N.J. Catholics outraged over accused priest’s access to children, Catholics paid $36m to 600 abuse victims in Victoria, An ongoing battle against the porn connection

N.J. Catholics outraged over accused priest’s access to children
By Mark Mueller Religion News Service, April 30, 2013

NEWARK, N.J. — Amid calls for a Vatican investigation, Newark Archbishop John J. Myers is facing fierce criticism for his handling of a priest who attended youth retreats and heard confessions from minors in defiance of a court-ordered lifetime ban on ministry to children.

At St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Colts Neck, where the Rev. Michael Fugee had been spending time with a youth group, angry parishioners said they were never told about Fugee’s background, and they questioned Myers’ defense of the priest, the subject of a lengthy story in The Star-Ledger….

Fugee, 52, is a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark and under Myers’ supervision. His work at St. Mary’s, however, was in the neighboring Diocese of Trenton, where Bishop David O’Connell has ordered the pastor of St. Mary to bar Fugee from any church activities, a spokeswoman said in a statement….

Fugee was convicted in 2003 of criminal sexual contact for allegedly fondling a 14-year-old boy’s genitals on two occasions. Three years later, an appellate court vacated the verdict, ruling the trial judge should not have allowed jurors to hear the part of Fugee’s confession in which he described himself as homosexual or bisexual. The rest of the confession was not called into question.

Rather than retry Fugee, prosecutors allowed him to enter a rehabilitation program for first-time offenders, on the condition that he undergo counseling for sex offenders and sign an agreement barring him from any work in which children are involved. The archdiocese’s vicar general, on behalf of Myers, signed the agreement as well.

Yet The Star-Ledger found Fugee has apparently violated that pledge with impunity, attending retreats and hearing confessions and traveling with members of the St. Mary youth group to Canada….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/nj-catholics-outraged-over-accused-priests-access-to-children/2013/04/30/f222d2ca-b1c6-11e2-9fb1-62de9581c946_story.html

Catholics paid $36m to 600 abuse victims in Victoria
By Greg Ansley Thursday May 2, 2013

Australia’s bid to prise open the secret world of endemic child sexual abuse in churches and other powerful institutions has stepped up a notch with revelations of the scale of perversion.

The Victorian inquiry resumed this week to admissions, contrition and apologies from the Catholic Church, which said it had paid A$30 million ($36 million) in compensation to about 600 victims of deviant priests in the state.

Next week the New South Wales special commission of inquiry will open its hearings in Newcastle, north of Sydney, in the diocese that triggered both the state inquiry and the federal royal commission into abuse of children in the care of religious, government and other institutions.

A key focus of the NSW hearings will be the late, defrocked priest Denis McAlinden, whose long-term abuse of dozens of children was known to the church but hidden as he was shuffled between Australia, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, where he worked at Tokomaru Bay near Gisborne.

McAlinden – whose predecessor was later convicted of child sexual abuse – was central to investigations by Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, the whistleblower policeman who sabotaged his career by making public alleged cover-ups by the Church….

In Ballarat, Church officials knew by 1975 that priest Gerald Ridsdale was a paedophile, but allowed him to continue working. Ridsdale was later twice convicted for child sexual abuse, and moved to different parishes.

The Catholic Order of Salesians of Don Bosco, which works with homeless and at-risk youths, and runs schools and boys’ clubs, said it had paid more than A$2 million in compensation to abuse victims and had 49 complaints against its priests in Victoria, three of whom will face courts this year. The Brothers of St John of God said it had received 31 cases of abuse by 15 members.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10880999

An ongoing battle against the porn connection
Bharat Dogra  The Statesman Asia News Network New Delhi May 2, 2013

Recent years have seen massive worldwide changes in cultural and social norms that are closely related to the spread of pornography and new forms of prostitution. These need to be studied and understood carefully, particularly in the context of their impact on violence and crime against women and children.

