By Terry Vanderheyden
WASHINGTON, March 16, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced charges against 27 people Wednesday, including 13 Americans, nine Canadians, and two from Australia and Britain, involved in what he described as “the worst imaginable forms of child pornography.”
“This international undercover investigation revealed an insidious network that engaged in worldwide trafficking in child pornography, including live molestations of children transmitted over the Internet,” Gonzales said, according to a Reuters report.
U.S. Homeland Security Department official Julie Myers explained that the new material actually often streamed live acts with children – one as young as 18 months. “We see child molestation on demand through streaming to chat rooms,” she explained. “The children are getting younger and the images are getting more and more violent and graphic.”
“The ease and anonymity of using home computers has revolutionized accessibility as well as the production and distribution of child pornography, especially across international borders,” said Ernie Allen, President and CEO, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC). “The fact that child pornography can be purchased using a credit card, or traded at no cost on the Internet, is causing an exploding global problem and an immeasurable impact on the sexual exploitation of children.”
The unchecked increase in child pornography reveals obvious evidence for the fundamentally disordered nature of the adult pornography industry. Individuals who defend adult porn may be outraged by the view that child pornography is a direct outcome of the adult industry, but in fact viewing the recorded image of child abuse has become a sexual turn-on for an appalling number of adults.
Furthermore, research shows that as an addiction, pornography builds upon itself, driving the addict to seek more extreme experiences of visually satisfying material.
“Sexual addicts develop tolerance and will need more and harder kinds of pornographic material,” said Dr. Mary Ann Layden, co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Therapy. “They have escalating compulsive sexual behavior becoming more out of control and also experience withdrawal symptoms if they stop the use of the sexual material. This material is potent, addictive and permanently implanted in the brain.”
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Child Porn among Fastest Growing Internet Businesses
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/nov/05110905.html
Canadian Company to be World’s Official Manager of Internet Porn Domain
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/aug/05082204.html
Canadian Women’s Group Exposes Homosexual Activist Opposition to Child Porn Law
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/sep/05092605.html
Canadian Internet Providers Bell and Rogers Refuse to Block Access to Child Porn Sites
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/jun/04062206.html