Counter Pedophilia Investigate Unit

Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald has ruled out exempting the confession box from long-awaited rules on mandatory reporting of child abuse.

Amid the fallout from the Cloyne report’s exposure of former bishop John Magee for failing to unmask abusive priests, the minister reiterated warnings that there will be no religious exceptions to hardline rules on withholding information.

Ms Fitzgerald dismissed out of hand suggestions that information given to a Catholic priest in the confessional about crimes against a child can remain confidential.

The church’s watchdog on clerical child abuse, Ian Elliot, has said there should be room to allow clerics to keep secret details passed on when someone seeks forgiveness. (more…)

WASHINGTON— Two years ago, a 13-year-old American boy from Indiana, Christian Choate, died after years of abuse, allegedly at the hands of his father, that authorities discovered only after it was too late.

“After his death, police found letters he had written about how he wondered when anyone would check on him or give him any food or water,” US Congressman Geoff Davis said Tuesday as he convened a hearing on Capitol Hill into the under-reporting of deaths of US children from abuse and neglect.

“It is hard to know which child deaths are more tragic — those we know about, or those we do not. (more…)

President Dmitry Medvedev has submitted amendments to the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, introducing chemical castration for criminals guilty of sexual offences against children, a Duma official said on Tuesday.

The castration bill, designed to “increase the effectiveness of the prevention of the strikingly brutal crimes” against children, also introduces life sentence as a possible punishment for pedophiles who are repeat offenders.

The bill also stipulates voluntary medical treatment, including chemical castration, for other rapists.

Medvedev, who first proposed the introduction of chemical castration for pedophiles in May, said punishment for such criminals should be “as harsh as possible.” “A liberal approach here is totally unacceptable,” he said. (more…)

(Reuters) – Pennsylvania next month will become the third state in the nation with a court dedicated to bringing sex offenders to justice.

In an effort to stop repeat offenders, particularly those who target children, a pilot program will open June 23 in Allegheny County, according to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. After a year, if deemed effective, it may be expanded statewide.

Judges hope that channeling sex abuse cases through a specialized court will speed up the process so that “victims and witnesses don’t have to wait before getting their day in court,” said Steve Schell, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts. (more…)

Last Sunday’s New York Times carried a story that I believe all parents of teenagers need to read.

How Sexting Changed So Many Lives

Here’s how the article began:

LACEY, Wash. — One day last winter Margarite posed naked before her bathroom mirror, held up her cellphone and took a picture. Then she sent the full-length frontal photo to Isaiah, her new boyfriend.

Both were in eighth grade.

They broke up soon after. A few weeks later, Isaiah forwarded the photo to another eighth-grade girl, once a friend of Margarite’s. Around 11 o’clock at night, that girl slapped a text message on it.

“Ho Alert!” she typed. “If you think this girl is a whore, then text this to all your friends.” Then she clicked open the long list of contacts on her phone and pressed “send.”

In less than 24 hours, the effect was as if Margarite, 14, had sauntered naked down the hallways of the four middle schools in this racially and economically diverse suburb of the state capital, Olympia. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of students had received her photo and forwarded it. (more…)

Officially 21 Priests from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia have been placed on ‘administrative leave’ until a thorough investigation has been conducted into child sexual abuse claims raised by a Grand Jury report that found a widespread cover up over the actions of up to 37 priests employed by the Catholic Church.

Cardinal Justin Rigali, the archbishop of Philadelphia, should have suspended the priests suspected of paedophilia much sooner, campaigners say.

The sweeping action of the church, the largest mass suspension in America of Priests, comes after the report was released on February 10, 2011.

Disclosed in the report were allegations that for decades the church had covered up abuse of children as young, mainly boys as young as 9. (more…)

NATIONAL POLICE arrested a 20-year-old man in Viator (Almeria) who had threatened at least 600 girls between 12 and 17 via social networking sites since 2007. He had created more than 500 profiles using the same number of e-mail addresses, then threatened to post pictures of the girls on porn sites or infect their computers with a virus unless they sent him pictures of themselves nude or posed for the webcam.

A search of his home revealed almost 1,000 videos, links to child pornography sites and photos of naked girls. The investigation began after a 12-year-old girl in Oviedo reported that she had been threatened.

The detainee has been set free with charges of corruption of minors, threats, coercion and revealing secrets.

Source: EuroWeeklyNews

Parents who want to prevent their children from accessing pornographic material online normally only worry about traditional PCs, but what’s the use of installing filtering software now that kids can get porn on their phones? Internet-enabled smartphones can access any pornographic website, but mobile filtering software is limited or non-existent. And with the rise of sexting, children can even share their own indecent images.

A recent patent application by electronics giant Samsung could have the answer. The patent describes a system for parents to monitor their offspring’s mobile activity through their own handset. It scans incoming images – either from the web, or the phone’s internal camera – for pornographic content by searching for large regions of exposed skin. If the image looks suspect, the child is locked out from accessing it and a copy is sent to their parent’s phone, who can choose to allow access in the case of a false alarm, such as a cosmetics advert. (more…)

A huge 95 percent of children have accessed porn on the internet, especially during homework time.

That’s according to BitDefender, which has also found that the average age of a child starting to look for adult content sites is just over 11 years old.

It interviewed 1,570 parents from five different countries, and found that while 97 percent of them used parental control software to block access to adult websites, 12 percent of their teenage sons or daughters succeeded in uninstalling or unlocking this software. The fact that children are finding a way around these controls are hardly surprising considering the government doesn’t know what to do about the situation.
In November we reported that Ed Vaizey is as confused about child safety online as the rest of parents and adults and it’s not just on the internet.

He said at the time that while most mobile networks have a default block on content that is for over 18s when surfing from a phone, such as gambling or pornography, technology such as Bluetooth, used for transferring files from phone to phone, is tough to police. (more…)

A PRIMARY school teacher appeared in court today accused of sexually abusing children in his classroom.

The 50-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is charged with 18 offences against children under 13.

He appeared at Bristol Magistrates’ Court wearing a grey tracksuit and glasses.

Prosecutor Ann Reddrop said: “The offences are alleged to have happened at the school, in the classroom.” (more…)