Researchers Rebecca Whisnant and Christine Stark describe the many-sided spread of this global industry: “Prostitution is a multi-billion dollar global industry that includes adult and child pornography, bartering sex for food and shelter, massage parlours, prostitution rings, stripping, saunas, live sex shows, street prostitution, escort services or outcall, ritual abuse, peep shows, phone sex, international and domestic trafficking, mail-order bride services and prostitution tourism. The prostitution industry is an enormously powerful and pervasive culture presence.”….

According to Forbes magazine, the contemporary legal pornography business is a $56-billion global industry, including a huge presence of some big multinational companies….

In a research paper titled “The Use of New Communication Technologies for Sexual Exploitation of Women and Children”, Donna Hughes…. This study quotes experiences of police officers who blame the Internet particularly for the spread of child porn. Raymond Smith of the US Postal Inspection Service, who has handled hundreds of cases of child pornography, found that the rise in Internet use by sexual predators has also increased their use of the US mail service. He said that from the time they first started investigating child pornography in the early 1980s until five years ago, they had almost eliminated the distribution of child pornography.

But since the Internet this has steadily increased. In 1998, 32 per cent of cases of distribution of child porn were related to the Internet. In 1999, 47 per cent were Internet-related, and in 2000 this had risen to 77 per cent. This paper concludes, “The use of new communication and information technologies for the sexual exploitation of women and children is creating a crisis for women’s and children’s status, and dignity all over the world.”
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/An-ongoing-battle-against-the-porn-connection-30205229.html

Sandusky’s potential ties to child pornography ring, Police bust sex traffic ring

Abuse victim assists U.S. Postal Investigative Service’s probe into Jerry Sandusky’s potential ties to child pornography ring

Abuser of Philly cop provided financial support to Sandusky’s Second Mile Foundation

By Christian Red / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Philadelphia product Greg Bucceroni said he reached out to the U.S. Postal Investigative Service on Tuesday in an effort to assist the agency with its investigation of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

The Postal Service’s criminal investigators are reportedly looking into whether Sandusky had any ties to a pedophile ring that involved child pornography and other supporters of the Penn State football program.

Bucceroni told the Daily News last month that he was a sex abuse victim of Edward Savitz, a well-known Philly businessman and advocate for at-risk youths, who was charged with multiple counts of abuse of minors in the early 1990s. Savitz died of AIDS days before his 1993 trial was to begin, but Bucceroni said he was abused by Savitz in the late ’70s, and that Savitz introduced Bucceroni to Sandusky during a 1979 fund-raiser for The Second Mile, the charity Sandusky founded and through which he met and groomed his victims….

“(The USPS) asked me questions about Savitz, about his connection to Sandusky and about any illegal child pornography operations that I remembered hearing about or knew about,” Bucceroni, a police officer in Philadelphia’s public school system, told The News. He added that he spoke with FBI authorities last fall and again earlier this summer about Savitz.

Although he does not think Savitz was a booster for Penn State, Bucceroni said Savitz was a financial supporter of The Second Mile….
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/abuse-victim-assists-post-office-probe-jerry-sandusky-potential-ties-child-pornography-ring-article-1.1136428

Police bust sex traffic ring Aug 10, 2012

RIVERSIDE, Cal. (NBC) – A federal grand jury has indicted eight people on charges related to the sex trafficking of teenaged girls who were groomed and recruited to work as prostitutes across Southern California, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Six of the eight were arrested Thursday; two others were already in custody.

Four of the defendants are members of the Rolling 60s Crips street gang and the other four are affiliated with the gang, officials said.

Street gangs are increasingly turning to prostitution and human trafficking as a source of their revenue, said Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz.
Http://www.wcsh6.com/news/watercooler/article/210275/108/Police-bust-sex-traffic-ring

How I Came To Talk About My Abuse, NCAA Penn State Sandusky Sanctions, Paterno Statue Removed

also:
- NCAA could fine Penn State as much as $60M as part of Sandusky sanctions
- Nightly News   |  Aired on July 22, 2012 Coach Joe Paterno statue removed

How I Came To Talk About My Abuse
07/19/2012  Carissa Phelps – Attorney, Author

When Carissa Phelps was 14 years old she found herself in a last-chance rehab facility for young people, on the verge of becoming another casualty of the streets. What had started out as frequent sleepovers at friends’ houses to escape the wrath of her stepfather and her chaotic, impoverished home, grew into full-fledged running away, until her exasperated mother finally abandoned her at Fresno’s Juvenile Hall. She was 12 years old.

