A brilliant invention that has helped protect innocent children from sick, evil predators:
A Dutch organization for children’s rights has identified more than 1,000 sexual predators after creating a computer-generated Filipino girl named ‘Sweetie’ to entice them to ask for child porn.
The Dutch chapter of the group Terre des Hommes created the 10-year-old girl and then posed as her on internet chat rooms to conduct a sting operation to unmask webcam child-sex tourists.
For two-and-a-half months during the spring, the researchers pretended to be the girl while working undercover in a warehouse in an industrial part of Amsterdam – and the results were instant.
They were quickly approached by more than 20,000 predators from 71 countries, and on Monday, they gave the identities of 1,000 of these allegedly predators to Interpol. Of these, 254 came from the U.S.
‘The moment we got online, we were swamped, like an avalanche,’ TDH special projects director Hans Guyt said in a webcast from the Hague, the Globe and Mail reported.
‘If we don’t intervene soon, this sinister phenomenon will totally run out of control,’ he added.
He said webcam sex with minors – which usually involves men from Western countries paying children from impoverished countries for sex shows – is still ‘a cottage industry’ and need to be stopped.
‘It’s still not too late,’ Guyt said. ‘Our worst scenario is that the same thing will happen with this as has happened with child pornography – that is now a multi-billion dollar industry in the hands of criminal gangs.’
Terre des Hommes has posted a documentary about its 10-week investigation on YouTube and begun a petition aimed at pressing police and politicians to do more to halt such illegal sex shows.
‘We do not need more laws… present legislation is suitable and more than enough to cover these acts,’ Guyt said as he called for a ‘novel approach’ to policing the problem.
Terre des Hommes’ novel approach involved using Sweetie as an online disguise for a group of researchers who then chatted to potential clients online.
‘We were swamped by men looking for contact, looking for sexual activities with us,’ Guyt said.
During a demonstration for AP on Monday, one of the researchers logged into a public chat room as Sweetie – identifying himself by her purported age, gender and country of origin.
Seconds later, multiple pop-up dialogue boxes began appearing on his screen from people using pseudonyms and soliciting a girl who had clearly identified herself as 10 years old.
One chat between the researcher identifying himself as Sweetie and one of the online users started with Sweetie asking: ‘What you want see?’
The user responded: ‘U.’
Sweetie replied: ‘What u pay for?’
And the user added: ‘Naked.’
As the conversation progressed, they agreed a $20 fee to be paid by a wire transfer and Sweetie asked for the person’s Skype address, but took the chat no further.
Guyt said Terre des Hommes, using basic research techniques and not hacking, was able to identify 1,000 adults from 71 countries who solicited Sweetie.
The group did not identify any of them to media, but passed the results of its investigation to Interpol.
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