The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s report found Tasmania had the second highest rate of children on protection orders over the past five years.

The report’s statistics estimated that 100 children in every 1,000 needed protection over the survey period.The state also recorded the second highest rate of substantiated child abuse or neglect notifications, again behind the NT.

Rates of children in out of home care are equal highest in New South Wales and the NT, followed by Tasmania.

The report says the national rate of children on protection orders and in out of home care has risen over the past five years.

Source: ABC

A 24-year-old man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, attended a bail hearing yesterday accused of possessing 466 images of child abuse, about 70 per cent of them Japanese animation.

Under the NT Criminal Code, any offensive material that “depicts, describes or represents” children engaged in sex, being subjected to torture or in a demeaning context is outlawed.Magistrate John Lowndes said it seemed to him the act was broad enough to cover cartoons of child abuse, or even written material.

“Some of the classics could even be considered abusive material,” Dr Lowndes said.

Prosecutor Sally Nicholas, told the bail hearing 72 of the images found on the man’s computers were level five child abuse images, showing torture of children.

Source: The Australian

The League said the owner and administrator of the website have been arrested, although no details were given about the time and place of the arrests. The website had roughly 130 members, most of them from Russia, although some were from Germany, France, Israel and former Soviet nations.It is believed the website had been operating for several years, and members were required to submit self-made child pornography in order to become a member. Some of the members of the pedophile ring also met in person, including meetings outside of Russia.

The two men arrested, both Russian citizens, were taken into custody on charges of the production of child pornography and the sexual abuse of children. One of them led a boy’s choir at a local children’s art school, although officials did not say whether children at the school had been abused.

“We need to take urgent measures to strengthen legislation [to protect children] before it is too late,” a League official said. “Lately the internet has become a haven for pedophiles and perverts – all because of the weakness of Russian law to resolve these issues.”

The League also called on Russian authorities to put in place laws which allow websites featuring child pornography to be blocked. “In Western countries, websites with not only child pornography but also adult pornography are blocked,” the official said. “In Russia, at the present time there are no mechanisms in place to protect children.”

More than 9,500 sex crimes against children were reported in Russia in 2009, including more than 960 child rapes. Despite the authorities’ declared fight against the sexual abuse of minors, police are often slow to respond to allegations of child abuse, according to activists.

Pavel Astakhov, Russia’s Children Rights Commissioner to President Dmitri Medvedev, previously suggested the existence of a “pedophile lobby” in the country’s lower house of parliament, which he believes is responsible for blocking legislation against child sex abuse.

However, in October, the lower house of parliament approved a bill stipulating the voluntary chemical castration for pedophiles and other rapists. Such a chemical castration is carried out with a series of injections, which cause a drop in testosterone, the male hormone that causes the individual’s sex drive. However, the effect is not irreversible.

Laws regarding the possession of child pornography have also been under discussion for years. Russia is only one of two major countries in the world where the simple possession of child pornography is legal, although the production of it is illegal. The second country is Japan where it is legal to possess child pornography as long as there is no intend to sell or distribute the material.

The new bill which was passed in October also introduces a life sentence as a possible punishment for pedophiles who are repeat offenders. In addition, pedophiles are stripped of the right to plea for a suspended sentence.

Source: Channel 6 News

For about 45 minutes, the judge, lawyers and a neuropsychologist had talked about Sundsmo.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ryan W. Bounds made his pitch to the judge: Sundsmo, 41, pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography after previously raping a child, so he deserved 15 more years behind bars.U.S. District Judge Robert E. Jones asked Sundsmo’s lawyer if her client was still interested in being surgically castrated to end the pedophilia that plagued him.

Francesca Freccero, Sundsmo’s lawyer, told the judge she didn’t know her client’s attitude about castration. She acknowledged that Sundsmo had considered “drastic measures,” including suicide, and hoped Jones would show a bit of mercy by sentencing him to the mandatory minimum: 10 years in prison.

“He literally has missing parts of his brain,” she said.

Sundsmo took a fall when he was 7 months old and had 15 surgeries before age 2. Today, about a third of his brain is missing, said Dennis P. Swiercinsky, a Portland neuropsychologist. He testified that Sundsmo’s brain injury left him with average intelligence but little control of his impulses.

Those impulses, and the hard evidence of his crime, hung over the court proceeding.

On Sept. 16, 2009, Multnomah County probation officers dropped in on pedophile Kevin J. Heasley and found him in a bedroom with Sundsmo, who had brought over a cache of child pornography. Illegal images shone on a nearby computer screen.