From this point, Carissa pinballed between the streets and various group homes or state run facilities. She experienced trauma that no child should have to endure at the hands of a brutal pimp, who made her walk the streets. But by some miracle she survived, and the child victim grew up to be a strong, successful woman, driven by her desire to pay it forward by helping kids in need.

RUNAWAY GIRL: Escaping Life on the Streets, One Helping Hand at a Time (Viking, $26.95), by Carissa Phelps, co-authored with Larkin Warren, is her story. Here, she explains why she decided to tell her story, and how people misrepresent what she went through….

When we call sexual exploitation of youth something like “prostitution” we put all the blame where it does not belong. We focus on the youth, on the child, on their behavior. In the recent Sandusky hearing, the questions were not about the child’s “promiscuous” or “needy” behavior that led to their being easy targets for abuse. Today, the focus is not on what a child victim is wearing or that they may have admired or sought out the person that was abusing them. Thankfully for the Sandusky victims and for many other child sexual abuse victims we’ve gotten past that type of victim blaming when it comes to straight child sexual abuse. However, for the children and youth that are commercially sexually exploited we are still far off.

What I experienced was not prostitution. I was twelve. I was abused. There was nothing about it that made me feel like I was in control. It was the opposite. I belonged to someone. He controlled me. He played games with me to get me to obey him and to make sure that I knew he was the boss. Up until that point I had rebelled against all adults, so it was odd for me to follow his rules, but he made sure I knew that he was in control….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carissa-phelps/child-abuse-runaway-girl_b_1686791.html

NCAA could fine Penn State as much as $60M as part of Sandusky sanctions

By Jerry Hinnen | College Football and Olympics Blogger
July 22, 2012

The NCAA will fine Penn State at least $30 million and perhaps as much as $60 million for its involvement in the Jerry Sandusky scandal, industry sources told CBSSports.com’s Brett McMurphy.

The record fine will go toward an endowment for children’s causes, sources said.

“This is a fine like no fine before,” an industry source told CBSSports.com.

CBSSports.com’s Dennis Dodd has reported Penn State will face “significant penalties that could severely damage the football program’s ability to compete” when the NCAA announces sanctions against the football program at a 9 a.m. news conference Monday.

To put the fine in perspective, Penn State’s athletic department had $116 million in revenue for the 2010-11 school year, the most recent data available according to figures from the U.S. Department of Education’s Equity in Athletics.

A source told CBS News correspondent Armen Keteyian that Penn State will suffer “unprecedented” punishment for its collective failure to report Sandusky, recently convicted on 45 counts of sexual abuse, to the proper authorities.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the source told Keteyian, indicating that both the football program and the school itself would face sanctions….

Bob Williams, the NCAA’s vice president of communications, said after the Freeh report was released that Penn State needed to answer “four key questions, concerning compliance with institutional control and ethics policies.”

Likely of particular interest to the NCAA were the report’s conclusions that the school had “decentralized and uneven” oversight of compliance issues – laws, regulations, policies and procedures.

“Certain departments monitored their own compliance issues with very limited resources,” the report found. Ensuring compliance with the federal Clery Act, which requires the reporting of crimes, was handled by someone with “minimal time.”….
http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/blog/eye-on-college-football/19632027/ncaa-to-sanction-penn-state-source-says-school-may-prefer-death-penalty

Nightly News   |  Aired on July 22, 2012 Coach Joe Paterno statue removed
A statue of famed Penn State football coach Joe Paterno has been removed following the report that he knew Jerry Sandusky was being investigated for child sex abuse. NBC’s Michael Isikoff reports.
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/48278494

Satanic Ritual Abuse Exists – Resources & Links for Survivors

Satanic Ritual Abuse Exists – Resources & Links for Survivors

The purpose of this website is to help stop ritual abuse by sharing information, links, and resources.

