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US teen, experts urge fight against online predators

UN rights chief: Poverty key cause of abuses

Global hunt for child-sex suspect

US teen, experts urge fight against online predators
Agence France-Presse
Last updated 09:41am (Mla time) 10/18/2007

WASHINGTON -- US teenager Alicia Kozakiewicz made a chilling plea Wednesday to US lawmakers to step up the fight against Internet predators who lure children into a sordid and often deadly world of abuse and sex.

"I am the 13-year-old girl from Pittsburg who was lured by an Internet predator, transported across state lines and enslaved," Kozakiewicz told lawmakers at a congressional hearing on sex crimes and the Internet.

"But I was saved, and I speak now for so many young girls who will never be heard," the now 19-year-old psychology student said.

Kozakiewicz recounted how, as a bored, lonely 13-year-old, she struck up a friendship in an online social network "with a beautiful red-haired girl."

"There was nothing she didn't know about me. We traded secrets, school pictures ... only it's too bad that Christine's were fake: Christine was a middle-aged pervert named John."

Kozakiewicz was kidnapped on New Year's Day 2002 from her parents' home in Pennsylvania by the "special friend" she had met on the Internet, and was driven to a house in Virginia where she was subjected to horrific sexual abuse.

"Every inch of my 99-pound (45-kilogram) body was violated," she told the hearing, reading with poise from prepared testimony.

"The boogeyman is real and he lives on the Internet. He's in my computer and yours and while we are sitting here, he's at home with your children," she said.

Three days after she disappeared, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Western Pennsylvania Crimes Against Children Task Force tracked her down and freed her, using the same tool that had been used to ensnare her: the Internet.

Experts told the panel that the Internet has caused the child sex business to swell into a global, multi-million dollar organization that feeds off the torture and abuse of children.

They also said they were seriously underfunded in the United States, and risked losing the battle against a formidable enemy.

UN rights chief: Poverty key cause of abuses
Agence France-Presse
Last updated 07:11pm (Mla time) 10/17/2007 

GENEVA -- Poverty is a key cause of human rights abuses worldwide and states must make every effort to ease inequalities, the United Nations human rights chief said on Wednesday.

"In a world with sufficient resources for all, poverty and the inequalities it breeds are the greatest human rights challenges facing humanity," UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said.

In a joint statement with Abdou Diouf, Secretary General of the Francophonie group of French-speaking nations, Arbour urged all countries to work to achieve the UN's Millennium Development Goals as a key means of eradicating poverty.

The statement comes as millions of people take part in a 24-hour "Stand Up and Speak Out" campaign, sponsored by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) alliance and the UN Millennium Campaign.

People in nearly 90 countries are to stand up in public spaces, schools, places of work or worship, at sports and cultural events to voice their frustration at the lack of real progress in rooting out global poverty.

Global hunt for child-sex suspect
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/asia-pacific/7047308.stm
Published: 2007/10/16 23:07:20 GMT
© BBC MMVII

An international manhunt has been launched after Thai police named a suspected paedophile as Christopher Paul Neil, a 32-year-old Canadian.

Authorities in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam are searching for Mr Neil, of British Columbia, who allegedly appears in 200 online images abusing boys.

He studied to become a priest and was a youth counsellor before moving to Asia.

His younger brother, Matthew Neil, said his family was "in shock" and appealed for Mr Neil to turn himself in.

Interpol had appealed for public help after experts unscrambled digitally-swirled internet photos of the suspect.

It was the first time the international police agency had made a direct worldwide appeal for public information in a case.

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