does not publicize the list of nominees to either the media or the nominees themselves. 
 
 khadija.hussain@columbiaspectator.com | @ColumbiaSpec ||||| Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese, left, explains to Amber Leake, 9, the dangers of Internet child predators, as requested by her mother, Jeally Leake, center, after a news conference in Los Angeles on June 26, 2014. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) 
 
 It was called “Operation Broken Heart.” Its targets were child sex traffickers, pimps, porn peddlers and sex tourists operating mostly through the Internet. And on Thursday, local, state and federal law enforcement in California announced the results: some 275 arrests. 
 
 Among them: 
 
 A teacher’s assistant accused of going to a meeting to have sex with two children. 
 
 A retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy, charged with distributing child porn online. 
 
 A 64-year-old computer programmer, accused of going to a park to meet a 15-year-old for sex. 
 
 A U.S. Army soldier on leave who responded to undercover cops posing as young girls and was arrested after showing up for sex. 
 
 A former substitute teacher who allegedly posted a personal ad seeking sex with a father and son, and was arrested after going to meet with who he thought was an 8-year-old boy. 
 
 “The dirty old man stereotype no longer applies,” ICE Homeland Security Special Agent Claude Arnold said at a news conference on Thursday. “The perpetrators in these cases come from all walks of life and virtually every strata of the socioeconomic spectrum. They’re community leaders, white-collar professionals and even law enforcement personnel. The common denominator in most of these cases is the Internet. It has become the preferred playground for child sex predators.” 
 
 Investigators with the Los Angeles Regional Internet Crimes Against Children task force posed as young teens online and then arrested those who showed up to engage in sex acts, Los Angeles Police Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese said. Also, parole officers arrested 186 sex offenders accused of violating their parole by possessing child porn or approaching children in public, the Los Angeles Times reported. 
 
 Law enforcement officials conducted the operations in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. However, the number of arrests is expected to increase as police continue to analyze and gather additional evidence, according to news reports. 
 
 Officials told the L.A. Times that one in 25 children between the ages of 10 and 17 nationwide have received online solicitations from strangers to meet in person. 
 
 “We can’t arrest our way out of the problem,” Arnold said. “Parents and children need to have frank conversations about how to stay safe in cyberspace.” ||||| Buy Photo Mount Pleasant police Chief Brian Fanelli and his wife Sonja exit Federal Court Jan. 23, 2014 in White Plains. Fanelli was freed on $50,000 bail after appearing in federal court to face child pornography charges, hours after federal agents raided his Mahopac home and seized computers containing more than 120 files of children as young as 7 years old engaging in sex acts.(Photo: Tania Savayan/The Journal News) (Photo: (Photo: Tania Savayan/The Journal News))Buy Photo 
 
 A single dad in Mahopac secretly videotaped his son's 9-year-old friend in a swimming pool changing room, while a Westchester Medical Center nurse had 19 videos of children under 13 having sex with adults, authorities said Thursday as new details emerge about a regional crackdown on Internet child pornography. 
 
 Among the more than 70 people charged was also a Port Chester man who had allegedly been downloading child porn for five years and a Kent man, charged with having images of girls as young as 6, whose father was deported six years ago for setting up a sexual tryst with a 14-year-old girl at a Wendy's restaurant in Chicago. 
 
 Advocates contend it's a small fraction of the disturbing illegal industry. 
 
 "How many more children are not counted? How much child porn is still out there?" said Keira Pollock, deputy executive director of programs and clinical services at the New City-based Center for Safety & Change. "It seems like there's this epidemic hidden industry that continues to profit off of children." 
 
 Special Agent in Charge James T. Hayes Jr., head of the New York office of Homeland Security Investigations, speaks about Operation Caireen, which resulted in the arrests of 70 men and one woman on child porn charges over the past five weeks Jonathan Bandler 
 
 Dubbed "Operation Caireen," the crackdown was headed by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and was prompted in part by a probe of then-Mount Pleasant Police Chief Brian Fanelli, who was arrested in January and charged with downloading and distributing 
 
 child pornography. 
 
 At least five of those charged have ties to the Lower Hudson Valley, including Jonathan Silber, 42, a Boy Scout den leader and Little League coach from Suffern, who was arrested at his home on May 9 and charged with possessing child pornography. Federal investigators said an IP address connected to Silber was used to distribute pornographic images online. 
 
 Silber and his wife, an elementary school teacher, have two young sons about 5 and 9 in age, neighbors said. Silber works as a systems analyst and project manager for Tranzact, a Fort Lee, N.J. company that helps insurance companies with direct-to-consumer sales. The company did not return calls for comment. 
 
