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Webcam : Do children really need it?

“THROW YOUR WEBCAMS OUT”…urged Oprah Winfrey from the other side of my TV, through an unfortunately old show dt Feb 15, 2006 that’s only just aired here in India. I had watched - in partial disbelief & in complete horror - how an honors student got turned into a porn star at the age of 13 - while still in the privacy of his own bedroom - without the knowledge of his mother.

“NO CHILD NEEDS A WEBCAM” - this was the strong sentiment of Justin Berry & the Kurt Eiechenwald who were guests on her show, based on their very real exposure to the child porn world on the internet. Perhaps the most disturbing news of all is that Justin Berry’s story as told by the New York Times reporter Kurt Eiechenwald who helped him come out of the vicious circle he was in, is not an isolated one. Thousands of children - in the “safety of their own homes” - fall prey to the paedophiles that lure them into exposing themselves on camera - and often times much worse. In cases like Berry’s (which Eiechenwald insists is not an extreme case but one of many many) the children are turned into porn stars. Their lives are taken away from them and it all happens so quickly that most children rescued aren’t even able to tell when things spiraled out situations that they though they could control. Meanwhile, the Child Porn industry continues to grow.

A serious problem

Introducing children to porn of any kind is one way to lure them into actually getting them involved in the child porn industry (others include “cash & kind” gifts offered by paedophiles as “rewards” to children who oblige their requests to undress etc for them on webcam). These shocking stats show that 90% of 8-16 year olds have viewed porn online, most while doing homework. I know from personal experience how many unsolicited emails with porn links I used to get before the email companies beefed up their spammers. One such mail called “God Blessed Kids” disturbed me enough to do something about it (yes, that particular mail contained child porn too). At least I was old enough then to react properly. Imagine how many similar mail young innocent children must receive? This was about almost two years ago. I have received countless emails since then and all I’ve been doing is tightening my spammers or deleting my junk mail without even reading the subject lines (many of which in my opinion are enough to make one sick).

Hindustan Times, as recently as January 6th 2007, ran a report titled Internet: Home of rampant paedophilia.

The report spoke of Indian paedophiles who:

Indian paedophiles, on the other hand, find that the Internet is their safest haven. Some even go online and boast of deals struck with adoption centres and child-specific NGOs. The scariest claim came from one who said, “Come to India for a week and find the child love of your life.” If a battle against paedophilia has to be waged, it is clear that the Internet should be a first frontier.

BBC, again as recent as January 8th 2007, termed Goa the new “Paedophile’s Paradise”. Though I personally have seens signs in Goan restaurants and in hotels urging people to “Come forward and report if you see someone with a child acting suspiciously”, the article quotes superintendent of Goa’s crime division, Vishram Borkar,who says that no cases of paedophiles have been investigated in 2006. Even as the superlatively horrific Nithari case still is in the process of fully coming to light (it’s a case of child abuse at it’s worst perhaps) we in India still have a long way to go in providing citizens like you and me a way to get involved in putting an end to this evil. Oprah Winfrey started a Child Predator Watch List on her very hit upon website & has had a lot of success educating people and even bringing others to justice. If you aren’t already, do educate yourself about this industry. It will enable you to better protect your children at home - and maybe even some others around you.

Controversy continues to surround Justin Berry.

FoxNews reported yesterday that:

Former Times staff writer Kurt Eichenwald made the payment ($2,000) in June 2005 to then 18-year-old Justin Berry, a veteran star in a seedy network of child-porn sites

Eichenwald defends his ethics with:

At the time, he said, he didn’t intend to write about Berry at all, but had come across his distressing Web identity while researching an unrelated article. Eichenwald said he and his wife decided to try to get help for the young man. “We were gambling 2,000 on the possibility of saving a kid’s life,” he said.

Earlier controversy came through Timothy Ryan Richards (aka Casey), who was one of the first to be arrested after Justin’s story broke. His family & friends started a website called ‘The Truth about Justin’ claiming that “With the development and marketing of his MexicoFriends.com site Justin, though still 16 at the time, was deep into his transition from victim to perpetrator in this story” However controversy or not, I hope that all this shines light on this industry & brings out the truth of the matter that there are a lot of children who are lured into becoming Child Porn stars in one way or the other & we must find a way of stopping this.