Investigators found more than 4,600 graphic images on Sundsmo’s thumb drive, including 29 that depicted “sadomasochistic abuse of children,” according to a government sentencing memo.

The judge asked Sundsmo if he cared to speak before he imposed sentence.

Sundsmo stood and acknowledged that he struggled with pedophilia.

“I been fighting it all my life — or most of my life,” he said. “All I get is locked up.”

Jones sentenced him to 15 years and eight months in prison.

Source: Oregon Live

The move comes after the group managed to take down more than 40 pedophile websites last week which were swapping images through the Tor anonymization network.

It all started when Anonymous came across a site hosted on a Tor darknet a couple of weeks ago that linked to images of child sex abuse.The group warned the site to remove the links, but shut down services when it was ignored.

“The owners and operators at Freedom Hosting are openly supporting child pornography and enabling pedophiles to view innocent children, fueling their issues and putting children at risk of abduction, molestation, rape, and death,” says Anonymous in a statement on Pastebin.

“By taking down Freedom Hosting, we are eliminating 40+ child pornography websites, among these is Lolita City, one of the largest child pornography websites to date containing more than 100GB of child pornography.

“We will continue to not only crash Freedom Hosting’s server, but any other server we find to contain, promote, or support child pornography.”

It’s published a list of over 1,500 individuals it says were users of the site.

“If the FBI, Interpol, or other law enforcement agency should happen to come across this list, please use it to investigate and bring justice to the people listed here,” it says.

However, when similar vigilante activities have been carried out in the past, law enforcement agencies have been less than happy, saying it could jeopardize proper investigation.

Source: TG Daily

Haarlem District Court sentenced Ad van den Berg Tuesday after prosecutors found thousands of photos and films depicting child pornography at his home.

Van den Berg claimed the images and films were for scientific research.

Van den Berg made headlines in 2006 when he and other self-avowed pedophiles registered The Party for Brotherly Love, Freedom and Diversity for parliamentary elections, saying they wanted to lower the age of sexual consent to 12 years.

The party failed to gather enough support to participate in the 2006 elections and disbanded after again failing to get on the ballot last year.

Source: Kansas City

Father-of-two Daniel Taylor, 31, from Leeds, northern England, was handed an indeterminate jail term after pleading guilty to 27 charges, including making and possessing indecent images and sexually assaulting a baby.

None of the charges relate to his own children.

Police who searched his property found an instruction video for paedophiles and a covert camera disguised as a cigarette lighter capable of capturing and storing video.

London’s Metropolitan Police, who first raised suspicions that Taylor might be a paedophile after monitoring his online activity, described him as Britain’s most prolific collector of indecent child images.

Passing sentence at Bradford Crown Court judge Rodney Grant handed Taylor an indeterminate sentence with a minimum jail term of three years, minus time already spent in custody.

“Fortunately it is a rare occurrence that a court has to deal with a case such as this involving such a huge volume of child pornography and the sexual abuse of a very young child,” said Grant.

Taylor stored the images on a laptop computer, hard drives, phones and memory sticks, the court heard.

Under the indeterminate sentencing system, a minimum jail term is handed down but the convicted individual must satisfy authorities that he or she is ready for release and is no longer a risk before being freed.

Source: AFP

“This conduct is just frightening,” said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd in a news conference Monday afternoon, “really frightening.”

The arrest of Christopher Lobban, 53, is connected to the case of Robin Leigh Pagoria, a 45-year-old jailer arrested in May on charges of aggravated child abuse; production, promotion and possession of child pornography. Deputies said she videotaped the beatings of two nude girls. Deputies would only say the girls are between 12 and 16 years old.

Pagoria, a six-year veteran of the department, resigned from her job the day she was arrested.

Pagoria told investigators she has never met Lobban, whom she met on an online sexually oriented website and described as her master in their relationship. She said he instructed her to do the paddling and sent him video recordings of the spanking sessions.

“She was following his direction,” Judd said. “Robin was submitting to his actions and directions.

“At least 11 times, he contacted her, berated her, dominated her and talked about how annoyed he was with her,” Judd said. He told her he “wanted those children belted hard.”

The beatings which occurred between January and May caused hemorrhaging and lacerations on the girls, deputies said.

Judd said detectives believe there may be other victims, “probably not in Polk County,” he said, “but maybe across the state, across the nation and as tough as it is to say, around the world.”

