Child Abuse Is Big Business, Staff article

We don't have the Centers for Disease Control reporting on this one, but the disease of sexual exploitation of children invades every corner of the world. It's spreading because it's big business.

We tend to picture a lone, isolated "bad guy" committing crimes against children, but the reality is an extensive industry which views children as a commodity, abusing and enslaving them for financial gain.

Child pornography

On September 2, 1998, over a thousand police and child-protection officers in thirteen countries raided over 200 men in connection with one of the biggest pedophile rings ever discovered.[1]

Police seized a total of 750,000 pictures along with a library of 1,800 computerized videos depicting children suffering sexual abuse. Of all these children, only 17 have been identified.

This pedophile ring was an exclusive international Internet club. The sordid entrance fee? 10,000 indecent pictures of children.

The international operation to trace the ring of pedophiles began in San Jose, California, in May 1996, when the police discovered that a child-abuser had broadcast live images on the Internet to a smaller pedophile ring known as the Orchid Club.

A ten-year-old girl had been pulled out of a slumber party in the middle of the night and taken into the computer room in an upper middle class American home, where she was molested and violated and raped online. The scene was broadcast to Australia and Canada and Finland and places all over the United States. Viewers were invited to send messages online saying what they wanted to see done to their victim.[2]

Once this incident was discovered, the ensuing investigation linked the Orchid Club to a larger and even more sinister pedophile network called Wonderland. Wonderland originated in the United States but also operated in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Britain.

Wonderland, the Orchid Club, and other pornography rings are not simply exchanging images of undressed children romping on the beach. They have images that are the most horrible — two-year-olds, even six-month-old babies, being violently raped.

Most of the 107 men eventually convicted for participation in the Wonderland Club were sentenced to fines. The heaviest sentence was three years in prison. Over 100 of these men are on the streets today.

Child prostitution

Our research uncovered that, just as with the marketing of child pornography, there is a black-market industry, vast beyond imagination, for the abduction and sale of children into prostitution. And this industry exists not only in places like Thailand and Singapore, but right under our noses, in American small towns and suburbs.

Children of the Night,[3] an American rescue program for stolen children, reports on the latest situation in the child prostitution industry: "In the '70s, we worked with 'runaways,' in the 80's we saw 'throwaways,' but now we are discovering something new — 'takeaways.' " And if you've ever wondered what happens to many of the children who are missing every year, here is one tragic answer.

Takeaways are children who are abducted and sold into prostitution. On the streets, abductors are known as "catchers." These catchers are typically well dressed and attractive, with nice cars. They hang out in places where young people congregate.

Once they get to know a child, catchers may offer drugs. In some cases, the drugs are administered without the child's knowledge. Whichever way it happens, at that point for the child the party is over.

The going price on the streets of Los Angeles for a young girl is $500.

The black-market industry that buys and sells these children is as extensive as the drug- and car-theft industries. It has a language and an entire culture that supports the trafficking of its merchandise. These children may end up "working" anywhere in the world, including the comfortable suburbs in middle America. Takeaways may account for some of the unidentified hundreds of thousands of children in the Wonderland Club files.

Why are we telling you this?

We have asked ourselves this question. This magazine was difficult for us to write. While putting it together, we at the Spirit of Ma'at were forced to think about what's really happening to children. And we also were forced to think about what it means to love our enemies.

Reading about what happens to children may be the biggest challenge there is to breaking down the "us and them" mentality that keeps us from Oneness.

Why don't we want to hear about this? If it's so bad we can't even be comfortable reading about it, what must it be like for the children themselves?

We have to care. And in order to care, we have to know. If we ignore what's happening to our children — refusing to hear about it, refusing to write about it, refusing even to think about it — how will it ever change? If those of us who hold the spiritual space of love are not willing to look at this, who will be willing?

Spiritually evolved people who are committed to Love and Light need to know these things because we really do care. And in our knowing and caring, perhaps an alchemical reaction may arise that will allow our collective awareness to open new doors.

It is our hope that breaking the silence may be the first, necessary step towards finding a cure.

Footnotes:

See Panorama: Wickedness of Wonderland, Internet report of a BBC Transmission on 11/02/01.

To find out how to protect your own children from Internet pornography and solicitation, see Wynn Free's article on Safe Surfing.

Our information was taken from a press kit from Children of the Night Founder Doris Lee. Contact can be initiated through their program director, Vikki Balet, at 818-908-1468. Their website is at ChildrenOfTheNight.org.