Peabody Award-winning investigative journalist Stephen Dean has been tackling the stories that other reporters shy away from since 1984.

The author of two nationally published books, he is now a highly sought-after expert on Internet crimes and culture.

Long before computers were a household fixture, Dean started breaking new ground on Internet crimes in 1996, and his extensive digging has been sending cyber-criminals to prison since joining the KPRC Local 2 Investigates team in February 2001.

In early 2004, he started exposing child predators by posing as a child online, a technique that is still used by other newsrooms and police agencies to this day.

Dean's reporting changed the World Wide Web overnight. In 2005, his expose of chat rooms geared solely toward indecent acts with children prompted hundreds of chat rooms to be unplugged. Worldwide headlines from the New York Times, to the Washington Post, to the China Daily News credited his reports on KPRC Local 2 with this historic move.

His work is featured in the National Museum of Television and Radio in New York and in a news writing textbook at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

He won the highest honor in broadcasting, the Peabody Award, in 2003 for his reporting on how the U.S. military was ignoring crucial evidence in crimes against its own soldiers. When KPRC Local 2 uncovered this practice, Congress moved to pass new legislation, signed into law by the President, which has forever changed how the military investigates crimes.

Reporting on the legal system earned Dean the State Bar of Texas "Gavel Award" five years in a row. He was the sole winner of the Texas AP Broadcasters "Freedom of Information Award" for its first four years for overcoming obstacles in digging through public records.

He won the national Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors Association in 2000 for exposing a Houston judge's practice of forcing families to cough up campaign contributions in exchange for getting a lawyer in his court.

Two elected Texas lawmen have been removed from office after their secret actions were exposed in his reports. One was indicted and arrested.

An entire police force was shut down because of Dean's reporting. Texas law was changed and a criminal grand jury investigation was launched when Dean uncovered the lies that allowed a man to abuse a legal loophole to purchase that police department, thus handing out badges to his friends. Dean wrote an article for a national law enforcement magazine on this investigative accomplishment.

In 2005, the Texas AP Broadcasters awarded him the statewide "best reporter" honor for his live coverage in breaking news.

He earned the national Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists for exposing a pattern of covering up sexual harassment within the Houston Police Department ranks.

Dean started his career at his hometown radio station, shutting down a fertilizer plant as one of his first accomplishments while still in high school. Families credited him with saving their family farms and livestock from illegal pollution. That's when Dean fell in love with investigative reporting.

He has worked at radio and television stations in York and Harrisburg, Penn. and in Columbus, Ohio, beginning in 1989.

His first nationally published book on Internet predators was released in June 2007. For more on the KPRC Local 2 reporting included in that book, log onto www.internetpredatorsbook.com.

His second book, "Your Neighbor's Secret Life Online," was released by New Horizon Press for pre-sales in August 2007.

Dean has been married to the love of his life since 1997. He loves trail-riding with his friends, water-skiing and anything else on the water, along with traveling with his wife.

Want to drop Stephen a line or share a news tip? E-mail him at sdean@click2houston.com.