Pat Pilcher
A DUTCH HUMAN rights group, Terre des Hommes Netherlands, captured the details of over 1000 online child sex predators using a computer-generated 10-year-old Filipino girl they called “Sweetie”.
The group has handed the identities of 1000 adults who were willing to pay for Sweetie to perform sex acts to the police.
After creating Sweetie, a convincing computer generated model of a 10-year-old child, she was placed in numerous chat rooms. Over the course of 10 weeks Sweetie was approached by 20,000 adults asking for webcam sex performances.
As the adults chatted with Sweetie, information about them was being gleaned from their conversations. Additional information was also gathered via secondary sources such as social networks.
Terre des Hommes are seeking to highlight the plight of children from developing countries being targeted with what they call webcam child sex tourism.
The problem is potentially huge as law enforcement agencies estimate that over 750,000 child predators are typically online on any given day. According to Terre des Hommes, only six people have been convicted of webcam child sex tourism so far. PAT PILCHER
