I know that I have blogged about this before and it makes me sick to my stomach, but VERY impotant! AJ, my devoted Oprah Watcher, told me about Monday's show about child predators! It is sick and it makes me angry. I won't be holding back some of the information I found on Oprah's website. I wish I could just copy the whole thing, since linking to the site may expire in time. But it is very important to understand how really SICK these people are and how stupid it is to try and rehabilitate these people!!!! If you are not up for this subject, then stop reading. If you want to help out and be aware of this epidemic, please continue.
"Pedophiles take these images and trade them like baseball cards," says Christine, an analyst. "The violation that occurs within these files…it's horrific."What they see on a daily basis is so disturbing the center keeps an on-site psychologist to help analysts cope."We're seeing sexual abuse including oral penetration, vaginal, anal penetration," says Michelle, another analyst. "We see children with dog collars on their necks. Kids with plastic bags over their heads. Foreign object insertion with these children."By posing as pedophiles, agents like Claude Davenport have learned how these operations work. "They will get together, discuss activities that they would like to see performed and actually perform it on their own children," he says. "We've had cases where infants have been molested on live feed. When the violators are caught, their reason for using such a young child is because the child can't articulate the violation that they've received."Authorities have even discovered videos and manuals created by pedophiles that give instructions on how to molest and rape children just months old and how to get away with the crime. Some videos even use well-known cartoon characters to desensitize the children to rape.
For the past seven years, Flint Waters, a father of four, has devoted his life to patrolling the Internet to take down child predators as commander of the Wyoming Internet Sex Crimes Against Children Task Force. Four years ago, he and two other men—Bill Wiltse of the Salem, Oregon, police department; and Robert Leazenby of the Wyoming attorney general's office—developed a revolutionary software program that tracks computers trading pornographic images and videos of children. The program runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week and can pinpoint the specific location of offenders' computers. His investigations have led to more than 100 arrests, and more than 30 children have been saved. Although the program is highly effective, Flint says there are simply not enough resources available to law enforcement officials to help put predators away. "We're getting better at finding them, seeing who's out there," he says. "We're just overwhelmed by the numbers." When predators are caught, Flint says he's the one who interviews them. "They'll look you in the eye. They'll describe it. They'll get excited about their interest. They'll talk about how society just hasn't caught up and this is what they should be doing," he says. "I've arrested them, have them get out on bond and on the way home pick up another computer and get back online to find the material. … They don't stop." Danger isn't just lurking with strangers or at the playground—many children are abused by people they know and trust.According to law enforcement research, almost three out of four children who are sexually abused know their offenders—and 35 percent of the time the abuser is the child's own parent. "In some of those cases, somewhere, mom is asleep in that house and has no idea that this guy's doing this," Flint says. "Some of these guys are brilliant at the techniques they go through to hide what they're doing."Studies say that 30 to 40 percent of people who view images of child abuse online are also molesters. "There's a huge number of these guys that when we catch them, they're using it to normalize their behavior, to normalize what they're already doing with the child that's in their care," he says. "So they act out on their granddaughter or their grandson. They go through this guilt cycle. They get the videos. They see that everybody else is doing it, and they continue to act."
Now, Vanessa realizes the importance of making sure a close relationship never masks a dangerous situation. "I think parents sometimes have to move outside of their comfort zone," she says. "If your child comes to you and tells you, 'I'm uncomfortable with the way this person's looking at me or the comments this person's making to me'—no matter how entwined you are with their lives, if they're family or they're friends that you feel as family—you need to remove your child from that situation."Jasmine has a message for kids who feel that something isn't right but don't know what to do. "If you think something is wrong, go find someone. Tell someone," she says. "If they don't believe you, if you have to, tell a police officer, anybody you can trust. Because if you hold it inside, it just kills you. It breaks you down."
If you are enraged, disgusted and fed up with child predators slipping through the cracks, there is something you can do right now. Camille Cooper works with PROTECT, a group working to pass better laws to build protection for children, and says there is an important bill going before the Senate this month.Senate Bill 1738, the PROTECT Our Children Act, will provide valuable funding for child protection task forces. "If you don't put the money behind law enforcement and fund them and have more cops that are dedicated to going after these guys and protecting our children, we won't rescue these children," Camille says.
Camille stresses that it is important to contact your senators immediately and put pressure on the Senate before Congress recesses on September 26. "It passed the U.S. House almost unanimously. We have to get it out of the Senate. We need to go rescue these children.""This is not about politics," Oprah says. "It's about our children. It's a bipartisan bill supported by both Republicans and Democrats. I believe that it really is up to us to tell the Senate not to go home until you pass that bill."
Check out the whole thing, there are a couple stories and details I left out due to the legth of this blog.
http://www.oprah.com/slideshow/oprahshow/20080911_tows_predators/1
Another useful site to see if there are sexual predators in general in your area.
Minnesota Level 3 Sex Offenders
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