The Child Protection eNewsletter

Major ISPs agree to block child porn newsgroups… 

Online forums where thousands of child-porn images have been posted have been stricken from three Internet providers, including two of the nation's five largest, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced.  Full AP story here

Verizon, Time Warner Cable and Sprint agreed with Cuomo to block access to child pornography disseminated through newsgroups and user groups, a hard-to-regulate sector of the Internet designed to bring together users with like interests.

With the agreement announced Tuesday, Cuomo skipped over the untold number of individual users accessing child porn and went to the portals that, unwittingly they all say, provided the route to sharing the illegal obsession.

Cuomo said the service providers blocked child pornography found in 88 newsgroups by his investigators.  Newsgroups, a mainstay of the Internet from its early days, are essentially online message boards in which users can post text and files in any of thousands of categories.

The companies also agreed to eliminate the material from their servers and will pay $1.125 million to help fund efforts to remove child porn from the Internet.  The agreements follow a six- to eight-month undercover investigation of child porn newsgroups and will affect customers nationwide.

Cuomo's investigators found more than 11,000 images in the newsgroups using software that identifies child pornography by tracking patterns in the pixels of the images.  NY AG Cuomo's Press Release here

But, as Cuomo said, such online pornography is difficult to stop.  When one point of Web access is closed, the same perpetrators are likely to open another.  And his agreements with the online services end at the nation's borders.

Meanwhile, the French state and Internet service providers have struck a deal to block sites carrying child pornography or content linked to terrorism or racial hatred, Interior Minister Michel Alliot-Marie announced.  MSNBC story here  The plan, part of a larger effort to fight cybercriminality, is to go into effect in September when a "black list" will be built up based on input from Internet users who signal sites dealing with the offensive material, the minister said.

Among other countries that have already implemented similar measures include Britain, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Canada and New Zealand.

State Department releases 2008 Trafficking In Persons Report… 

The United States has released the 2008 Trafficking In Persons report.  2008 Trafficking Report here

In releasing the report, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said "We are pleased that in the seven years since the creation of the Department of State’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, the United States and our friends and allies have made important strides in confronting the reality that human beings continue to be bought and sold in the twenty-first century."

"It has been gratifying to witness the determined governments, human rights and women’s groups, faith-based organizations, and many brave individuals who are dedicated to advancing human dignity worldwide.  Trafficking and exploitation plague all nations, and no country, even ours, is immune."

According to Secretary Rice, "For the first time, in this year’s report, we closely examined prosecution data and made a disturbing discovery:  Although more countries are addressing sex trafficking through prosecution and convictions, the petty tyrants who exploit their laborers rarely receive serious punishment.  We see this as a serious shortcoming, and as we move our efforts forward, we and our allies must remember that a robust law enforcement response is essential."  Transcript here  VIDEO here

When releasing the report, Ambassador Mark P. Lagon, Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons commented that "In virtually every country around the world, including the United States, men, women and children are held in domestic servitude, exploited for commercial sex, coerced into work in factories and sweatshops.  In some, children are forcibly recruited as soldiers."  Ambassador Lagon's full remarks here

"These are forms of human trafficking.  They are, in fact, forms of modern-day slavery.  Estimates of the number of victims vary widely.  According to the U.S. intelligence community, approximately 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year.  About 80 percent of them are female. Up to half are minors.  These figures do not include millions who are trafficked for purposes of labor and sexual exploitation within national borders as well."

In other news…

Sexual activity is on the rise among U.S. teens while their use of contraceptives is sliding in the other direction, according to a study released last Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  FoxNews story here  Approximately 48 percent of 14,041 high school students said they have had sex, representing a 2 percent hike since 2005; however, teens still are having less sex today than their counterparts did in the 1990s.  View report here  The 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System study showed a 2 percent drop-off in the percentage of teens who said they used condoms while having sex.  The CDC questioned the students on a range of risky behaviors including sexual activity and drug and alcohol use.  Ninth- through 12th-graders from 39 states participated in the study in spring 2007.  CDC reports on trends by risk area here

