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

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.

Charged With Dissemination Of Child Pornography

Rick Peters, the county prosecutor, decided against charging Margarite. But he did charge three students with dissemination of child pornography, a Class C felony, because they had set off the viral outbreak.

After school had been let out that day in late January, the police read Isaiah his rights, cuffed his hands behind his back and led him and Margarite’s former friend out of the building. The eighth graders would have to spend the night in the county juvenile detention center.

The two of them and a 13-year-old girl who had helped forward the photo were arraigned before a judge the next day.

Charge Amended To Telephone Harassment

The New York Times reports that eventually a deal was brokered for the three teenagers who were charged. The offense would be amended from the child pornography felony to a gross misdemeanor of telephone harassment. Isaiah and the two girls who had initially forwarded Margarite’s photo would be eligible for a community service program that would keep them out of court, and the case could be dismissed.

There are many disturbing aspects to this story of “sexting,” or sending sexual photos, videos or texts from one cellphone to another.

Double Standard: Girls Are Sluts, Boys Are Show-Offs

One aspect is the double standard, the same double standard that plagues all women. A boy caught sending a phot of himself might be seen as a fool or a show-off, but a girl whose photo goes viral is likely to be branded a slut. Sound familiar?

The casual nature of this sexting struck me too. Again, from The New York Times:
How had the sexting from Margarite begun?

“We were about to date, and you’ll be like, ‘Oh, blah blah, I really like you, can you send me a picture?’ ” Isaiah recalled.

“I don’t remember if I asked her first or if she asked me. Well, I think I did send her a picture. Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Mine was, like, no shirt on.

“It is very common,” he said. “I’d seen pictures on other boys’ cellphones.”

They weren’t even dating, and she sent him a naked picture of herself?

Sexting Can Have Fatal Consequences

As the New York Times article points out, sexting is not illegal, but if it involves an under-18-year-old, then it may be child pornography. And it may have much bigger consequences, as Care2′s Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux explained here, writing about the sexting-related suicide of a young woman.

The reality is that teenagers are surrounded by highly sexualized messages, including endless songs and music videos that promote sexting.

So it is all the more important that parents stay in touch with their teenage children, talk to them, monitor their behavior, let them know that sexting is dangerous and demeaning – in short, that parents do some parenting on this issue that is not going away.

Parents And Teachers Need To Take Action

Adults in positions of authorities need to take action too. Many school districts have banned sexting and now authorize principals to search cellphones. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 26 states have tried to pass some sort of sexting legislation since 2009.

According to The New York Times, an Internet poll conducted for The Associated Press and MTV by Knowledge Networks in September 2009 indicated that 24 percent of 14- to 17-year-olds had been involved in “some type of naked sexting,” either by cellphone or on the Internet.

That is a scary statistic. Parents, please talk to your children!

Source: Care2

“Bob (not the boy’s real name) wants to say sorry for what he did to her. He talks about it often,” investigating officer Warrant Officer Tonya Louwrens said.

She was testifying during the bail application of the boy’s 32-year-old mother before magistrate Pierre Wessels.

The woman is one of a family of nine accused of a string of child pornography and related acts.

Louwrens said the boy told police he had been forced to have sex with cousins of both sexes.

He blamed his grandfather for starting the abuse when he was in Grade 1. The court heard the grandfather’s alleged abuse included fondling the boy’s genitals.

“His hands were very rough and that hurt me,” the boy was quoted as saying in a forensic assessor’s report Louwrens read to the court.

After the boy’s father and grandfather had sex with the children, they were forced to have sex with each other, the court heard.

According to the boy’s own statement, parts of which were read to court: “Pappa het ook seks gehad met Janine (not her real name). Ek wou nie kyk nie (Daddy also had sex with Janine. I did not want to look).”

Louwrens said the 10-year-old was told that a “tollie” (male private part) went into a “padda” (female private part) and that he saw his grandfather having sex with one of the children on a mattress outside the house.

The boy also claimed that his grandfather penetrated his anus.

Louwrens said the 10-year-old came across as an honest child who was taught that God would punish him if he told lies.

The boy blamed his grandfather for all this and his mother for doing nothing to stop the adults from molesting the children.

Louwrens said the boy wanted the accused, including his mother, to go to jail.

“According to him, all these people must stay far away from him because of the slegte dinge (bad things) they did to him.”