Judd said Lobban, who was arrested Saturday, was employed as a groundskeeper but lives in a $1 million house in Mullaloo, a suburb of Perth in west Australia.

He was charged with two counts of promotion of child pornography, solicitation to commit aggravated child abuse and solicitation to commit lewd and lascivious battery on a victim between 12 and 16.

It was unknown when he will be brought to Polk County to face the charges.

“When you start whipping children 50 times and video record that and show it to someone,” Judd said, “you’re going to be investigated and you’re going to be arrested.”

Fuente: TBO

Weldon Marc Gilbert, a millionaire and former commercial pilot arrested in November 2007, has unlimited access to the 28 hours of footage on more than 100 DVDs seized by police, KOMO-TV reported. He is in the Pierce County Jail in Tacoma awaiting trial. But he won’t be alone while watching the evidence, KIRO-TV points out. An investigator will be in the room.

The county prosecutor and sheriff say that denying Gilbert access risks a mistrial, noting that the state Supreme Court has ruled in his favor.

The Associated Press writes that in a plea bargain two years ago, Gilbert pleaded guilty in federal court and was sentenced to 25 years in prison for producing child pornography. But the deal was contingent on Gilbert also pleading guilty in state court to sex crimes, and when a judge told Gilbert his state sentence could be as long as life in prison, he withdrew his guilty plea.

The Seattle Weekly has posted the charging documents.

By Michael Winter, USA TODAY.

Photo: By Pierce County Sheriff’s Department

That new wireless router. He’d gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his Internet connection, he thought.

“We know who you are! You downloaded thousands of images at 11:30 last night,” the man’s lawyer, Barry Covert, recounted the agents saying. They referred to a screen name, “Doldrum.”

“No, I didn’t,” he insisted. “Somebody else could have but I didn’t do anything like that.”

“You’re a creep … just admit it,” they said.

Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale. Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router.

Plenty of others would agree. The Sarasota, Fla. man, for example, who got a similar visit from the FBI last year after someone on a boat docked in a marina outside his building used a potato chip can as an antenna to boost his wireless signal and download an astounding 10 million images of child porn, or the North Syracuse, N.Y., man who in December 2009 opened his door to police who’d been following an electronic trail of illegal videos and images. The man’s neighbor pleaded guilty April 12.

For two hours that March morning in Buffalo, agents tapped away at the homeowner’s desktop computer, eventually taking it with them, along with the iPads and iPhones belonging to him and his wife.

Within three days, investigators determined that the homeowner had been telling the truth: If someone was downloading child pornography through his wireless signal, it wasn’t him. About a week later, agents arrested a 25-year-old neighbor and charged him with distribution of child pornography. The case is pending in federal court.

Lots of horror stories
It’s unknown how often unsecured routers have brought legal trouble for subscribers. Besides the criminal investigations, the Internet is full of anecdotal accounts of people who’ve had to fight accusations of illegally downloading music or movies.

Whether you’re guilty or not, “you look like the suspect,” said Orin Kerr, a professor at George Washington University Law School. Kerr said the issue is just one of many reasons to secure home routers.

Experts say the more savvy hackers can go beyond just connecting to the Internet on the host’s dime and monitor Internet activity and steal passwords or other sensitive information.

A study released in February provides a sense of how often computer users rely on the generosity — or technological shortcomings — of their neighbors to gain Internet access.

The poll conducted for the Wi-Fi Alliance, the industry group that promotes wireless technology standards, found that among 1,054 Americans age 18 and older, 32 percent acknowledged trying to access a Wi-Fi network that wasn’t theirs. An estimated 201 million households worldwide use Wi-Fi networks, according to the alliance.

The same study, conducted by Wakefield Research, found that 40 percent said they would be more likely to trust someone with their house key than with their Wi-Fi network password.

Advocates for public Wi-Fi
For some, though, leaving their wireless router open to outside use is a philosophical decision, a way of returning the favor for the times they’ve hopped onto someone else’s network to check email or download directions while away from home .

“I think it’s convenient and polite to have an open Wi-Fi network,” said Rebecca Jeschke, whose home signal is accessible to anyone within range.

“Public Wi-Fi is for the common good and I’m happy to participate in that — and lots of people are,” said Jeschke, a spokeswoman for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that takes on cyberspace civil liberties issues.

Experts say wireless routers come with encryption software, but setting it up means a trip to the manual.

Source: MSNBC