Death to Traffickers in Children - and Nothing Less
(CNN, October 26, 2009) Law enforcement authorities have recovered 52 children and arrested 60 pimps allegedly involved in child prostitution, the FBI announced Monday.
More than 690 people in all were arrested on state and local charges, the FBI stated.
______________________
I can't let this go. I WON'T let this go. As painful as this is to confront, and as near to tears as I am right now, I can't ignore this for another minute.
There are children out there--OUR children--who are being kidnapped, raped, exploited and forced into lives of prostitution and abject misery. They are CHILDREN. They were babies once. Infants. Now they're kids. They should be living the lives that all kids dream of living. Free from worry, free from harm, free to be as joyful and as silly and as wonderful as any sitcom kid devised.
In a little over six years, 889 children have been rescued or "recovered" through the efforts of a task force of 34 agencies known as the Innocence Lost National Initiative. The kids who have now been recovered will never, ever be full time kids again. Those days, if they ever existed, are behind them. They may have joyful moments--kids are resilient, after all--but they will carry those days and nights of misery with them forever.
I hate that.
I want those people--the people who did this to our children--dead. I want them never to walk this earth again, never to inhale the same air we exhale, never to have one more moment to walk upright among the rest of us. I don't say this lightly. I'm not writing this in the heat of passion. I mean it.
In those six years, there have been around 500 convictions, with some sentences as light as eight years. The longest sentences work out to around 25 years. That's not nearly long enough. When those monsters get out, their victims will still be young enough to have to look ahead to years of persistent nightmares. What could be worse than knowing your tormentor is walking the streets, free as a bird, free of conscience, human in physiognomy only?
We owe it to the children rescued and to the pitiful children still lost to the child sex trade to become warriors in their name. We watch animals in the wild protecting their young and think nothing of it. It's the way of nature, after all. But where in the wild is exploitation? What other species of animal creates an environment where helpless, defenseless young are served up to the baser instincts of the most dangerous elements of their kind? None but humans.
We bring these children into this world. We're high-minded in our seeming concern for them. We claim to love them all. And yet we will not take seriously enough our ability to change their lives for the better. We cannot ignore the enemies of our children. We are in the frontline of a battle for their very lives. Every child is a child of ours. We are their only hope.
If it takes a village, we are it.
Innocence Lost National Initiative
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
FBI Crimes Against Children Unit
DOJ National Sex Offender Website
(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices here)
Oh Ramona..two kids of my own and two step kids...This sickens me. They do a lot of expose on Law & Order and its namesakes on this issue or these issues.
There are actually organizations that claim to be proud of the propensity for this sin of all sins.
Real evilness. I mean that is why I got so initially angry at Delay. You know he was give aid and comfort to a corp located in one of our territories that fostered child prostitution and mandatory abortion.
Thank you for all these links. And thank you for discussing an issue that has faded into the background.
October 26, 2009 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's not an easy topic to discuss. Since I live in a bubble of nice(my own choosing), this is really difficult to think about. But, oh, poor me--all I have to do is THINK about it. Those poor children have to live it. The least I can do is keep this alive--for them.
October 26, 2009 9:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Stories like this always makes my heart hurt. This stuff goes on. I know it does. And I'm glad there is a task force dedicated to rescuing these kids and arresting the pimps.
Why isn't there stronger sentencing for these soul-less monsters? Can't the sentencing guidelines be enhanced? These are the ones that should be in prison for life, not the three strikes and your out petty thieves or pot heads that are too stupid to stay out of sight while they get high.
October 26, 2009 10:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Flower, it looks like they're doing a lot, but obviously more resources are needed, and longer prison sentences of course should be a given. I don't understand the foot-dragging in these cases. They don't have time to waste.
October 27, 2009 7:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
This kind of news sickens every decent human being.
Imagine how quickly we could shut this reprehensible criminal culture down if all our resources were not being diverted toward imperial wars and propping up the criminals of Wall Street.
October 26, 2009 10:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Right, Oleeb. But our priorities have been skewed for a long time now. I'm just glad to know there are agencies out there at least trying to do something about this. Funding shouldn't be one of their obstacles, but I'm betting it is.