A woman born and raised in the cellar where her mother allegedly was kept captive as a sex slave for 24 years has emerged from an induced coma with two requests: to go on a boat ride and to see pop singer Robbie Williams in concert, doctors and a lawyer said Wednesday.  Fox news story here  Kerstin Fritzl met with family members Sunday, shortly after doctors roused her from the induced coma she had been in for weeks, according to two doctors and Christoph Herbst, a family lawyer.  She had been admitted to a hospital on April 19, unconscious and suffering from multiple organ failure–a case that brought to light the family's underground existence in the town of Amstetten, west of Vienna.  Josef Fritzl is accused of keeping his daughter Elisabeth hostage for two decades, fathering her seven children, including Kerstin, 19.  Three grew up underground, never seeing the light of day, while three were brought upstairs to be raised by Fritzl and his wife, who believed they had been abandoned.  One died in infancy, authorities say.  See  vol6_iss35,  vol6_iss34  vol6_iss33.

Two people have been charged with beating a 3-year-old boy who died in their care in a home just blocks from where a girl's brutal death in 2006 spurred calls for reform in the city's child-welfare agency.  CBSNews story here  Police and social workers had gone several times to the Brooklyn apartment where Kyle Smith lived but never saw any problems.  Neighbors said they saw abuse, but never reported it.  Kyle was sodomized, beaten, doused with cold water and forced to do push-ups and march in place as punishment, according to court papers.  Neighbors told the New York Daily News that they saw the boy being abused and now regret failing to report it to authorities.  "Everyone could have said something but nobody did," Hason Parker told the paper.  "Now this little boy is dead."

A man awaiting trial in another 1975 killing has been indicted on murder charges in the slaying, also 33 years ago, of a Girl Scout who disappeared while she was delivering boxes of cookies, prosecutors said.  CNN story here  Marcia Trimble, 9, disappeared while delivering Girl Scout cookies in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1975.  Jerome Sidney Barrett was indicted on charges of first-degree murder and felony murder in the death of Marcia Trimble, said prosecutors in Nashville.  The case is the city's most notorious unsolved slaying, officials noted, and "recent scientific evidence" connected Barrett to the girl's murder.  "The murder of Marcia Trimble is one that has affected the entire Nashville community," District Attorney General Victor "Torry" Johnson said in a written statement.  "It's a case that no one has forgotten," the top prosecutor added.

An Episcopal bishop accused of concealing his brother's sexual abuse of a 14-year-old girl decades ago twice walked in during the abuse and never did anything to stop it, the now-adult victim testified at a church trial.  AP story here  The testimony came as the trial opened for Bishop Charles E. Bennison Jr. of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.  His brother became a priest after the abuse is alleged to have begun.  A panel of bishops, priests and church members will decide whether Bennison, the leader of the nation's fifth-largest Episcopal diocese, may resume his duties.  Bennison, 64, was ordered to cease all "ministerial and canonical acts" in November.  The accuser, now 50, said Charles Bennison witnessed incidents in a Sunday school classroom and in a church office in 1973.  "He opened the door, took a look at us, turned around and walked out," the victim testified.

No suspect or motive has been identified in the mysterious killing of two girls who were shot to death along a dirt road in rural Okfuskee County, according to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.  CBS News story here   On Sunday, the bodies of 11-year-old Skyla Whitaker and 13-year-old Taylor Paschal-Placker were found on an isolated county road near Weleetka, about 70 miles south of Tulsa.  The pair, best friends who lived a few miles apart in an impoverished part of the community, had walked the road dozens of times for sleepovers.  Family said they didn't have an enemy in the world.  Residents in this close community of 1,000 remained on edge knowing a murderer could be in their town.  OSBI Special Agent Ben Rosser said it appears unlikely the girls were sexually assaulted.  They were clothed when found and had been missing only a half hour.  Full autopsy results were not back yet, he said.  Investigators were examining evidence, including tire tracks, shell casings, ballistics and shoe prints for any possible leads.  Kevin Rowland, chief investigator with the state medical examiner's office, said the girls each suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the head and chest.  Rosser said the fact that the killings took place in such an isolated rural area leads investigators to presume a local person may have been involved in the crime.  Possibilities include that it was a random shooting, they had intended to meet someone or may have interrupted a crime that was occurring, Rosser said.

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