A subject near and dear to my heart, having co-authored 2 articles on the subject. The ring is international in scope. Here! Here! for the police!!!

Police smash global pedophile ring, arresting 700 people and rescuing 31 children
By D'ARCY DORAN (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
June 18, 2007 11:29 AM EDT
LONDON - Police shattered a global Internet pedophile ring, rescuing 31 children and rounding up more than 700 suspects worldwide, authorities said Monday.

Some 200 suspects are based in the United Kingdom, said the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center, a government agency. The ring was traced to an Internet chat room called "Kids the Light of Our Lives" that featured images of children being subjected to horrific sexual abuse - including streaming live videos of the abuse.

Some of the children were only a few months old. More than 15 of the children were in the United Kingdom, the child exploitation center said, refusing to elaborate.

British authorities would not break down where the other suspects or children came from. A Canadian official said 24 Canadians were arrested and seven children rescued, but added that the time period was longer than the more than 10 months the British said their portion of the investigation lasted.

U.S. officials declined to comment because their investigation is continuing in at least 12 states.

Authorities said they used surveillance tactics normally used against terrorism suspects and drug traffickers to infiltrate the pedophile ring at its highest level.

The investigation involved agencies from 35 countries and lasted more than 10 months. Officials did not immediately provide a full breakdown of which countries were involved, but identified Canada, Australia and the United States as British officers' main partners in the investigation.

Toronto police conducted online surveillance along with British police, said Detective Sgt. Kim Scanlan of the Toronto police sex crimes unit. She said 24 Canadians were arrested and seven Canadian children rescued since late 2005.

"Every arrest we make we seize computers and information so there are a number of ongoing investigations," Scanlan said. "There's just been great cooperation. It's a good day, but it's one day out of many."

Police are investigating two men in Germany in connection with the breaking-up of the ring, the country's Federal Crime Office said.

In one of those cases, prosecutors in the eastern town of Cottbus are investigating a 46-year-old man on suspicion that he possessed or distributed child pornographic material, said Toralf Reinhardt, a spokesman for regional investigators. However, he said the possibility could not be ruled out that others used the man's computer to log into a child porn chat room.

Authorities said the host of the chat room, Timothy David Martyn Cox, 27, of Buxhall, who used the online identity "Son of God," admitted to nine counts of possessing and distributing indecent images. Cox was given an indeterminate jail sentence Monday at Ipswich Crown Court, in eastern England. An indeterminate sentence means he will remain in jail until he is deemed to no longer be a threat to children.

"Today's verdict serves as a powerful warning to those using the Internet to facilitate the sexual exploitation of children," Jim Gamble, the agency's chief executive told a news conference.

Cox was identified after intelligence linking the chat room to Britain was passed on to Britain's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center by Canadian authorities in August. The agency, working under the purview of the Home Office, is made up of police officers with specialist experience of tracking and prosecuting sex offenders.

After his arrest on Sept. 28, 2006, British, Canadian and Australian authorities were able to infiltrate the chat room and collect evidence on the other members. Officers posed as contributors and even pretended to be Cox, running the chat room for 10 days. At no point did officers distribute illegal images, authorities said.

Forensic teams examining Cox's computer found 75,960 indecent and explicit images in addition to evidence that he had supplied 11,491 images to other site users.

A man described as Cox's lieutenant, Gordon Mackintosh, tried to resurrect the chat room in January. Authorities in Britain, Canada, Australia and the U.S. again infiltrated the operation. Upon his arrest, they assumed Mackintosh's identify online and ran the chat room for three days while collecting information on offenders who traded images in the chat room.

Mackintosh, 33, pleaded guilty to 27 charges of making, possessing and distributing indecent images and videos. He is awaiting sentencing.

---

Associated Press reporters Rob Gillies in Toronto and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

I can't imagine anything worse than this type of abuse. Those bastards should be sent to those secret CIA prisons around Europe for extensive torture. It makes me absolutely sick thinking about those poor children.

We keep our pedophiles under the Julia Tuttle Causeway around here. I'd prefer much harsher punishment. This was in the Miami paper a couple months ago:

The five men under the Julia Tuttle Causeway are the only known sex offenders authorized to live outdoors in Florida, said state Corrections Department spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger.

They have fishing poles to catch food, cook with small stoves, use battery-powered TVs and radios and keep their belongings in plastic bags. Javier Diaz, 30, has trouble charging the GPS tracking device he is required to wear; there are no power outlets nearby.

