Internet child exploitation - what can be done?

nozzferrahhtoo

Quite some time ago I got upset by the issue of online child exploitation. I started putting time into researching** how such people operate with the view of finding out how I could do my bit to help. Life got in the way and I came back to this periodically. I eventually decided I would work on an article highlighting how such people operate and how parents can do their bit to help protect their own children. I have literally been concerned with this issue since my college years over a decade ago but I never got the time to pursue it with the zeal I wanted.

I am constantly aghast by what I have learned, to the point I am in danger of becoming dangerously obsessed and am losing sleep over my concerns. Having recently become a father myself I find this does not reduce my fears but boosts them and I find I can not longer sit passive in a world of paedophilia without doing something to help.

The greatest rage for me comes from how open and blatant such people are. So essentially my question for this thread is.... why is nothing done... why can nothing be done.... how are they able to get away with it so openly and easily? And what can we as average citizens do? It seems to me that short of an internet user walking into a honey trap and handing over credit card details... there is little that can be legally done. Does anyone here with a legal background know of the barriers the police face in prosecuting such people? How is it they can sit and laugh at their own immunity to the law?

To give some examples of my research and how blatant and open these people are I will mention a few of my experiences.

The first was with the bigger internet chat servers like Dalnet and Undernet. Less than 2 minutes on one of these is all it takes to find people openly discussing child sex and exchanging erotic materials on the subject. So blatant and fearless are they that chat rooms on the servers have names like "kids'r'us" and "childslavesex" in which people openly discuss the ins and outs of everything from how to find porno on the internet to the ins and outs of their experience travelling in the worlds child sex tourism. All of this seemingly done without masking their IP addresses in any way and I was able to trace some of them to Ireland, the UK, France and Germany. Nor are Undernet and Dalnet under any legal pressure, that I know of, to monitor and close down such channels. They host them happily and freely without retribution from anyone.

The teens rooms on Dalnet and Undernet also appear populated with men who prey on girls, or what they hope to be girls, private messaging them with threats if they do not do everything those men ask them to... which varies from going on camera to meeting in real life. Private messages are sent freely with threats to harm loved ones or infect computers with awful viruses if the girl(s) do not comply to the sexual advances of the threatening man. I invite anyone interested to simply join such a channel with a feminine user name, leave the chat room running for 24 hours unattended, then return and simply read the private messages there waiting. You need do no more than this to end up in a spiral of despair and the pure evil present in our world.

Second it seems from the information these people discuss openly on chat rooms and usenet groups, that obtaining material for viewing is as simple as downloading any peer to peer file sharing client and typing in the right keywords and downloading any of the results. Again seemingly many doing this do not bother to go to any lengths to mask their IP addresses.

Third, upon entering web based chat rooms under a female username to test how numerous perverted advances are for the article.... using some of the webs most popular uk and ireland based rooms..... I was constantly met with a barrage of private message requests for meet ups for sex. No surprise. The surprise comes however when you reply with things like "Oh I cant because im baby sitting" or some other such throw away phrase indicating the presence of a child. The number of men who openly offer their phone numbers saying they would be interested in including the child in the "fun" is obscene. Yet despite complaints to the administrators of some of the bigger chat rooms and letters with all the details to the police in the UK and Ireland I am aware of no action being taken or police enquiry made... let alone actual prosecutions.

So despite the open and blatantly obvious methods of these people, displaying their phone numbers, contact details and IP addresses for the world to see, nothing can be done or is being done. Why is this? What are the legal barriers preventing action being taken? What can we as citizens do aside from lie awake at night worrying with it to the point of obsession or tears. Who can be contacted or petitioned?

Paedophilia is one of the greatest and most awful humanity issues of our time and aside from the rage people espouse from their armchairs declaring such people should be castrated and left to rot.... I feel lost in a sea of people who are not actually doing anything on the issue. Yet I look at my beautiful baby girl every day since she has been born and find tears in my eyes and my helplessness to do anything at all to help build a world where she will be that little bit safer than she is now.

Finally - I very much hope to compile my experiences and findings into an article I can submit to a news paper in the hope that it will get published and raise awareness on many issues from how these people operate to how to protect ones own children in the home when they use the net. However I have never been published before so I also welcome any and all suggestions on how to go about this and who and how to approach. IF even one parent reads it and protects their child online like they did not before.... or if even one parents reads it and is moved to petition their TD to have more done on the issue.... I would feel justified in the time spent working on the article.

** I hasten to add that all my experiences and research were done legally and I did not go so far in my research as to break the law in any way, actually download any of the files in question, or attempt to talk to girls of any age myself on the internet, let alone underage ones. I am under no illusion as to how little I can do on this issue and so I do not intend to break any laws or martyr myself without cause or without being convinced that it would do any significant good, nor do I feel there is much more to be learned than I already have by attempting to learn more by actually engaging myself in illegal activities.

prinz

Unfortunately not a lot. You are raising the issue. I'd suggest keep raising the issue, with newspapers, politicians etc. There is a market for such things and if you close down one site/group etc another will pop up somewhere else. Internet child exploitation is one facet of a whole range of exploitations which the internet has facilitated or increased... and the many that don't get anywhere near the internet.

The greatest rage for me comes from how open and blatant such people are. So essentially my question for this thread is.... why is nothing done... why can nothing be done.... how are they able to get away with it so openly and easily? And what can we as average citizens do?

Unfortunately the same can be applied to an endless list of acts.