An on-line sting set up by Dutch charity Terre des Hommes, identified 1000 predators trying to pay a child to perform sex acts. These predators included 254 Americans.
The sting was based on a computer-generated avatar of a little girl named “Sweetie.” As Angus Crawford, the author of a BBC News article about the sting described it, “…. a researcher logged on to a chat room as Sweetie. Within seconds, like sharks, men were circling.”
I am glad for stings like this. I hope there are more of them.
If you suffer from addiction to porn, I hope that you will seek help. Pornography is the objectification of another human being. It reduces women and children, who are made in the likeness and image of God, to the level things. It degrades and humiliates women and children. It also degrades the person who uses it.
Using pornography is using people. It is deeply sinful.
As for those who sexually abuse and exploit children, we should put them in prison and leave them there.
From BBC News:
Sweetie, the computer avatar used to catch on-line sex predators. Source BBC.
More than 100 Britons were among 1,000 men caught trying to pay a computer-generated child to perform sex acts online, after a Dutch children’s charity set up a fake profile.
Terre des Hommes carried out a 10-week sting near Amsterdam, posing on video chat rooms as “Sweetie”, a 10-year-old Filipina girl.
Some 20,000 men contacted her, with 1,000 found to have offered her money.
When I visited the charity’s operations room – in a warehouse on the outskirts of Amsterdam – I watched as a researcher logged on to a chat room as Sweetie – incredibly life-like but created by a computer.
Within seconds, like sharks, men were circling.
Of the 1,000 men who were willing to pay Sweetie to take off her clothes in front of a webcam, 254 were from the US, followed by 110 from the UK and 103 from India.
Researchers used evidence including profiles on Skype and social media to identify the suspects.
Project director Hans Guyt told a news conference in the Hague on Monday that the crime “requires a new way of policing”.
“The predator won’t come forward. The victim won’t come forward,” he said.
“We identified ourselves as 10-year-old Filipino girls.
“We did not solicit anything unless it was offered to us.”
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