UN peacekeepers ‘paid 13-year-olds for sex’, FBI hacked into ‘dark web’ to bust up largest ever child abuse network

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reportedly interrupted and shut down a massive online child abuse network after hacking into the so-called dark web in an operation that may lead to 1,500 prosecutions.”

UN peacekeepers ‘paid 13-year-olds for sex’
Four peacekeepers allegedly paid young girls as little as 50 cents in exchange for sex
Kevin Sieff Tuesday 12 January 2016

The United Nations has been grappling with so many sexual abuse allegations involving its peacekeepers that Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon recently called them “a cancer in our system.”

Now, officials have learned about what appears to be a fresh scandal. Investigators discovered this month that at least four UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic allegedly paid young girls as little as 50 cents in exchange for sex.

The case is the latest to plague the UN mission in the Central African Republic, whose employees have been accused of 22 other incidents of alleged sexual abuse or sexual exploitation in the past 14 months. The most recent accusations come in the wake of Ban’s efforts to implement a “zero tolerance” policy for such offenses….

The most recent allegations involve at least four peacekeepers who are accused of paying girls as young as 13 for sex at a camp for the internally displaced next to the international airport in Bangui, the capital. The site, known as M’Poko camp, is home to 20,000 people, mostly Christians. It is a vast agglomeration of white tents surrounding old, decaying airplanes, just yards from the airport runway.

The United Nations has not publicly released the nationalities of the acccused troops, or provided details of the alleged abuse. But in interviews, UN officials said the peacekeepers were from Gabon, Morocco, Burundi and France. The prostitution ring they allegedly used was run by boys and young men who offered up girls “for anywhere from 50 cents to three dollars,” according to one official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation….

Human Rights Watch documented nine cases of sexual violence between September and December in and around the displacement camp. In several instances, Christian women were raped by members of the mostly Christian “anti-balaka” militia after being accused of interacting with Muslims. Across Bangui, the conflict has fallen largely along religious lines.

“M’Poko is a lawless zone run by anti-balaka thugs a few hundred meters away from the international airport. The camp is not being protected, and women are being raped,” said Lewis Mudge, Human Rights Watch’s Central Africa Republic researcher….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/un-peacekeepers-paid-13-year-olds-for-sex-a6806961.html

FBI hacked into ‘dark web’ to bust up largest ever child abuse network
The FBI used an unprecedented technique to hack into the protected bulletin board
Andrew Buncombe New York Friday 8 January 2016

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reportedly interrupted and shut down a massive online child abuse network after hacking into the so-called dark web in an operation that may lead to 1,500 prosecutions.

Vice Motherboard reported that federal investigators used an unprecedented approach to hack into the dark web bulletin board site named Playpen. The bulletin board was launched in August 2014 and within one year had 215,000 accounts with 11,000 unique visitors each week.

The report said that the FBI seized the North Carolina-based server running the board in February 2015 but did not shut it down immediately. Rather, the investigators ran the site via its own servers and deployed a hacking tool known, or network investigative technique (NIT), to identify the IP addresses of those visitors to the site.

The dark web is a section of the internet not discoverable by conventional means, such as through a server search or by directly entering a website URL.

Playpen was apparently the largest child abuse site discovered to date. It enabled users to sign up and then upload any images they liked. According to court documents, the website’s primary purpose was to advertise and distribute child pornography….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fbi-hacked-into-dark-web-to-bust-up-largest-ever-child-abuse-network-a6802886.html

Online child abuse network smashed, Organizational Infidelity Amplifies Sexual Trauma, Pursuit of Truth Film

– Online child abuse network smashed
“hundreds of thousands of child abuse images”

– Organizational Infidelity Amplifies Sexual Trauma

– Pursuit of Truth Film
Adult Survivors Of Child Sex Abuse Seeking Justice
“a court system weighted in favor of perpetrators combine to make it extremely difficult for survivors to successfully assert their legal rights and far too easy for perpetrators to walk free and continue to abuse other children”

Online child abuse network smashed
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 15/03/2013
Reporter: Ben Worsley

Federal police have smashed what they allege is one of the largest online child abuse networks they’ve seen, arresting twenty one people, confiscating hundreds of thousands of child abuse images and reportedly rescuing a young victim of the network….

BEN WORSLEY, REPORTER: This scene was repeated in 40 homes across Australia in every state and territory, the AFP swooped en masse….
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2013/s3717028.htm

Organizational Infidelity Amplifies Sexual Trauma
By Rick Nauert PhD Senior News Editor
Reviewed by John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on March 11, 2013

Organizational Infidelity Amplifies Sexual Trauma

A dispiriting sign of the times is human fallibility associated with hitherto “safe” environments. Previously sacrosanct institutions – universities, the military, the church, scouts — are now headline news for the wrong reason.

Researchers are now learning that recovery from sexual trauma is more challenging when an individual has been betrayed by a perpetrator within a conceptually secure setting.

In a study of 345 female university students, University of Oregon researchers found that 233 of them had experienced at least one unwanted sexual experience in their lifetime, and 46 percent of those victims also experienced betrayal by the institution where incidents occurred.

In the final analysis, researchers found, those who experienced institutional betrayal suffered the most in four post-trauma measurement categories, including anxiety and dissociation.

In the study which appears in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, investigators used a 10-item analysis tool — the Institutional Betrayal Questionnaire — to assess institutional betrayal and involvement.

“Our work on institutional betrayal has coincided with increased public awareness of the harm inflicted by unresponsive institutions surrounding traumatic events,” said researcher Jennifer J. Freyd, Ph.D….

Those reporting a sense of institutional betrayal were found to have more severe post-traumatic symptoms of sexual abuse trauma, anxiety, sexual dysfunction and dissociation.
http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/03/11/organizational-infidelity-amplifies-sexual-trauma/52465.html

Pursuit of Truth Film

Adult Survivors Of Child Sex Abuse Seeking Justice
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a crime that is committed behind closed doors without witnesses and remains in the dark because children typically are unable to speak about their abuse.  This inability to come forward frequently continues into adulthood.  Regrettably, close to 90% of cases go unreported.  Thus, despite its epidemic proportions in this country – at least 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 5 boys likely to be abused before age 18 – CSA remains in the shadows, hidden from the wheels of our justice system.

The legal system itself must share responsibility for such tragic underreporting.  As presently constituted, the legal process constructs unfair barriers for survivors to overcome to achieve justice against their abusers.  Unjust laws– including arbitrary statutes of limitations (SOL’s) that effectively bar 60%-70% of survivors’ cases from even being filed, erratic police/prosecution practices, and a court system weighted in favor of perpetrators combine to make it extremely difficult for survivors to successfully assert their legal rights and far too easy for perpetrators to walk free and continue to abuse other children.

But winds of change are stirring.  There is a growing movement to change the justice’s system fundamental approach to survivors’ cases.  Reformers in a number of states have either eliminated SOL’s or expanded the filing deadlines substantially.  Activists are shining the light on the need to transform the handling of survivors’ cases by police, prosecutors, and courts so that justice can become a reality for survivors.
http://www.pursuitoftruthfilm.com/