In the immortal words of Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buford_%22Mad_Dog%22_Tannen),

"High time we had a hangin'!!!"

My friend once had a job with the US Attorney's office. One of his tasks was to review seized child pornography and use various factors to try and determine the sex and age of the child in the photos. Yes, it was difficult in some photos to even figure out if it was a boy or girl.

He said eventually he just got numb to the task. Just tried to block out what he was really looking at and focused on the various bone structures etc. to determine age.

He never went into detail. I wouldn't want him to. But he said it is absolutley horrific what these people do to children.

:mad:

I can't imagine anything worse than this type of abuse. Those bastards should be sent to those secret CIA prisons around Europe for extensive torture. It makes me absolutely sick thinking about those poor children.

We keep our pedophiles under the Julia Tuttle Causeway around here. I'd prefer much harsher punishment. This was in the Miami paper a couple months ago:


yeah, I remember reading about that and wondered how the children were kept safe.

The only thing that keeps me from totally hating them is that the odds are, like 90%, that they were sexually abused as children themselves and that is how they got sexualized. We all get sexualized in some manner growing up. If something perverted is associated with our sexualization process, then it impacts on us for the rest of our sexual lives. That's were foot fetishists, etc come from.

So this is one of my Justitia long posts WARNING !!! :)

I have known a number of pedophiles who were working very hard to overcome their "addiction" -- as pedophilia is a compulsive behavior and a form of sex addiction. Many feel horrible about it but can't control it. The new Kevin Costner movie, "Mr. Brooks" though about a compulsive murder rather than a pedophile addresses that issue. I haven't seen and the reviews do not speak highly of it but the trailers I have seen and heard gives me a sense that they are trying to portray in some sense these kinds of addiction.

Though too many of the psychiatric and therapeutic profession say that pedophiles are basically hopeless, I don't believe that. I think that we just don't know how to treat yet that degree of severity of disorder.

40 years ago there was significant % of the population that seemed on the boundary between "neurotic" and "psychotic" and were all lumped together as "borderline personality disorder." About 25 years ago, thanks to the behavior of many returning Viet Nam vets -- who would suddenly start acting as if they were back in the jungle, like in the middle of the night, and seeing their wives as enemy Viet Cong, therapists began to realized that there was a psychological disorder happening, which they labeled "post-traumatic stress disorder" (PTSD.)

Social workers began to realize that a number of their clients that were diagnosed "Borderline" exhibited symptoms very similar to the Viet Nam vets and started to inquire as to the cause. They realized over time that the these borderline cases were victims of trauma, just like the Viet Nam vets but it occurred in their childhood -- i.e., child abuse, child sexual abuse, etc. And in their adult lives their erratic behavior was a delayed reaction to suppressed feelings from the abuse of their childhood, just as the Viet Nam vets suffering from PTSD were experiencing a delayed reaction to suppressed feelings while fighting in Nam.

In both cases, it was unsafe to feel the actual feelings the trauma was causing. For the Vets, it would paralyze them from action if they allowed themselves to consciously feel the full degree of fear, so many suppressed it, only for it to come out later, when they were home and safe and it was safe for the feelings to emerge.

Similar with adult survivors of child abuse. Usually it was unsafe for them, for a variety of reasons, to allow themselves to consciously feel the full range of feelings the abuse being perpetrated on them invoked. So they suppressed it, only to come out later when they were safe, which is when they are adults and no longer under the power of perpetrating individuals.

So for half a century, these people were viewed as untreatable. Now, we know what they are suffering from -- PTSD -- and how to treat it. SO many of these individuals go on to live more filling and happy lives and are more productive members of society.

I believe a similar development can occur for the more severe disorder of pedophilia, but we have to be willing to invest the time and energy and patience to do so. And I assure you, there are many pedophiles out there who would quite willingly participate in discovering how to heal them. Right now it is too unsafe for them to come forward because they are immediately treated as criminals. So they hide and hope they don't act out. But of course that will not happen.

I don't mean by this that we should let pedophiles run free-- I don't, absolutely, I think society should be protected from them. I don't even agree with the registered sex offender approach. I don't think they should be allowed to live in the community. How many instances do we read, almost on a weekly basis, of children and teenagers being kidnapped raped and killed by registered sex offenders. The risk and consequence is just too high.

