State law enforcement has announced the arrest of 20 individuals for trading images of child sex abuse online.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Dan Gorenstein has the details
A warning - this story contains graphic language that is not suitable for some listeners.
Between December 2006 and May 2007 a combination of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies began to investigate child pornography on the internet.
Since then forty search warrants have been issued.
Eleven adults and nine minors have been charged with possession of child pornography.
Portsmouth Police Lieutenant Tim Brownell says law enforcement conducted online undercover operations to identify people who were viewing the pictures and videos.
He says what investigators found was a system where individuals trade illegal images the way kids trade baseball cards.
30:56 these cases are just free trading on the internet. They offer them up on the internet through file sharing programs, for other people to download. They collect them, and then they put them right back out there.
Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, whose office helped coordinate the effort, says going forward she expects additional arrests to be made as a result of the campaign.
At the press conference Ayotte said the term pornographers fails to capture the extent of the exploitation.
8:45 ... images of a 3 three old being raped on a bed. A 12 year old being tied up and raped. A nine and ten year old girl performing fellatio on adults. And ejaculating on them. 8 and 9 year olds dancing and then performing fellatio on adults.
Ayotte and other law enforcement said that anytime a person views the images, it’s as if that child is being abused again and again.
Concord Detective Mark Dumas says he’s watched videos of children younger than three being raped.
He says it’s watching life through the eyes of very sick people.
What Dumas has trouble shaking is the looks on the children’s faces.
3:25 it’s probably as raw an image or as raw as footage as you can see of human beings being exploited.. If you’ve ever seen a really sad child, or a hurt child, take those images and magnify them. And that’s basically what you are seeing in these videos.
Law enforcement at the press conference say they hope this and subsequent efforts will help curb people trading in these images.
At the same time, one officer said, some people will always do drugs, some will always look at child pornography.
UNH Sociology Professor David Finkelhor questions the scope of the problem.
Finkelhor, who directs the Crimes against Children Research Center, estimates that 2-3 men out of every thousand probably consume this material.
TAPE: Frequently the most immediate reaction that other people have is, ‘my god, there is so much of this going on. What could possibly be going on in our society or our world?’ My reaction is I think there have always been such a lot of these people. and law enforcement is getting better at finding them and catching them. And internet is working to the advantage of law enforcement.
Finkelhor points out that sex abuse cases have declined since the mid-90’s- right around the time the internet was taking off.
The sociologist says he’s ultimately optimistic that through law enforcement and counseling the problem will at least ebb.
But to treat people, Finkelhor says society must understand the people who do enjoy the images.
TAPE: For many of these people, they have been sexually abused, or sexually humiliated in a way that left all kinds of images and feelings attached to their sexual arousal. Many of them having to do with kids. And as I see it, part of their attraction to kids as sexual objects is work their way out of these uncomfortable, confusing feelings they have been left with.
For NHPR News, I’m DG.
