The Internet
& Child Abuse

by Pat McKenna.
"80% of child porn involves imagery of rape and 21% involves torture."

In the last week of February 2010, four UK internet domains were attacked by criminals who placed child pornography on them.

The material was placed on a number of sub directories which meant that genuine users of the root and primary domain did not know that the material was there.

For example, a site had existed for a number of years: www.mysite.co.uk. The attackers created pages on a subdirectory such as www.mysite.co.uk/newdirectory/xyz. The owners of the original site were not aware of the new material on their server and were pretty taken aback as the currency of the business model is trust.

The matter was reported to authorities immediately upon discovery and over a two week period, three of the domains were removed and at time of writing this article, one still remains.

This incident demonstrates the ease with which child porn sites can be created, imagery sourced and made accessible, a payments mechanism through credit card and money transfer put in place, and hundreds of links from so called ‘circular’ sites put in place to point to the material.

In fact, a person using one of a number of legal adult porn sites is a mere three or four click of the mouse from this site. It reminds me of the story of the rat: they say that in any major city, one is never more than eight or so feet from one. The story of child porn is very similar. You think that it is resident an internet dungeon but in fact it is never more than a couple of clicks away from what we perceive is internet normality.

Many people use terms like child porn, kiddi porn, paedophile, paedophile ring, without really appreciating what they are referring to. Each of these terms is generally used in a very broad manner without much of an understanding of what is being referred to. The term paedophilia is probably the best umbrella term for any and all things relating to underage children and sexuality. The term paedophile can describe a person with an unhealthy or unlawful interest in children, even where that person would never physically touch a child. Lookup a site dedicated to paedophiles by paedophiles and they will tell you that a person seeking to have sex with a child is a paedosexual, and they would also differentiate between someone interested in infants, preteens or young teenagers.

80% of child porn involves imagery of rape.

Child porn is another catchall term that spans all material relating to children and pornography. However the term is discarded by law enforcement who calls it CSAI (Child Sex Abuse Imagery) or CAM (Child Abuse Material) and CEM (Child Exploitation Material).

Many believe that such imagery depicts only nude images of children. However the NCMEC (National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children) in the US tell us that 99% of such imager goes beyond simple nudity, that 80% involves rape where the child struggles or is assaulted against their will, and 21% involves torture.

Indeed some material is absolutely grotesque in any terms that a normal human being can imagine.

And lastly are the misconceptions that only children connected to the internet are threatened by who and what is on it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Capture the following image in your mind: A man at home in the very early hours of the morning is consuming child porn. His wife and children are in bed asleep. He is masturbating while watching an infant bound with duck tape being penetrated by an erect male. The infant is very distressed. It is actually very distressing to hear her infantile instinctive pleading for mercy.  When he has had his fill of this material, he goes to bed and a couple of hours later at eight in the morning, he interacts with his own children, and indeed other people’s children as the world goes about its business.

You won’t know who he is until he is caught with this material. He is the busman, policeman, soldier, bin man, priest, social worker, and in fact that person may be a man or woman.

I will work with Chris over the next while to explore the nature of this disease in our society and highlight the threats, and what we can do to mitigate them what this is possible

Pat McKenna

www.childwatch.ie

Follow Childwatch Ireland on Twitter: @ChildWatch

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