Child pornography deadly cause of child abuse
(republishing, copying, no restrictions)
By: Father Shay Cullen
In most countries there is another damaging impact of the computer revolution- the cyber sex over the Internet. Today young people can connect to the internet in a cyber cafe for a few pesos and with a simple click of a button, they can connect to web sites that show the most perverse images of child sexual abuse. This has a powerful impact on the mind of a young boy. The influence can fill his feelings with sexual arousal intense curiosity and temptation to make sexual experimentation with children younger than him.
Many eleven or twelve year old has sexually abused small children as a result of what they have viewed on the Internet. How safe is your little girl from older boys who are her playmates and have Internet access? The wisest and safest thing nowadays is to restrict and limit the contact. But that is not the only action that can be taken; it is essential that we look for the ways and means to control the accessibility of these perverse images.
They are in fact illegal content that is banned almost everywhere in the world. Even here in the Philippines, but the laws are not sufficient to control the accessibility to these images or prevent their copying on to computers, CDs and distributing them to others through Internet Server Providers (ISPs).
In fact it is a billion dollar industry worldwide. The ISPs make the most money because they rent out the web site to customers who can put there anything they want-even child pornography. If they were storing illegal drugs they would be sentenced to life in prison. Then they make money from customers who subscribe and connect to their Internet server computers for a monthly fee. With that connection the customer or family member can access the Internet and get access to child pornography sites.
The images of children being abused whet the sexual appetites of their viewers, even eleven-year-old boys and they are prone to go out and sexually abuse children in their own locality. Child pornography is the advertisement for the sex industry that specialises in prostituting children. Hundreds of thousands of children are sexually abused as a result of advertisements for international sex tours that provide underage teenagers to the tourists.
There is the growing cyber-sex industry that is making its regional presence felt in the Philippines. Last 2004, in the UK alone, more than 7,000 suspected sex perverts were detected in an international investigation and 2,500 were arrested for accessing and down loading child pornography over the Internet much of it coming from the sex dens in the Philippines.
This was the work of Britain's National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) - the unit which led Operation Ore. It developed out of the US successful break up of a huge international child Porn ring named “landslide” by access, the credit cards used to buy the pornography over the Internet and credit too must go to the Philippine police.
The pedophiles in Britain, Ireland and Hong Kong and cyber-sex -tourists paid as much as £50 to watch young boys and girls perform sex acts directly beamed from the cyber-sex dens in Angles city and Metro Manila to their home based computer screens. Some of the Children were as young as eleven year old.
The sex acts desired can be made ‘to order’. The children can be made to do acts as desired by the customer or an adult will do it to the child on live cameras and it is sent to the customer through an ISP corporation. In Britain, British telecom has a blocking system that prevents customer’s access to any child porn site.
Who is and should be held legally responsible for this damage and abuse to children? The makers of the child pornography, most certainly, yes. But we believe that the law must hold responsible the ISPs those who store, transmit and distribute it too and they are all over the world. They are earning millions from transmitting and storing the illegal images and the victims are innocent children. [to be continued]