 The arrest came as a shock to neighbors, who described Silber as a "typical Rockland neighbor." 
 
 "Surprised? I was shocked," said Vic Robbins, 66, a retiree who lives across the street. "He's always got kids at his house. He's very active in the community. Lovely wife. Two nice kids… I would never have any suspicion that anything wasn't normal." 
 
 Other local defendants include John Asmodeo, 30, a computer technician who was temporarily living in Mahopac. He was arrested April 23 and accused of setting up a camera in a changing room to film his son's friend when she changed to go swimming. The girl would visit the home with her 7-year-old brother, but police said Asmodeo would edit out anyone else who appeared on the videos. 
 
 Authorities said Asmodeo had visitation rights to see his 9-year-old son at the home. They said the girl was interviewed by Child Protective Services and did not appear to have been physically abused or molested. Asmodeo was freed on a $10,000 bond posted Wednesday. 
 
 Kenneth Gardner, 59, a speciality STAT Flight nurse at Westchester Medical Center, was arrested at his home in Astoria, Queens on April 8. Gardner, who is married, is charged with possessing and prompting a sexual performance by a child, according to a complaint filed by the Queens District Attorney's Office. 
 
 He has been a licensed registered nurse since 1986, having worked at New York Hospital before moving to the Valhalla medical center in 1992. Hospital officials said in a statement Thursday that Gardner "was immediately and indefinitely suspended without pay" after his arrest. He could lose his nursing license if convicted. 
 
 Solomon Ben, 29, of Port Chester, was charged with possessing and receiving child pornography in a federal complaint filed April 28. Authorities said Ben had been viewing pornographic files for up to five years. He was later released on bail. 
 
 Agents said they first questioned him at his home on Nov. 18, and that he "had a preference for child pornography depicting girls approximately thirteen to fourteen years old." He could not be reached for comment. 
 
 Christian Cote, 26, of Kent, was arrested April 9 and charged with possessing images of girls as young as 6. The Putnam County District Attorney's Office said in a statement that investigators seized a laptop, desktop computer and a mobile phone. They also found a small amount of marijuana, authorities said. 
 
 His father, Francois Cote, was deported to Canada in 2008 after being released from federal prison, where he served time for traveling from Newark to Chicago, intending to have sex with a 14-year-old girl he met online. 
 
 Mount Pleasant police chief Brian Fanelli and wife, Sonja, exit U.S. District Court, Jan. 23, 2014, in White Plains. He was freed on $50,000 bail after appearing in federal court to face child pornography charges. Tania Savayan/The Journal News 
 
 The girl was actually a Cooks County sheriff's detective, who Cote greeted with a hug in 2003 at a Wendy's restaurant. Her greeting "wasn't nearly so warm," a federal judge wrote in the case, as Cote was arrested by FBI agents and sheriff's deputies. 
 
 The current investigation – named for Caireen, the protector and patron of children in Celtic mythology – focused on online peer-to-peer, or "P2P", file-sharing that allows Interenet users to exchange images and videos. The defendants include a rabbi, two other police officers, an airline pilot and an architect. Investigators said additional charges could be lodged against some of them. 
 
 Staff writers Lee Higgins, Jonathan Bandler and Hoa Nguyen contributed to this report. 
 
 Twitter: @jfitzgibbon, @corcoranterence, @alextailored, @leehiggins, @jonbandler, @reporterhoa 
 
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– His public push to end sexual violence against children was so significant it reportedly nabbed him a nomination for the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize. Joel Davis' private actions couldn't have been more contradictory, say police. The 22-year-old Columbia University student, who started Youth to End Sexual Violence before becoming chairman of a group of more than 5,000 human rights organizations, was arrested Tuesday in Manhattan on charges of child pornography and attempting to sexually exploit children, reports the Columbia Spectator. Davis allegedly responded to a post left by an undercover FBI agent on a "fetish" website, per the Washington Post. In a series of text messages, he admitted to past sexual experiences with children as young as infants, including a 13-year-old boy he met in June through the Grindr app, police say. Showing "the highest degree of hypocrisy," Davis also tried to arrange meetings with children supposedly in the care of undercover agents, says the FBI's William F. Sweeney Jr. "As if this wasn't repulsive enough, Davis allegedly possessed and distributed utterly explicit images of innocent infants and toddlers being sexually abused by adults." US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman calls the development "as unfathomable as it is sickening" given that Davis has rubbed elbows with Angelina Jolie, served as a youth ambassador for the UN special representative on sexual violence in conflict, and is now leading the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence. Davis, who last year described being "tormented by the recollection of my childhood sex abuse" and spoke out about child rape in war zones in a 2014 Huffington Post op-ed, could face up to 70 years in prison.