What Will Become of These Children?

Why would anybody want to ruin their childhood?

What twisted humanity we have become to want to permanently destroy, traumatise a young life like that? On Oprah Winfrey Show episode, Oprah talked about the serious issue of child sex pornography, supplied by syndicates running child sex trafficking, and how there are vast numbers of people online who are secretly relishing in watching child pornography. She also shared that the latest scary trend is that there is a growing demand by child predators to watch these tortures take place live.

With the growth of online streaming websites such as Chat Roulette (equally disurbing, I find), live child pornography has taken the next stand in terms of popularity. There is some real and very serious issues here we need to grapple with.

On the show, the police interviewed had to go through websites after websites of disturbing images and their work is hardly complete even though the day is over. Resources to crack down these child predators are scarily low. And the number of predators just go on increasing.

Recently, Facebook was embroiled in a case where they failed to report an alleged child porn ring that was operating on its website. The shutting down of their operations on Facebook did little more other than protect the integrity of Facebook as a social networking platform. This week, Craigslist, U.S.’s top classified website, had its Adult section permanently shut down to crack down on child sex trafficking activities.

Because of this issue, Oprah set up the Child Predator Watch List. Within the first 48 hours of its launch, 2 child predators were arrested. The power of the media brought immediate attention and action because this is such a gripping issue.

It’s shocking but here’s the other thing that disturbs me. On one hand, the amount of publicity this issue is receiving leads people to take action, like what Oprah did.

On the  other hand, the black hat part of me wonders if too much publicity about such an issue will actually draw people’s curiosity to child sex pornography, giving the industry more demand. I certainly hope not and think we may be treading a fine line with the rise in awareness, but it is noteworthy, nevertheless.