Child Pornography: Behind Every Picture There's Pain

I tossed and turned in bed unable to get the image out of my head. I felt a knot in my stomach and got up to take a couple of Tums. Then I climbed back in bed and stared up at the ceiling in the darkness with the same thought running over and over through my head-"That poor little girl." Sleep didn't come easy.

It happened innocently enough.

I write humorous articles that often focus on some of the more annoying individuals in the entertainment industry. So I do a lot of research on the Internet, surfing Web sites and looking for any tiny bit of information on celebrities that I can use. In the course of an evening, I may visit dozens of sites-usually no longer than the time it takes to quickly scroll down a page and discover it provides nothing useful. Admittedly, some of these sites reside on the seamier side of cyberspace. They may come up on my Google search, but in truth they are nothing more than photos of celebrity bimbos in bikinis or climbing out of cars minus their panties. These sites are sometimes filled with advertisements to pornographic Web sites accompanied with alluring photos. The thinking is that if a visitor is doing a search on Britney Spears or some other celebretard, he may very well be enticed to visit a hard core site. Anyone who has read any of my articles knows that I am by no means a prude, but I don't have the desire to contribute my time, money and attention to Internet porn. I move on.

On the night that eventually had me tossing and turning in bed, I was visiting one of the hundreds of celebrity BS sites. As I did my usual quick scroll down the page to see if there was perhaps an article on something stupid Lindsay or Paris may have done or said recently, my attention moved to the right-hand side of the page where I caught a glimpse of a photo on one of the ads. I felt a sharp bolt shoot through my heart and I'm sure I gasped as I realized that the photo was of a little girl in an unspeakable sexual situation. Immediately I exited the site and just sat in my chair almost shaking-my stomach churning. I stood up and paced the room not believing what I had just seen. I kept seeing her face-a face I had actually looked at for no more than a second or two before hitting the X in the corner of the page. No longer in the mood to do anything involving a computer, I shut it down and headed to bed.

I have always known about child pornography-always known that there are sick bastards out there exploiting innocent children for their own gain-but like anything else, unless I had any true exposure to the problem, it was something I never thought much about. We all go through our daily lives aware that in the deepest, darkest corners of the world, others experience unspeakable horror, but after years of surfing the Net, this was the first time I had ever come across anything related to child pornography and it hit me like I had been whacked in the stomach with a 2x4.

As I lay in bed, I pictured this innocent child living in a world of hellish confinement. I thought of my own sweet, wonderful grandkids and how I would hunt down and kill anyone who would dare harm any of them. What kind of a sick world do we live in? Then I began to wonder about the numbers. How many kids are going through this? As I tried to relax and finally find some sleep, I decided I would try to educate myself on what is perhaps the most heinous act any adult could perpetrate on a child.

Hitting the Internet the next day, I checked out some Web sites devoted to getting the word out on the evils of child exploitation and some of what I found is frightening.

Here are just a few of the numbers:

• In a study made in 2005, 40% of those arrested for possession of child pornography had also sexually victimized at least one child (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children).

• Between the years 2000 and 2001, 83% of possessors of child pornography had images of children between the ages of 6 and 12; 39% had images of children between the ages of 3 and 5; and 19% had images of children under the age of 3 (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children).

• There are in excess of 20,000 new images of child pornography posted each week on the Internet (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children).

• The U.S. Customs Service has estimated that 100,000 Web sites offer child pornography and that child pornography has become a $3 billion per year industry.

• Perhaps most disturbing: According to an online article titled Guess Who's Behind the Lens of Child Porn? the number of children victimized by their own parents is seven times greater than those victimized by strangers.

Like any other industry, it is all about supply and demand. There are unsettling indications that the demand for pornography involving babies and toddlers-can you believe this?!-is rising and the overall desire for images of prepubescent children involved in sexual situations grows each day. And some awful parents, looking for any way to make fast, easy money, are willing to offer up their children to satisfy the perverse desires of child porn consumers.

This is one sick world we live in.

If you Google the words "child pornography" you will likely find disturbing news stories about recent arrests, trials and convictions of child pornographers. You will also find many Web sites devoted to educating the public on the evils of child pornography. Among them are:

National Center for Missing and Exploited Children

National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children

ACPO AntiChildPorn.org

Wired Safety

There is even an organization created by adult Web site owners that is dedicated to fighting child pornography: Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection

Many of these sites offer ideas on what you can do to help stop child pornography.

Finally, click here for a poster from Wired Safety titled Behind Every Picture There's Pain. It is children like this whose lives are being destroyed each day.