Meanwhile, the boy’s mother will have to wait until next month to know if she will be released on bail.

The bail application of the mother, a manager at a supermarket chain in Hammanskraal, was postponed to April 1.

The woman was the last accused to be arrested – on January 27 – in connection with an alleged child pornography sex ring.

Her husband, parents, brothers and other family members were arrested in December and are in custody awaiting bail after their bail application failed.

Louwrens said there was a possibility that the woman would not attend her trial if granted bail because “the State has a strong case against her”.

Louwrens told the court that since the children had been taken into safety they had been kept apart but they still corroborated one another’s tales of abuse.

However, under cross-examination by the woman’s lawyer, Chris Greywenstein, she conceded that none of the evidence put before the court until now had directly linked the woman to any of the specific charges.

She also conceded under cross-examination that the woman did not have the financial means to buy an air ticket to leave the country.

She also conceded that the boy’s medical report had revealed “no evidence of recent anal penetration”.

Greywenstein said the woman could have escaped – if she had wanted to after members of her family had been arrested in December.

Louwrens replied that she did not know the police were going to arrest her. She claimed that the woman neglected her children and that the house the family stayed in was always dirty.

Greywenstein argued that the woman did not neglect her children and that she worked long hours to eke out a living for her family.

Louwrens responded: “I know many women who work long hours but still manage to look after their families.”

The woman might contact other children involved in the child pornographic sex ring whom the police had just traced, Louwrens said.

“She is family (of the girls) and will be able to contact them.” – Pretoria News

Source: Petroria News

Detlef S, 48, who earlier acknowledged that he had fathered seven children by his stepdaughter, is also accused of having forced his daughters to have sex with men in exchange for money.

The accused, dubbed the ‘German Fritzl’ by the media, had so far only admitted to abusing his daughter, who is now aged 18, as well as fathering the children of his stepdaughter, who is now 27.

But on the next-to-last day of the trial, he admitted to abusing his stepson as well.

Tears flowing down his cheeks and his voice quaking, he offered amends. ‘I want to apologize to the victims. I am really sorry,’ he said.

His full surname has not been printed by the majority of German media because of privacy and libel laws. Media have compared him to Austrian Josef Fritzl, who had held his daughter Elisabeth captive for 24 years in a basement until her release in April 2008.

The children of S were not confined in their home in the village of Fluterschen, but have told the court they were too terrified of their father to dare tell authorities about the abuse.

The court has ruled the man is legally responsible for his deeds, after a psychologist examined him.

The lawyer for Detlef S, Thomas Dueber, called for a jail term of no more than nine-and-a-half years for his client.

Dueber said his client decided on a full admission after realizing how other people perceived him. His self-image had been shaken by his daughters’ testimony, reading media accounts and receiving threats from fellow inmates in the remand jail where he is kept.

Prosecutors, who last week sought a prison term of 14 years, 6 months to be followed by long-term detention on public-safety grounds, said they were sticking to that recommendation despite the admission.

A verdict is expected Tuesday.

Source: M&C

The number of victims safeguarded is the highest ever achieved from this type of investigation, and is set to rise even further in the coming weeks.

These spectacular operational results were the work of effective police cooperation across many countries. Instrumental to the success was the unique role played by Europol in identifying the members of the child sex abuse network and facilitating operational action by police authorities in multiple jurisdictions.

In particular it was the work of Europol analysts in cracking the security features of a key computer server at the centre of the network which uncovered the identity and activity of the suspected child sex offenders. Europol subsequently issued over 4000 intelligence reports to police authorities in over 30 countries in Europe and elsewhere, which has led to the arrests of suspects and the safeguarding of children.

These reports also identified links between this network and those featured in multiple other investigations.

“I am proud of the exceptional work of our experts in helping police authorities around the world to record these groundbreaking results. The safeguarding of so many vulnerable children is particularly rewarding and demonstrates the commitment of our agency to make Europe a safer place for its citizens. I also pay tribute to the relevant authorities in Europe and elsewhere for their operational work in tracking down the suspected criminals and their victims,” says Rob Wainwright, Director of Europol.

Known as Operation Rescue, this complex case has run for three years, with Europol supporting and coordinating investigations for the last 1.5 years. Law enforcement authorities have been brought together from 13 countries to track offenders on a truly global scale. Countries involved: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Greece, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States. Some other countries, although not listed, still have investigations ongoing in which suspects have been identified.