October 27, 2009 7:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ramona, you want these people dead? So do I. Probably so do most of us. There may be saints among us who would abjure killing even the most evil of humans, but they are rare. Rather, I see the wish for these monsters to die as a sign of a strong moral sense, and an indifference to their fate as an egregious lack of moral integrity.
But you say you are not writing in the heat of passion, and I'm not sure I believe you. In any case, I hope you'll forgive me if I use your visceral outrage as a stepping off point to address the large and vexing topic of the death sentence as the appropriate penalty for heinous crimes. It's a useful starting point, because to me, it illustrates the need for a moral society to erect a clear wall of separation between how we feel and how we act, recognizing that the two may properly coincide in many cases but diverge in others. I don't want to turn this discussion into a death penalty debate, but only to make the point that wanting to kill someone is not a shameful response to evil but a necessary one, and those who condemn the emotion are missing the point, as well as failing to understand why most people in the U.S. don't understand why they are so lacking in righteous rage. I believe that anyone opposing the death penalty should acknowledge that if executing those convicted of crimes is to be condemned, wanting them dead should not be.
The pros and cons of the death penalty are too complex to discuss here, but to summarize my own feelings about the evildoers you cite, I would simply say that I want them killed, but I don't think they should be. The reasons can be debated at length elsewhere.
October 26, 2009 11:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Fred, for a really thoughtful comment. You're right that I came at this with a passion. I am outraged. But I think I'm being clear-headed about it, as well. I am an opponent of the death penalty in all but the most heinous, proven cases. I don't think that's a contradiction, or a cop-out. There are some people for whom life can no longer be a privilege. Anyone who commits a heinous crime against a child cannot expect mercy.
I think we as a society need to hold our children dear. We need to make it clear that they are our most precious asset. They are not to be abused or thrown away or seen as anything less than wonderful. The crimes we're talking about here are horrific and need to be dealt with as crimes against humanity. They cannot be tolerated in a society that prides itself on justice and concern for its people.
My point here is to draw attention to the degree of these crimes. They are like no other, in that our children are being exploited, abused, and often killed for no other reason than the gratification of a host of perverted adults.
These crimes are in a class by themselves and need to be dealt with in a way that not only protects our kids but stops the activity dead in its tracks. We need to stop this. The people involved have to be made afraid. Harsh, mandatory sentencing is the only weapon we have.
October 27, 2009 8:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
You can't make them "afraid," Ramona. People who are mentally ill will not ever react the way you want or expect them to. Better to deal with mental illness, rather than neglecting it.
October 27, 2009 8:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, some of those people might be mentally ill, but there are millions apparently who follow this trade. They may be nutcases but they're not all certifiable. They're criminals.
October 27, 2009 9:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
I could not - nor do I imagine many others do - condemn the emotion of wanting to kill someone as a punishment. In many cases people are fully justified in feeling that way.
The emotion is not in question, acting upon it is. A civilized society will recognise that it is impossible to ever truly ascertain the guilt of someone and will therefore never mete out a completely irreversible punishment.
October 27, 2009 8:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
We're dropping bombs on innocents in Afghanistan every day, but we're going to get bent out of shape about some sex trafficking? 25 years in jail isn't enough? Do we need Sharia law, hack off limbs of offenders?
Stings like this are supposed to make headlines - to be part of a deterrent. Likely we'll never know how many of those 690 arrested are actually guilty once this leaves the headlines. We have made fear of abduction a backdrop of our daily lives despite malicious abduction being a small probability.
I'm fine with the laws as they are and simply enforcing them. I don't think we need more hysteria or over-reactive sentencing. We already did that with drug sentencing to awful results. We have our fear of sexual offenders out in the open, which for some reason is more important than violent offenders. (Oh, that might mean taking away people's guns).
October 27, 2009 4:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Desidero, we're talking about CHILDREN here. Heinous crimes against children. I'm not just bent out of shape about it, I'm twisted like a pretzel. Yes there are a whole lot of issues that need our attention, but in the meantime there are kids out there being subjected to horrors we don't want to talk about in mixed company.