Ritual abuse is an extreme sadistic form of abuse of children and non-consenting adults. It is methodical, systematic sexual, physical, emotional and spiritual abuse, which often includes mind control, torture, and highly illegal and immoral activities such as murder, child pornography and prostitution. The abuse is justified by a religious or political ideology.
http://ritualabuse.ca

New task force targets traffickers who force children into the sex trade

New task force targets traffickers who force children into the sex trade

FBI, Chicago police join forces to go after pimps

By Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune reporter

May 14, 2012

Inside the Harrison Police District station, the officers sat in a semicircle to be briefed about the shift ahead in one of Chicago’s most beleaguered areas.

But on this recent day, the topic was not the shootings and murders on these West Side streets, but a crime often pushed far back into the shadows — the thousands of young girls and women who are prostituted, pushed into the violence of Chicago’s sex trade.

FBI Special Agent Jonathan Williamson and Chicago police Sgt. Traci Walker were there to announce a new joint effort by the FBI and Chicago police to target child traffickers in the city….

The clandestine nature of sex trafficking makes it difficult to know exactly how many young women and girls work in prostitution, said DePaul College of Law researcher Jody Raphael. She has estimated that in Chicago as many as 25,000 are involved in the commercial sex trade, including exotic dancers.

Many who work the street or are sold on the Internet started out in the business in their teens. A 2008 survey of Chicago women working in prostitution who were 25 or younger and under the control of a pimp found that they began at 16 on average.

The younger the girl or woman, Raphael believes, the more likely it is she has a pimp or trafficker, in part because she is often recruited first into a romantic relationship.

Over the past decade, advocates have pushed law enforcement to re-examine how it views the crime of prostitution — especially for the young adults caught in the trade. Today, investigators are going after traffickers on one hand while extending social services to women working in prostitution. Chicago police, Cook County and federal authorities meet monthly to target offenders for the toughest punishment.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-human-trafficking-20120514,0,7415972.story

Sandusky labeled ‘likely pedophile’ in 1998 report

articles
- Jerry Sandusky Called A ‘Likely Pedophile’ By Psychologist In 1998
- Sandusky labeled ‘likely pedophile’ in 1998 report
Psychologist warned university police, but they weren’t able to prove abuse of boy
- Spanish police arrest 22 gang members that tattooed bar codes onto prostitutes’ wrists

Jerry Sandusky Called A ‘Likely Pedophile’ By Psychologist In 1998

The Huffington Post  By Melissa Jeltsen 03/24/2012

Penn State police were warned Jerry Sandusky fit the profile of a pedophile in 1998, an internal memo has revealed.

The memo, published by NBC News, was written by Alycia Chambers, who was a psychologist for an 11-year-old boy who knew Sandusky through his charity for troubled boys, Second Mile Program.

The boy is not named in the report, but is now known as Victim 6. He is one of 10 boys allegedly molested by the former Penn State coach over a 15-year period. Sandusky denies the allegations against him.

The boy’s mother contacted Chambers after he returned home from a night of weightlifting with Sandusky, the memo says. He had wet hair, and explained to his mother that Sandusky asked him to take a shower with him. When they were naked, he came up behind him and tightly squeezed their bodies together, according to the memo….

Chambers reported the incident to the Pennsylvania child abuse line and wrote a detailed report for the Penn State police. In it, she concludes that Sandusky’s actions matched those of a “likely pedophile”:

My consultants agree that the incidents meet all of our definitions, based on experience and education, of a likely pedophile’s pattern of building trust and gradual introduction of physical touch, within a context of a “loving,” “special” relationship. One colleague who has contact with the Second Mile confirms that Mr. Sandusky is reasonably intelligent and thus, could hardly have failed to understand the way his behavior would be interpreted, if known. His position at the Second Mile and his interest in abused boys would suggest that he was likely to have had knowledge with regard to child abuse and might even recognize this behavior as typical pedophile “overture.”