The suspected child sex offenders were members of an online forum – boylover.net – that promoted sexual relationships between adults and young boys. The website operated from a server based in the Netherlands and, at its height, boasted up to 70 000 members worldwide.

The website has now been taken down. It attempted to operate as a ‘discussion-only’ forum where people could share their sexual interest in young boys without committing any specific offences, thus operating ‘below the radar’ of police attention. Having made contact on the site, some members would move to more private channels, such as email, to exchange and share illegal images and films of children being abused. Computers seized from those arrested have harvested huge quantities of child abuse images and videos.

At the start of the investigation, UK and Australian covert police internet teams infiltrated the boylover.net site to quickly identify those members who were assessed as posing the highest risk to children. They also tracked the migration of offenders to other sites where further investigations and risk assessments continued.

In 2009, the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre located the owner of the website and traced the server to Holland, involving the Zaanstreek-Waterland Police in the Netherlands and also bringing Europol into the investigation.

Between June 2008 and June 2009, Canadian, Italian, New Zealand and US law enforcement authorities all joined the investigation, as the scale of the international network became clear and suspects were identified in their jurisdictions.

In January 2010, a copy of the seized site’s server was received by Europol, and the Australian and UK police. Working with Zaanstreek-Waterland Police in the Netherlands, Europol rebuilt the forum offline and forensically interrogated the server to produce intelligence analysis which was disseminated globally to law enforcement authorities. So far, Europol has distributed 4202 operational intelligence reports to 25 EU Member States and 8 other countries.

Having identified at least 670 suspected offenders, international law enforcement authorities continue to work with forces which are actively pursuing the intelligence arising from Operation Rescue. This has led to the arrest of a number of individuals suspected of serious offences against children, who are now awaiting trial.

Source: EuroWeeklyNews

By DIANE DANIELS
WSBT-TV Reporter

About 75 percent of teens now own cell phones, and most of those phones have texting and camera capabilities.

That creates the perfect storm for a surge in teen text messages containing sexually explicit images.

But it’s becoming increasingly apparent to Michiana authorities that most teens don’t know the consequences of sexting, and many parents may not be aware of the dangers when they put that phone in their child’s hand.

This year started with a Grissom Middle School in Mishawaka making sexting headlines. Now St. Joseph County Prosecutor Mike Dvorak is involved in that case. In fact, he says his office is investigating more than 20 kids at three different area schools all accused of potentially being caught up in sexting.

“You’re seeing a greater report of these incidents of children actually producing porn of themselves or friends and transmitting it to others,” Dvorak said. “What they don’t realize is they’re putting themselves at danger. For a child to take a sexually explicit picture of themselves is illegal. Now we have children as a lark or a gag taking pictures and sending them to friends and they can be placed into the commerce of child pornography,” Dvorak said.

‘They never go away’

Last year at a Valparaiso middle school, authorities were called in when nude pictures were exchanged via cell phone between a 12- and a 13-year-old. That case also landed in the lap of the local prosecutor.

” ‘You show me yours, I’ll show you mine’ sort of thing,” said Porter County Prosecutor Brian Gensel, after the incident hit the news in January 2010. “The problem is, it is illegal. They’re posted on cell phones. They’re posted on the Internet and they never go away.”

Recent surveys find 30 percent of young people admit to sexting. During a recent cyber-security seminar at Schmucker Middle School in Mishawaka, when seventh- and eighth-graders were asked if they had heard of sexting, a sea of hands went up among the students.

Notre Dame cyber safety and security expert Robert Riley has been volunteering to conduct sessions for all Penn-Harris-Madison School Corp. middle school students throughout the last three months to educate them about the dangers of a number of high-tech activities, including sexting.

“So this is always illegal. It’s important to understand sexting is always illegal,” Riley told the kids.

And that nugget of information came as a surprise to most of the students interviewed after Riley’s presentation.

“I didn’t know it was actually illegal. I thought they just didn’t want you to do them (sexting) because they’re really bad,” said Jacqueline Murphy, a Schmucker seventh-grader.