But I don't think they should be treated like criminals. We need to work out a system in which they can live productive lives, be in therapy to help us move forward in finding out how to treat them, but at the same time protect society from them. They have a disease, and just as we quarantined that young lawyer who had TB, we should develop some form of quarantine system for the pedophiles.

Though I am not alone in my position, there are number of noted psychiatrists and therapists internationally who hold the same views, but admittedly this perspective is quite controversial. The disgust factor is so high, that it is hard to feel charitable in any way towards them.

Some of the children were only a few months old.

But I don't think they should be treated like criminals. We need to work out a system in which they can live productive lives, be in therapy to help us move forward in finding out how to treat them, but at the same time protect society from them.

Justitia I am sorry I have to disgree here. These people should be treated like animals, and eliminated. Period.

Some of the children were only a few months old.
Justitia I am sorry I have to disgree here. These people should be treated like animals, and eliminated. Period.

I am going to have to agree with Eric.

While I see Justitia' s perspective, I am of the opinion that these animals should be marked and highlighted for everyone to see. I want to know one when I see one. In the end there is no excuse for this behavior.

To let them walk around without a label and blend into society is to do the victims wrong.

They ought to hang em...period.


Then there's this add below this thread "Is there porn on you pc?":rolleyes:

Some of the children were only a few months old.

Justitia I am sorry I have to disgree here. These people should be treated like animals, and eliminated. Period.

I am going to have to agree with Eric.

While I see Justitia' s perspective, I am of the opinion that these animals should be marked and highlighted for everyone to see. I want to know one when I see one. In the end there is no excuse for this behavior.

To let them walk around without a label and blend into society is to do the victims wrong.

As I said at the end of my post, my position is a controversial one. And I absolutely agree with Pootiestang about not letting them blend into society.

But I would like to ask everyone to think about the following. Of the pedophiles' victims, 1 % of the victims will grow up to be pedophiles because of their victimization by these predators. Those are the statistics. Being a victim of pedophilia is the predominant source of pedophiles. If we treat those victims of the predators, once adults, the way some propose here, aren't we as a society perpetrating the victim again solely b/c he or she was already a victim of a perpetrator and his or her conduct as a result was the consequence.

Wouldn't we be better off to treat those victims while still young to avoid their maturing into a pedophile and facing a noose as one person suggested?

But how are we going to learn how to treat them, if we hang them as soon as they become acting out adults? We don't know how now. Locking them away and throwing a way the key, shooting them , hanging them, is not different that the 19th century inclination to lock mad members in the attic (many of whom themselves were victims of abuse a s a child.)

To me the only way to stop this disease being passed on from generation to generation is to understand it and learn from the adult perpetrators willing to work hard at finding and healing the source of their psychic injury. We certainly cannot do it if they are dead.

And there are ways to let them live and be productive and yet absolutely precluded from instigating any harmful activity against children. We just haven't figured out how to do that yet because we've put no time or energy into figuring it out. We are a resourceful; society and it is a shame we have not put the resources we have to good uses..

If something perverted is associated with our sexualization process, then it impacts on us for the rest of our sexual lives. That's were foot fetishists, etc come from.


While I agree with your point of view in that we need to try to fix the problem instead of eliminating the symptoms, but having said that, I fully understand the "burn them at the stake" sentiment too, being a father myself. However I feel that your views on other sexual "fetishes" is a bit harsh. For instance a womans feet can be very attractive without it being a deviant sexual fantasy. Why else would a woman paint her toenails and wear strappy shoes for instance. As long as a sexual act is concentual, between adults and non-harmful it cant be considered wrong. Just my 2 cents. :tu:

To me the only way to stop this disease being passed on from generation to generation is to understand it and learn from the adult perpetrators willing to work hard at finding and healing the source of their psychic injury.

I disagree. Having chemical imbalances that cause you to have weird moods is an illness. Acting crazy because you have mercury poisoning is an illness. Getting pleasure from abusing children is not an illness, it is evil. As such, it cannot be treated, only stopped.

Even if I accept some of your premises, I have no faith in the community of doctors, psychiatrists, and parole boards who are involved with the disposition of the criminal "Mentally ill," partly because of stories like this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_E._Duncan_III).

COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho - Idaho kidnapping suspect Joseph Edward Duncan III committed his first act of sexual assault 30 years ago, preying on a 5-year-old boy when he was just 12, according to a report published Wednesday.

