Sting nets Canadians willing to pay for web sex with 'virtual' 10-year-old girl

Comment: The problem with entrapment operations is that there is a very fine line between creating crime and those that indulge in fantasies - however sick they may be. How far does one go to stimulate sex crime? Pre-crime and entrapment has a track record of ensnaring the innocent along with the guilty though it still remains a big part of law enforcement priorities. Money allocated to paedophile prevention (medical and cognitive help) however, is way down the list even non-existent in some countries. The REAL culprits who lie at various pinnacles of global networks remain comfortably above the law. That is not to say that entrapment cannot play a part in the discovery of child porn and paedophilia in general but the ethical and operational science of these law enforcement activities need to be placed under the spotlight much more than it has, otherwise many innocent - albeit ignorant - people will continue to be sentenced to make more profit for the prison system already out of control.

It amounts to an Entrapment Industry which stretches from the terrorism to child porn - the formula is the same. Given that we live under institutions and governmental agencies saturated with the same child abuse it is a bit rich that those same authorities are attempted to clean up the public reflection of those top down influences. These pro-active law enforcement techniques should only be targeted towards known individuals who have exhibited probable cause and ready to engage in criminal activity of a similar nature. If not, this is just more pre-crime bullshit and state mandated vigilantism.

Emotional reactions - especially on the subject of sexual predators and child abuse - will always be easy to exploit. If we want to eradicate paedophilia and child abuse we need to go after the root causes and work to change our present social systems rather than relying on our cherished authorities to create more sex offenders and blur the line between crime creation and the rule of law.

Further reading: 

Entrapment As a Defense to a Criminal Charge 

The spectacle of terror and its vested interests

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A Terre des Hommes researcher chats in a public chat room where users solicit fake 10-year-old Sweetie from the

Philippines, top in a computer-generated image, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, Monday Nov. 4, 2013. (AP / Peter Dejong)

  Sting nets Canadians willing to pay for web sex with 'virtual' 10-year-old girl 

 ctvnews.ca

A sting operation has turned up dozens of Canadians among thousands of adults willing to pay to watch a 10-year-old Filipino girl perform sex acts on a webcam, an international children's rights group said Monday.

The group Terres des Hommes, operating out of Amsterdam, said 54 Canadians were among more than 1,000 adults from 71 countries identified during the 10-week project.

"It's frightening to see that these people think that the Internet is a completely lawless space," said one of the researchers for the group, who identified himself only as Peter for fear of reprisals.

"The most shocking part of this -- aside from the horrific child-abuse material that we were sometimes sent -- was just the fact that it was so easy to catch these people. They have zero risk perception."

Detailed identification information -- including names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses -- was now in the hands of Interpol for passing on to national law-enforcement authorities to investigate, Peter told The Canadian Press from Amsterdam.

Canada's Criminal Code prohibits accessing child pornography and child prostitution, so the law should be adequate for prosecution, the group said.

The sting involved setting up a pretend 10-year-old girl Filipino girl named "Sweetie," who signed on to various public chat rooms that cater to teens and children. Predators would latch onto her almost immediately.

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