It's hardy hysteria. It's reality, and it's nothing like putting a bunch of pot-smokers behind bars. We know that child porn and sex trade has become a growing, profitable industry all over the world. We pick and choose our battles. Today I've picked this one. Kids will always be my main concern. They need me and I have much more power than they do. If I don't use it to keep them safe, shame on me.
October 27, 2009 7:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse is a term for internet criminals, or the imagery of internet criminals.
Wikipedia: The Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse is a term for internet criminals, or the imagery of internet criminals. A play on Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, it refers to types of criminals who use the internet to facilitate crime and consequently jeopardize the rights of honest internet users. There does not appear to be an exact definition for who the Horsemen are, but they are usually described as terrorists, drug dealers, pedophiles, and organized crime. Other sources use slightly different descriptions but generally refer to the same types of criminals. The term was coined by Timothy C. May in 1988, who referred to them as "child pornographers, terrorists, abortionists, abortion protestors, etc."[1] when discussing the reasons for limited civilian use of cryptography tools. The term seems to be used less often in discussions about online criminal activity, but more often in discussions about the negative, or chilling effects such activity has had on regular users' daily experiences online. It also used frequently to describe the political tactic Think of the children. A message from the same mailing list states:
The four supposed threats may be used all at once or individually, depending on the circumstances:[4]
Pedophiles fill in the gaps when the terrorists aren't doing anything. I mean, how many more buildings have fallen here in the U.S. since 9/11? Not many. So, given the absence of an active external threat, an internal one must be manufactured.
October 27, 2009 6:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. We're dropping on bombs on kids, we're selling or giving "aid" in the form of weapons to other countries, that are used on kids. Not to mention that we squander the money on all that militarism that if used for real aid would prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of children per week.
Chemical castration is a good solution for the perps here. No need to make the state do more killing.
October 27, 2009 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, I totally agree! It is just as bad as getting bent over some gender equality thing, or over how Detroit is getting screwed or whatever...
October 27, 2009 8:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Check out Crimes Against Children conference here.
https://www.cacconference.org/
Things that make our blood boil.
October 27, 2009 6:03 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks TPC. They've provided more good sources here:
https://www.cacconference.org/Related_Links.html
October 27, 2009 7:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
I can agree with the outrage part, but I can't agree with the death penalty part. I just can't. To me, the death penalty is as base (and to me, morally repugnant) an impulse in humans as the impulse to commit any other premeditated violent act. Therefore, it doesn't solve anything about the human condition, it only perpetuates our basest nature.
But I also don't believe humans are a "higher" species just because we have a more complex brain. If our more complex brains were worth as much as we (of course!) think they are, we would figure out how to live in peace. We can figure out lots of things, but we can't wrap our brains around how not to kill.
I suspect that as long as we are arrogant enough to believe we are a superior species, we will always fall short of being superior.
October 27, 2009 8:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
You make some good points here. But about this child sex trade issue. What is the solution?
October 27, 2009 9:35 AM | Reply | Permalink
From your links, the child sex trade issue appears to be incredibly complicated to offer a single solution. Just for one example, there are a number of different "reporting" categories, as this link explains.
But before you even get to the punishment phase, you have to catch people. It looks like the FBI is doing that in a focused, cross-country, multi-agency initiative, which launched in 2003 (Innocence Lost National Initiative). The number of people arrested (and convicted) is in the hundreds, according to the website's updates.
What that tells us, however, is that law enforcement had a gaping hole through which criminals could operate undetected before the initiative got underway. Why? We don't know because the FBI doesn't say. So one of my answers to your question would be to close the apparent gaps in law enforcement nationwide. But I think we don't even have enough information about that particular issue, even after reading the ILNI website.
Only 34 dedicated task forces after 5 years? That seems inadequate to me, considering how many people have been convicted already.
So another answer to your question (still at the pre-punishment phase) is that we need more public education and publicity about the issue as a strategy for prevention. There are necessarily lots of people involved, not just pimps. Surely some parents must be involved in some cases.
October 27, 2009 11:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly. More public awareness. That's what I'm trying to do here. We're talking. That's a start.
October 27, 2009 12:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for bringing it up. I didn't know about this initiative.