Duncan’s records reveal a history of inflicting violence and sexual torture upon others, particularly young boys, with his crimes escalating in their seriousness. His past shows a series of failed treatments and refusal to comply with therapists and law enforcement officials who tried to correct his behavior, which mental health evaluators diagnosed in 1980 as consistent with an antisocial personality and a sexual deviant, the Seattle Times reported.

On Tuesday, Duncan was charged with two counts of first-degree kidnapping in connection with the abduction of Shasta Groene, 8, and her brother Dylan, 9, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The two children had been missing since May 16, when the bound and beaten bodies of their mother, older brother, and mother’s boyfriend where found in their rural home.

In addition to kidnapping the children, authorities believe Duncan is also responsible for killing the children's brother, mother and her boyfriend at the family home, a sheriff's spokesman said Wednesday.

The suprising thing about this case from my point of view is that the person running the website had a respectable background, lived with his parents and had a girlfriend.

I guess we tend to assume that people like this have either been severly sexually abused and have no interest in normal relationships. The evidence of a girlfriend suggests that may not be true.

I think in the future we will have the abilities to change people's behaviour (which has it's own set of fears when we can control people like that), but at the moment we can't change their behaviour enough..

While I agree with your point of view in that we need to try to fix the problem instead of eliminating the symptoms, but having said that, I fully understand the "burn them at the stake" sentiment too, being a father myself. However I feel that your views on other sexual "fetishes" is a bit harsh. For instance a womans feet can be very attractive without it being a deviant sexual fantasy. Why else would a woman paint her toenails and wear strappy shoes for instance. As long as a sexual act is concentual, between adults and non-harmful it cant be considered wrong. Just my 2 cents. :tu:

My apologies for my lack of care in writing. In no way did I mean to imply anything wrong or evil with foot fetishism, liking women dressed up in corsets, even BDSM (spanking, bondage, etc.) as long as it was consensual between adults and no permanent harm done.

My poor writing choice was because I was thinking in terms of the fact that our sexual predilections whether common, broadly-held or narrow in scoop of popularity are largely due to what happens to us as we sexually mature. We will have more "common" (i.e., typical) tastes if we have more "common" (typical) childhoods... etc.

I truly feel variety should be embraced and celebrated not condemned or ridiculed. I suspect that often, some couples with sexual issues (i.e., the lack thereof) could be resolved by delving deeper to find what really turns one on and being open to whole range of possibilities. Sexual pleasure, though physically manifested, is 90% in the mind.

To me, it is just tragic, given the process of sexual maturation humans go through, that some get their sexualization sufficiently derailed and in a direction that it is associated with harming others, whether it is children or adolescents or adults of varying ages.

"but for the grace of God" or fate or whatever, 99% of the victims of pedophiles don't grow up to be pedophiles themselves. The consequences for those victims can range from minimal to horrible: unable to hold jobs, sleep at night, compulsively overeat, alcoholism, drug addiction, becoming prostitutes, strippers -- and none of these are gender tied. But they don't grow up to be perpetrators.

But 1 % do. And the statistics don't go the other way. It is not the case that only 1% of the perpetrators were abuse victims in their childhoods -- it more on the order of 99%.

So as much as we would like to say -- well, they should control their impulses, they should be empathic for their victims, etc... just think, for those of us on here at JSF, when we eat the extra cheat when we know we shouldn't but we can't stop ourselves anyway, or skip work-outs or fall off the wagon completely... for many of these perpetrators the experience is the same, except it is not a donut they are devouring.

Anyone who reads interviews with Jeffrey Dahlmer (he is the one who was find capturing young adolescents, molesting them, killing them then literally eating his victims afterwards) can hear the pain he struggled with trying not act out and how devastated he was when he finally no longer could hold off. In no way do I excuse those crimes, I just mention it because there are a number like him and we could learn a lot from them how to heal future generations of perpetrators.

I am sure people here know that child-molesters are the ones most at risk in prison. The odds are they will be killed by inmates within weeks if not days, That happened to Jeffrey Dahlmer, also Father Porter, one of the most notorious of the priest child molesters.

I point this out not to raise sympathy for the murdered child-molesters but to point out an interesting fact. Why is it that inmates don't go after rapists, murders and other brutal individuals the way they go after child molesters? In my belief (and many others') it is because the odds are that most of the people in prison are victims of child abuse and molestation themselves -- and they have lived with the awfulness of that experience, which most likely is the root cause of why they are in prison. And their rage is unrelenting.