But prosecutors decided not to charge Sandusky. The case was closed for 13 years, until last November, when Sandusky was arrested.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/24/jerry-sandusky-psychologist-likely-pedophile_n_1377156.html

Sandusky labeled ‘likely pedophile’ in 1998 report
Psychologist warned university police, but they weren’t able to prove abuse of boy

By Michael Isikoff NBC News 3/24/2012

More than a decade before former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky was charged with more than 50 counts of child sex abuse, a psychologist warned university police that his actions fit that of a “likely pedophile’s pattern.”

The finding by State College, Pa., psychologist Dr. Alycia A. Chambers, the therapist for one of Sandusky’s alleged victims, was contained in the internal Penn State files of a 1998 police investigation of the former coach for showering and bear hugging her client and another young boy in the school’s athletic locker room.

The Sandusky Files: Read the 1998 police report http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/redactedpolicereport.pdf

NBC News has obtained the complete file on the investigation – the police report and assessments by two psychologists who interviewed the boys — which provides new details about Sandusky’s behavior. It also could raise fresh questions about how school and local authorities handled his case.

“There was very little doubt in my mind (Sandusky) … was a male predator, someone that was in the process of grooming a young man for abuse ,” said Chambers, speaking publicly for the first time, with the permission of her client’s family, in an interview with NBC News. “I thought…my report was strong enough to suggest that this was somebody who should be watched.”….

Joe Amendola, Sandusky’s lawyer, said he hasn’t seen Chambers’ report, but that her conclusions will be disputed by other psychologists who will be called by the defense. “I understand that there are some people who could look at this behavior and say it’s a pedophile problem. But there are others who will say, ‘This is somebody who loves kids and loves to be around them’…Sandusky has pleaded not guilty to all charges. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/46843083/ns/today-today_people

Report of expert who concluded no abuse occurred http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/Seasock_Sandusky_Report_Redacted1.pdf

Spanish police arrest 22 gang members that tattooed bar codes onto prostitutes’ wrists
By Associated Press, March 24, 2012

MADRID — Spanish police arrested 22 suspected pimps who allegedly used violence to force women into prostitution and tattooed them with bar codes as a sign of ownership, officials said Saturday.

Police are calling the gang the “bar code pimps.” Officers freed one 19-year-old woman who had been beaten, held against her will and tattooed with a bar code and an amount of money — €2,000 ($2,650) — which investigators believe was the debt the gang wished to extort before releasing her….

Sex is a multibillion-dollar industry in Spain, with colorfully lit brothels staffed mainly by poor immigrant women from Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe lining highways throughout the country.

Prostitution falls in legal limbo: it is not regulated, although pimping is a crime. The northeastern city of Barcelona plans to introduce regional legislation in coming weeks banning prostitution on urban streets.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/spanish-police-arrest-22-gang-members-that-tattooed-bar-codes-onto-prostitutes-wrists/2012/03/24/gIQAil7AYS_story.html

Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods – Backpage Village Voice Media

Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
March 17, 2012
I WENT on a walk in Manhattan the other day with a young woman who once had to work these streets, hired out by eight pimps while she was just 16 and 17. She pointed out a McDonald’s where pimps sit while monitoring the girls outside, and a building where she had repeatedly been ordered online as if she were a pizza….

After Alissa testified against her pimps, six of them went to prison for up to 25 years. Yet these days, she reserves her greatest anger not at pimps but at companies that enable them. She is particularly scathing about Backpage.com, a classified advertising Web site that is used to sell auto parts, furniture, boats — and girls. Alissa says pimps routinely peddled her on Backpage.

“You can’t buy a child at Wal-Mart, can you?” she asked me. “No, but you can go to Backpage and buy me on Backpage.”

Backpage accounts for about 70 percent of prostitution advertising among five Web sites that carry such ads in the United States, earning more than $22 million annually from prostitution ads, according to AIM Group, a media research and consulting company. It is now the premier Web site for human trafficking in the United States, according to the National Association of Attorneys General. And it’s not a fly-by-night operation. Backpage is owned by Village Voice Media, which also owns the estimable Village Voice newspaper….

Liz McDougall, general counsel of Village Voice Media, told me that it is “shortsighted, ill-informed and counterproductive” to focus on Backpage when many other Web sites are also involved, particularly because Backpage tries to screen out ads for minors and reports possible trafficking cases to the authorities. McDougall denied that Backpage dominates the field….

