Millions of children around the world are being sexually abused and
molested. Billions of dollars are changing
hands as part of a growing
crime wave of child
pornography. This is anything but a victimless crime.
Children – some
as young as infants – are being barbarically assaulted for the
sexual gratification of their abusers and those who view their photos.
While inroads have been made in the fight against child pornography,
the problem remains severe. We have much more to do.
The Internet has become a child pornography superhighway, turning children
into a commodity for sale or trade. Analysts at the National Center for
Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) have reviewed 9.6 million images
and videos of child pornography on the Internet just since 2002. There
are millions more such images in cyberspace that we have yet to find.
Law
enforcement agencies are cracking down on this crime wave. In November,
the chief operating officer of the National Children''s Museum in Washington
was arrested and charged with distributing child pornography over the
Internet. Also this month, police across Europe announced they had arrested
nearly 100 people linked to a network that allegedly produced and sold
child pornography videos to 2,500 customers worldwide.
In 1998 Congress asked NCMEC to create a "9-1-1 for the Internet." We
established CyberTipline (www.cybertipline.com), which has received more
than 500,000 reports from the public and Internet service providers regarding
child sexual exploitation. More than 460,000 of those reports involved
child pornography.
What is child pornography? It goes far beyond nude pictures of children.
It is the visual depiction – whether in still photos or video – of
children being sexually assaulted. In some instances, rapes of children
have been shown live over the Internet to paying customers. In 1982,
the US Supreme Court held that child pornography is not protected speech
but child abuse.
Some suggest that many people who view child pornography just "look
at the pictures." But our work on these cases has led us to conclude
that for most of those who view these images, sex with children becomes
a compulsion and evolves into physical acts with real children.
When NCMEC analysts scour the Internet for child pornography, they determine
whether website content is illegal, use search tools and techniques to
identify and track down the distributors of child pornography, and then
provide the information to the appropriate local, state, federal, or
international law enforcement agency.
Law enforcement agencies and NCMEC have managed to identify almost 1,200
of the many children who appear in child pornography. We have found that
35 percent of the photos were taken by a parent, 15 percent by another
family member, and 20 percent by someone close to the child or the family.
We have provided more than 12,000 evidence reports to prosecutors and
law enforcement officers to assist in prosecutions of those accused of
these crimes.
Sadly, NCMEC has found that the children being used in these images
are getting younger and younger, and the images are becoming more graphic
and more violent. Of the children in pornographic photos and videos who
have been identified, 58 percent had not yet reached puberty.
To stop the use of credit cards that fuel the child pornography industry,
NCMEC created the Financial Coalition Against Child Pornography. Today
this coalition includes 90 percent of the US payments industry, with
growing international involvement. The 30 companies in the coalition
include MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Bank of America, Citigroup,
Microsoft, America Online, Yahoo, Google, and many others.
Thanks to the participating companies and extraordinary leadership from
federal, state, and local law enforcement, we have virtually eliminated
the use of credit cards in child pornography transactions. Although credit
card logos still appear on some sites, now when consumers attempt to
use credit cards, they either become victims of identity theft or are
redirected to another method of payment.
In too many places around the world, the possession of child pornography
is handled as a relatively minor offense. In fact, in 136 countries it
is not even a crime.
Children depend on adults to keep them safe. We need to do more to protect
them from dangerous, cold-hearted predators who want to harm them for
pleasure and profit. We need to recognize child pornography as a crime
against humanity that must be attacked more forcefully and that deserves
harsh punishment.