Isn't it in our interest to learn how to treat, to cure, to stop this disease (and I do feel it is a disease)? The havoc it wreaks is enormous. There have been studies and theories propounded by noted psychiatrists (Alice Miller being one) that one can trace the rise of Nazism in Germany to the particular brutality that was considered appropriate child-rearing practices in Germany at the time those adults were children. Does that not give pause for thought?

If people are curious about interesting insights into the consequences of child molestation, the film industry has a pretty good track record of capturing cinematically what becomes more understood in the therapeutic community over times.

Most recently, the film Mysterious Skin (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0370986/) is a riveting yet devastating film to watch. It is the most accurate portrayal yet to date of how being a victim manifests itself in the individual's maturation. The film won a ton of cinematic prizes.

One of my favorite films relating to the subject is one people might not expect. The Cell (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0209958/), a more of a blockbuster type but rather gorgeous on large screen with Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn and Vincent D'Onofrio. I love the film for its use of color and cinematic imagination. But I also love it because it is the first film that conveys well how trauma in childhood can lead to brutalizing behavior in adulthood. We are confronted in the film with the adult brutalizer. And to me, Jennifer Lopez plays her best role as the gifted therapist. The film has a sci-fi base plat -- so be forewarned.

Also I want to note one of the first films to actually recognize that incest and child molestation was actually quite prevalent. For you "youngsters" here -- 30 or so years ago, psychiatrists refused to acknowledge it existed to any meaningful extent, giving statistics like "1 in a million families", something we all know now is laughably false. But back then, a mother who came to a psychiatrist with her suspicions that her husband was abusing one or more of their children was likely to get committed for being deeply emotionally disturbed, that's how dead set against acknowledging the prevalence of sexual abuse was.

The first film, as far as I know, to open this up was "Something About Amelia (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088149/)" a made for TV in which a very courageous Ted Danson, riding on the high of his new breakthrough popularity on Cheers dared to take the role of a perpetrating father. Danson's willingness to do this played a significant role in pulling our society out the denial that such conduct was going on.

There are others but these are interesting starts.

I am sure people here know that child-molesters are the ones most at risk in prison. The odds are they will be killed by inmates within weeks if not days, That happened to Jeffrey Dahlmer, also Father Porter, one of the most notorious of the priest child molesters.

Good idea, send them to prison for life, however short it might be. There are no chemical inbalances only evil people. When they harm children, they should be harmed. :mad:

I've always found it somewhat troubling how quickly people are willing to arbitrate and strip the rights of other human beings- particularly when it comes to 'sex offenders'.

My sister was raped a few years back, and a nephew that I am currently raising was molested in his formative years... and so I am no stranger to the arena of pain that is almost assured with any violent sexual crime. Furthermore, make no mistake about it- I consider any child sex offense to be, ipso facto, violent.

However, I am definitely concerned with the instinctual reaction (hang, castrate, torture, etc.) to things like these. I am by no means 'easy on crime', and I consider myself anything but 'leftist' in regards to the judicial system; in fact, I am not morally opposed to the death penalty. Even so, it is unsettling that there is such an off hand, condemning response to these situations.

We all possess certain values that tell us that things like this are wrong: the value of life and freedom from such transgressions; even more than that, we all value the welfare of our children.

I implore you not to allow the principle of those values (the value of all human life) to escape you when you pass judgment on these people.











ADDENDUM: I hope I don't sound preachy... I don't intend to.

I implore you not to allow the principle of those values (the value of all human life) to escape you when you pass judgment on these people.



I reject the assertion that all human life has value. The life of a child molester has no value whatsoever.

I reject the assertion that all human life has value. The life of a child molester has no value whatsoever.

That's the problem... I see a gradient, there. Perhaps you don't.

What if a young boy 'plays' with a younger boy?

What if a 32 year old woman has unforced sex with an 11 year old boy?

What if a 22 year old man briefly touches the genitals of a 6 year old?

Then what if someone over 18 years old brutally rapes multiple children over a period of time?





Of course, there is 'wrongness' in each of these things. But I think the label of 'sex offender', and 'child molester' in general, is really dangerous. It garners a huge emotional response and I fear that the particulars of the crime will be disregarded in lieu of "oh God look a molester!"

Again, I'm not trying to excuse or trivialize these crimes... just throwing out my thoughts about the unfortunate social attitude towards this in general.