Backpage’s exit from prostitution advertising wouldn’t solve the problem, for smaller Web sites would take on some of the ads. But it would be a setback for pimps to lose a major online marketplace. When Craigslist stopped taking such ads in 2010, many did not migrate to new sites: online prostitution advertising plummeted by more than 50 percent, according to AIM Group.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/kristof-where-pimps-peddle-their-goods.html

Ohio man accused of prostituting adopted boy

Ohio man accused of prostituting adopted boy
By ANN SANNER and DAN SEWELL Associated Press
3/1/12

TROY, Ohio (AP) – A 10-year-old boy shook when asked about being prostituted to two other men by an adoptive father who regularly had sex with him, according to police, who said the boy was fearful of talking because he didn’t want to be taken from his home or separated from his new siblings.

The adoptive father has been charged with raping three boys in his care and compelling prostitution by hiring the 10-year-old out for sex. He and two other men remained in jail Thursday on rape charges.

Federal and local law enforcement officials said they’re widening the investigation into child sexual exploitation allegations against the father, who worked out of his home as an insurance claims adjuster….

School officials said the man had recently withdrawn the three adopted children from school, saying he would home school them. A neighbor said he had no idea anything lurid might be going on in the home.

“You don’t know what goes on inside people’s homes,” said neighbor Ed Rogers, who had lived across the street from the man the past five years in a neighborhood lined with single-story ranch homes, typical in this working class city of 25,000 people about 20 miles north of Dayton….

An undercover detective in Franklin County, part of a state task force, talked online with the adoptive father, who said he would arrange sex with a 10-year-old boy, Troy police said. He had been led to the adoptive father by another man who had posted a Craigslist ad wanting “taboo” sex, police said.

The adoptive father was going to meet the undercover detective at a McDonald’s in a nearby city
http://news.yahoo.com/ohio-man-accused-prostituting-adopted-boy-013051158.html

Casey Anthony case sealed evidence, Child p_rn victims get younger, violence

“Seemingly normal people….are charged with possessing and making child porn, a $3-billion-a-year industry that the federal government has labeled the new silent child abuse…..Currently, there are an estimated 100,000 known child porn websites”

WHEN WILL WE SEE THE “SEALED” EVIDENCE?
2011 July 16 by Wendy Murphy

First, I’m excited to let you all know that I have a book coming out very soon.  Technology allows for the publication of books far faster than ever before, but it still takes a bit of time to get things organized.  Stay tuned here for more information on the likely release date.  My hope is that it will be out before the end of August….

Assuming the backstory includes “sealed” evidence of postitution and/or child pornography, which I believe is the case, there are two key reasons this information would have been excluded from trial.  One is that the court “sealed” the information because it was never directly connected to Caylee’s murder.  If highly prejudicial information is not strongly related to proof of the crime, which is to say, the witnesses have not explained why the evidence helps to prove or disprove guilt, the court would be compelled to exclude the information as unduly prejudicial without sufficient probative force.

The second reason is that the feds are involved in investigating the porn issues and they want to be able to proceed on these charges against Casey, and perhaps others, in federal court.  If the evidence had been allowed in during the murder trial, Casey’s acquittal would have precluded retrial on the porn charges under double jeopardy principles….

Under the Supreme Court’s “same facts” Blockburger test, if the state offered any evidence of Casey Anthony’s involvement with prostitution or child pornography, those facts could not be used against her again, in a pornography prosecution, by state or federal officials….

But now that that she’s been acquitted, the truth should be told about what was sealed during trial, and what’s going on with the feds….

http://blogs.wickedlocal.com/front-page/#axzz1QbbpsUzU

Feds: Child pornography victims get younger, violence increases
Jan. 31, 2011
DETROIT — Child pornography isn’t just more pervasive, it’s getting even uglier.

Federal prosecutors here say they have witnessed the disturbing trend with the kids getting younger — toddlers and infants as young as 6 months old — turning up in photos and videos.

