Photo via ontariooregon.org

Massive Canadian child porn bust only tip of iceberg say police

This past week Ontario police arrested twenty-three individuals, including one woman and a youth offender, in one of the largest child porn sting operations of its kind. The OPP executed 25 search warrants and has laid a total of 73 child-porn related criminal charges, reports John Jalsevac, LifeSiteNews.com.

"Today is a great day for children in communities right across the province," police Commissioner Julian Fantino told a news conference in Toronto yesterday. "This provincial sweep carried out yesterday, and into today, serves as a very loud wake-up call for those who commit these horrific crimes. The provincial strategy will stop at nothing to hunt down child predators.

"So many of our children are much safer today and, no doubt, into the future."

However, during the news conference police indicated that the sting had only chipped away at the very tip of the iceberg. According to one estimate 15,000 people in Ontario alone are trading child porn images and videos, and police said that collections are becoming increasingly larger and the images themselves increasingly more violent. Nationally there are an estimated 44,970 individuals trading child pornography online.

The OPP said that they chose whom to arrest from amongst thousands of offenders. The police would not say exactly how they went about choosing who to pursue, but indicated that priority would be given to offenders who were known to police, who occupy positions of trust with youth, and who have a history of abusing minors.

"It's a major problem for us and police services around the world," OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino said yesterday. "We'll stop at nothing to eliminate offenders. You can run but you can't hide."

The OPP said that this would be the first of many similar arrests to be made in the near future, in an effort to combat what they said was a social epidemic.

Brian Rushfeldt, the Executive Director of Canada Family Action Coalition (CFAC), responded to news of the arrests by pointing out that the problem of child porn is much deeper that a simple matter of policing.

"Due to liberal attitudes about children, crime and sex for the past 25 years Canada has the distinction today of being ranked fourth amongst users and distributors of criminal material called child porn (it is not porn, it is rape and abuse). This is unacceptable for a civilized nation," he said.

Rushfeldt, however, did call on the government to institute stricter laws and to enforce the law more vigorously, to remedy the inevitable fallout of years of "liberal attitudes".

"Every image is evidence of a crime as stated in our Criminal Code. Distributing it is also a criminal act. But the government has not acted with full force on this activity. And to add to the dangers posed to children, internet service providers distribute this criminal material with immunity", said Rushfeldt.

Rushfeldt called on the government to change the wording in the criminal code to read "child rape and abuse" rather than "pornography" and also to require the reporting of the IP addresses of offenders by internet servers.

"Requiring ISPs to block criminal activity has nothing to do with rights and freedoms; it has everything to do with applying laws that any civilized country ought to do to protect vulnerable children. Some data indicates that more than 30 per cent of those who view child pornography go on to prey on children."

Rushfeldt concluded, saying, "CFAC is calling upon the Conservative government to now implement laws, policies and regulations that will require ISPs to report all known websites and email addresses distributing criminal content to the law enforcement, to block all known child sex sites, to increase sentences for convicted criminals, to have a clear and usable registry, and publicize the names of child sex criminals. It is clearly time for action, not studies; action, not partisan dithering; and action, not soft rehabilitation ideology."

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[02/15/2008]

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