October 27, 2009 12:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post, Ramona. And, no, Desidero, there's no mitigation here. The victims are children. No abstract arguments will heal their pain or recover their lives and spirits, debased by monsters.
October 27, 2009 10:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
Desidero is saying our society is immoral: In practice we bomb innocent children in Afghanistan, which muddies the purity of sending a message of zero tolerance regarding immoral acts committed stateside.
October 27, 2009 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Intent is the difference. Killing an innocent by accident is morally different from doing it on purpose. War by itself is immoral, but it is also sometimes necessary as the only way to prevent greater immorality. Killing innocent civilians while bombing a Nazi V2 rocket factory is an example.
October 27, 2009 12:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
The idea isn't to "send a message". The idea is to save children from monsters. I don't care how many headlines such such stories attract, or who gareners political kudos, criminals who prey on children should be "over-reactively" sentenced. Societies are amoral; only human individuals have within their charactors morality - or don't.
October 27, 2009 12:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I didn't say anything about "sending a message."
But anyway, in your view, it's not at all hypocritical to kill Afghan children and "save" American children.
Okay! Thanks for clearing that up!
October 27, 2009 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Someone yell, "Think of the children" so we can all run grab our pitchforks. Sorry, I'm underwhelmed by it all. Children were much more abused 200 years ago. Yeah, there's some abuse going on, and there's law enforcement. No need to panic, no need to suspend habeas corpus. Just regular due process, thanks.
October 27, 2009 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I just don't know where the lines are going to be drawn. I haven't read anything on this blog yet that addresses the other side of the coin, the consumers of child sex enslavement - "the market" to put in perversely rational terms. Do we execute these folks also? And the third side of the coin: sexual abuse of children generally, which sports horridly high statistics in our country. Since the stats vary wildly depending on the source, an average figure is something like 17% for boys and 28% for girls, combined it means that 45% of our children are sexually abused by parents, aunts and uncles, neighbors, baby sitters etc. That's astounding - and within that statistical framework are probably located the customer base of criminals who have found trafficking child sex slaves extremely lucrative.
October 27, 2009 6:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Are we really going ot decline to intervene because we cannot walk and chew gum at the same time? Spearheading anti-sex slavery and the was in the ME are not mutually exclusive. We need to end both. Should we kill these predators? No, life in prison. Same with Terrorists. I think if dead is dead, then their not being given decades to think about their socially repugnant behavior is getting off easy. I think they ought to have their lives extended as long as possible and reminded daily they have nothing to show for their time here on Earth.
October 27, 2009 12:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think they think about their behavior, Gregor. There are people without conscience - I know, I've met far too many of them over the course of my mottled life; a few (thankfully) are utterly devoid of what, for lack of a better term, we call a "soul". Yes, monsters live. They have sentient brains, walk on hind legs and carry a social security number. But there is within them a vast emptiness that allows them to do horrible things. As the father of a young child, nothing terrifies me more than their very existence. I spent most of my life opposing the death penalty, but here's where i am now: Someone murders a child, give them the pin. The next morning, should we look out our windows, the world will still be there, turning away. They just won't be on it. Good thing? Bad thing.
Hmmm... good.
October 27, 2009 3:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ramona, here is an issue right and left can agree on. These people are scum and if there is to be a death penalty then they should qualify for it. We just had a case where a couple was arrested for sexually abusing their own 18 month old, and they had video evidence of them doing so since BIRTH! In a case like that, with irrefutable video evidence, FRY 'EM!
October 27, 2009 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
What sickos. And when the evidence is irrefutable (video evidence? Holy shit, what sick f**ks.), and the crime disgusting, the punishment should fit. Fry 'em or let the other inmates know what the sickos did. It would end the same.
October 27, 2009 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Let their own kind deal with them, in prison. If that was the world they sought(abusive), and created(video), then they can live there, but it won't be for long. They get what they wanted, an abusive world, and it destroys them, naturally.
October 27, 2009 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
also interesting..
October 27, 2009 6:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry I had to leave while my blog was still up. Got called away overnight and didn't get back until tonight. Thanks the great comments, all.
October 28, 2009 8:51 PM | Reply | Permalink