The Race4innocence Continues!
Running across the Sahara desert, biking across Death Valley, running 100 miles… so what’s next?
Swimming, of course. This summer Mike will swim 22 kilometers across the Strait of Gibraltar, from Morocco to Spain.
For Mike, it's just another part of his Race4Innocence to raise awareness of the problems of child pornography on the internet, and to raise enough funds to fight this evil by shutting down 21,280 websites and saving 21,280 children.
Thank you for your support for this cause!
Melissa (not her real name) wasn't abducted; she was befriended by a neighbour, whom her family trusted. He was nice to the child, won her confidence, and her family never suspected that he was doing anything improper. He seduced her. And then he victimized her.
Thousands of photos of her were appearing on pedophile websites and being traded and exchanged around the world over the Internet. She appeared to be four or five years old. The ICMEC reviewed these images, enhanced them, and looked for clues and indicators as to where she was and who she was.
The Center noticed that in one photo, the child was holding a school yearbook. While she was clearly of pre-school age, perhaps another member of her family attended that school. By magnifying the text, they identified the name of the school and its location. In another photo, a television in the background displayed a station logo, enabling them to determine a probable city and region. There were many others. They worked with law enforcement officials who used these and other investigative clues in their search for the child.
When the child was located and the offender apprehended, law enforcement officers recovered more than 10,000 sexually abusive images of small children, including numerous victims in that same community. The offender, a friendly neighbour, had not been suspected at all by the family of the child victims, who were not even aware of the child’s victimization. He was prosecuted and sentenced to a long prison term. The four-year-old child is receiving help, as are the other child victims who have been identified.
We cannot actually display child pornography and show you how terrible it is, but these images are real images of the real child victims taken by the sex offenders, but they are not examples of child pornography. The offenders take lots of photos of their prey, many of which are innocent and part of a process to break down the inhibitions of the child so that they can move on to more extreme photos. There must be actual sexual activity and content for it to be illegal child pornography. We disguise the eyes of the children to protect their identity.