“I knew it wasn’t a good thing to do, I didn’t know it was like a federal offense,” added eighth-grader Corcharnelia Martin. “Why would you want to do that to yourself, expose yourself that way? Even if you send it to one person, it could get out to other people and you could be totally embarrassed.”

Seventh-grader Brodie Balsley also said he was unaware sexting was illegal.

“I’ll definitely be anxious to talk to my mom about all the illegal things and inappropriate things that can happen,” he said.

What kids should do

Riley educated the middle-schoolers about how to handle a “sext” from the very moment of discovery.

“So it’s really important to understand the difference between the discovery of child porn and the distribution. Because if you discover it by accident, it’s not going to get you into any trouble,” Riley explained as he encouraged kids to go to a trusted adult immediately if they discover a sext on their phone.

“But if you save it, create it, distribute it, there are serious ramifications,” he explained. “It’s possession, and it’s a federal crime. If you send that to someone else, it’s a federal offense, which is also a crime.

“It’s important to understand the difference between discovering, possessing and distributing it, OK?” Riley cautioned the students.

Riley has also held sessions with some of the parents of P-H-M middle-school kids.

“Some parents, quite frankly, operate on the ‘hope’ system,” Riley observed. “They say, here’s the technology and I hope you stay safe, and that’s not really a viable plan. I can see they don’t understand these issues themselves. They don’t understand technology themselves. They stumble when trying to relay that to their kids.”

Riley also said he’s found that “parents aren’t well prepared to explain to kids how to stay safe online … and this is traditionally not an area of expertise for teachers.”

Some of the parents who have attended Riley’s sessions admit that the amount of technology their kids have access to and the specter of sexting is overwhelming.

Possible penalties

Prosecutors, like Dvorak, have a whole range of penalties they can impose on kids for sexting, everything from diversion programs to juvenile court to trying kids as adults. Staffers in Dvorak’s office also add that another scary thing parents need to be aware of is that with GPS technology on phones, if a child takes an inappropriate picture and sends it out, a tech-savvy predator could decode the GPS tag on the photo, revealing exactly where the child was when the photo was taken. That could literally provide a road map leading straight to the child.

Experts typically suggest that a parent’s best game plan to deter sexting behavior among kids is to get educated on the issue and to talk to their children. There is also some evidence in surveys by the Pew Research Center that suggest kids whose texts are monitored or limited by parents are less likely to be involved in sexting.

As for taking away the technology, Riley said prohibition doesn’t work. He says the key is teaching kids to live with the technology and to become good digital citizens.

Fuente: South Bend Tribune

 A paedophile who targeted an 11-year-old on Facebook and was caught when the child’s parents posed as her online, was today beginning a jail sentence.

Thomas Gibbs was snared after the couple logged on as their daughter and discovered he was grooming her for sex.

The 52-year-old was yesterday handed a 16-month prison term by a judge at Oxford Crown Court.

Prosecutors said the family took matters into their own hands when they noticed their daughter was communicating with a stranger online.

Looking over her shoulder as she used her laptop, their suspicions were confirmed and they realised the mystery correspondent was posting “extremely concerning” messages.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Children are using the Internet to watch YouTube videos, connect with friends on social network sites and look up “sex” and “porn,” according to a study of the top Web searches by youngsters.

Symantec Corp identified the top 100 searches conducted between February and July through its family safety service OnlineFamily.Norton, which monitors children’s and teenager’s Internet use. It found the most popular search term was for YouTube, the video sharing website owned by Google, with Internet star, Fred Figglehorn, a fictional character whose YouTube videos are popular with children, coming ninth in the top searches….    Children use web to watch videos, look up sex: study| U.S.| Reuters

The search engine Google was the second most popular search term and Yahoo came seventh, while social network site Facebook ranked third and MySpace came fifth in the list…..But the words “sex” and “porn” also made it into the top 10, ranked numbers four and six respectively.

….California-based Symantec’s Internet safety advocate Marian Merritt said the list showed that parents needed to be aware what their children were doing online.

“It also helps identify “teachable moments” when parents should be talking with their kids about appropriate online behavior and other issues in their kids’ online lives,” she said in a statement.

The list was compiled after Symantec studied 3.5 million searches made by the OnlineFamily.Norton which lets parents see what children are searching and who they are talking to on instant messaging and what social networks they are using…..via Children use web to watch videos, look up sex: study| U.S.| Reuters.