And the assaults are getting worse. It’s not just still images of children in the nude, they say.

“There’s a misconception in the public arena that these are mainly still images of children without clothes on. Well, the truth is that the majority of the pictures that are traded among these guys almost inevitably involve a child being either raped, or being forced to perform some type of sexual act on an adult or child,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Mulcahy, chief of the general crimes unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit.

Child porn lovers live in your neighborhood

They aren’t just creepy loners.

Seemingly normal people — doctors, coaches, authors, engineers, teens — are charged with possessing and making child porn, a $3-billion-a-year industry that the federal government has labeled the new silent child abuse….

Currently, there are an estimated 100,000 known child porn websites, according to Brigham Young University Women’s Services. Child porn accounts for one-quarter of the $12-billion U.S. porn industry….

The Justice Department report says complaints of online enticement of children have more than tripled from 2004 to 2008, and complaints of child prostitution rose tenfold. Since 2006, more than 8,600 people have been prosecuted at the federal level on child porn charges….

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/CN/20110131/NJNEWS18/110131042/Feds-Child-pornography-victims-get-younger-violence-increases

 

Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door – 300,000 young American girls

“There are more young American girls entering the commercial sex industry—an estimated 300,000 at this moment—and their ages have been dropping drastically. “

“we’re still in the Dark Ages with trafficking because, unlike incest, rape, and domestic battering, trafficking generates massive revenues—$32 billion a year worldwide.”

these articles may have graphic descriptions of these crimes

Sex Trafficking of Americans: The Girls Next Door
By Amy Fine Collins May 24, 2011

….In the Sex Crimes Bureau of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, in the pediatric division of Fort Bragg’s Womack Army Medical Center, in the back alleys of Waterbury, Connecticut, and in the hallways of Hartford’s Community Court, Assistant D.A. Rhonnie Jaus, forensic pediatrician Dr. Sharon Cooper, ex-streetwalker Louise, and Judge Curtissa Cofield have all simultaneously and independently noted the same disturbing phenomenon. There are more young American girls entering the commercial sex industry—an estimated 300,000 at this moment—and their ages have been dropping drastically.

“The average starting age for prostitution is now 13,” says Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (gems), a Harlem-based organization that rescues young women from “the life.” Says Judge Cofield, who formerly presided over Hartford’s Prostitution Protocol, a court-ordered rehabilitation program, “I call them the Little Barbies.”

The explanations offered for these downwardly expanding demographics are various, and not at all mutually exclusive. Dr. Sharon Cooper believes that the anti-intellectual, consumerist, hyper-violent, and super-eroticized content of movies (Hustle & Flow), reality TV (Cathouse), video games (Grand Theft Auto: Vice City), gangsta rap (Nelly’s “Tip Drill”), and cyber sites (Second Life: Jail Bait) has normalized sexual harm. “History is repeating itself, and we’re back to treating women and children as chattel,” she says. “It’s a sexually toxic era of ‘pimpfantwear’ for your newborn son and thongs for your five-year-old daughter.” Additionally, Cooper cites the breakdown of the family unit (statistically, absent or abusive parents compounds risk) and the emergence of vast cyber-communities of like-minded deviant individuals, who no longer have disincentives to act on their most destructive predatory fantasies. Krishna Patel, assistant U.S. attorney in Bridgeport, Connecticut, invokes the easy money.

Criminals have learned, often in prison—where “macking” memoirs such as Iceberg Slim’s Pimp are best-sellers—that it’s become more lucrative and much safer to sell malleable teens than drugs or guns. A pound of heroin or an AK-47 can be retailed once, but a young girl can be sold 10 to 15 times a day—and a “righteous” pimp confiscates 100 percent of her earnings….

Introduced and signed into law under the Clinton administration, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, 18 U.S.C. 1591, covers labor trafficking as well as sex trafficking, but only when a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or when the person induced to perform such an act is a minor, under 18….

