Thursday, March 16, 2006

Protect children... Shame on Us All

On Wednesday, March 15, the good guys caught the bad guys. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE Cyber Crimes Center) led an investigation into an international child pornography ring and succeeded in arresting 27 child victimizers. These 27 perverts were using an Internet chat room to molest children and distribute child pornography.

Although undercover agents were able to identify the criminals, the investigation took 10 months. That duration of time is more than half the entire life of the baby under 18 months old who was molested on live streaming video. The implications of the 10-month investigation mean that after authorities received the tip, these children suffered brutal rapes, molestation, and victimization possibly several times a day for more than 10 months.

The effects of child sexual abuse are grave physical harm – even death, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicide, depression, anxiety, promiscuity, behavior disorders, substance abuse, and psychiatric disorders (http://www.childtrauma.org). Many child molesters were molested themselves as children, which may be creating an exponential increase of child molestation in general over time.

Child sexual abuse brings shame on us all. How can we prevent Internet web and chat room child pornography? How can we prevent child sexual abuse? Perhaps a good place to start would be to hold Google and especially Yahoo (Yahoo has many child porn group members) accountable for allowing access to child pornography pages.

E-mail Yahoo to tell them to stop allowing child porn groups. Contact your legislators to enact laws that would hold more business accountable. Get online (if you can stomach it) and report child porn sites to www.cybertipline.com, https://tips.fbi.gov/, and Operation.Predator@dhs.gov.

The agencies responsible for policing the web are the FBI's Cyber Crimes Program www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/cac/innocent.htm and the ICE Cyber Crimes Center http://www.ice.gov/graphics/investigations/services/cyberbranch.htm. If these agencies cannot adequately protect children, we need to find another way to increase protection. We are all responsible.