The unlikely trafficking-abolitionist coalition—consisting of secular social-justice advocates, faith-based groups, black activists, second- and fourth-wave feminists, liberals, conservatives, Democrats, and Republicans—shares a peculiar adversary in the form of trafficking skeptics, coming largely from the left. The Nation, for example, ridiculed the “‘sex slave’ panic,” and both Slate and City Pages questioned the alarming statistics published by the Department of Justice, the State Department, and non–government organizations such as ecpat and the Salvation Army.

“All the numbers we have on trafficking are inaccurate,” avows Deirdre Bialo-Padin, chief of the domestic-violence bureau of the Brooklyn D.A.’s office. “They’re too low. It’s an underreported crime. Who is going to raise her hand and say, ‘Hi, I’m a trafficking victim!’ when her family has been threatened? With the right laws in place, we will get harder numbers.” For victim advocates, saying that trafficking in America isn’t a problem is akin to J. Edgar Hoover saying the Mafia doesn’t exist. Melissa Farley believes “we’re still in the Dark Ages with trafficking because, unlike incest, rape, and domestic battering, trafficking generates massive revenues—$32 billion a year worldwide.”….

Scates had noticed that the X-rated classifieds in the back of The Hartford Advocate had dwindled slightly, she hoped as a result of the task force’s valiant efforts. But she quickly caught on that a new, tech-savvy generation of pimps was filling the void by merchandising girls on Craigslist (in September 2010 the site succumbed to pressure to remove its adult-services section, which was expected to earn $44 million last year); on Backpage.com (owned by Village Voice Media); or via theeroticreview.com. Females on theeroticreview.com are rated for consumers—ostensibly by “hobbyists” but more often than not, victims say, by their ever shrewder pimps. With the help of untraceable, prepaid cell phones and credit cards, this futuristic breed of trafficker can….obliterate any paper trail. “….

the theory behind the Sex Purchase Law in Sweden. As of 1999, johns are punished by up to six months’ imprisonment, traffickers are locked up for 2-to-10-year hits, and prostitutes are offered medical care, education, and housing. As a result, prostitution has been reduced by 50 percent in Sweden, and the purchase of sex, which is understood to be a human-rights abuse, has decreased by 75 percent. In contrast, Europol studies show, nations such as Holland and Australia, where prostitution has been legalized, have become lucrative, low-risk magnets for international sex-slave drivers and organized crime….. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/05/sex-trafficking-201105

Sex Trafficking: The Girls Next Door
By James R. Marsh on June 2, 2011
Vanity Fair has a great story about child sex trafficking and prostitution in All-American Hartford, Connecticut. Here’s an edited excerpt of this excellent piece:

There are more young American girls entering the commercial sex industry—an estimated 300,000 at this moment—and their ages have been dropping drastically. “The average starting age for prostitution is now 13,” says Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (gems), a Harlem-based organization that rescues young women from “the life.”

The explanations offered for these downwardly expanding demographics are various, and not at all mutually exclusive. Dr. Sharon Cooper believes that “history is repeating itself, and we’re back to treating women and children as chattel,” she says. “It’s a sexually toxic era of ‘pimpfantwear’ for your newborn son and thongs for your five-year-old daughter.” Additionally, Cooper cites the breakdown of the family unit (statistically, absent or abusive parents compounds risk) and the emergence of vast cyber-communities of like-minded deviant individuals, who no longer have disincentives to act on their most destructive predatory fantasies. http://www.childlaw.us/2011/06/sex-trafficking-the-girls-next.html

Colin McEnroe Show: ‘Sex Trafficking Of Americans’ How is prostitution treated in Connecticut?  By Colin McEnroe Published: Jun 01, 2011

….But the story of Connecticut’s human sex trafficking ring is not as distant as 19th-century London. It’s a story of right here, right now, maybe a girl you saw walking across the parking lot as you drove past a motel in the Meadows or on the Berlin Turnpike. She’s young, and maybe even something about the way she’s dressed makes you think, “She’s a hooker.”

What might not occur to you is how young the woman is and how trapped into the trade.  Some of those young women, right here, right now, have been bought and sold so that they can be forced to do a smaller, seamier version of the buying and selling of themselves. http://www.yourpublicmedia.org/content/wnpr/colin-mcenroe-show-sex-trafficking-americans