US global child porn crackdown nets 245
Source: Agencies |
January 5, 2013, Saturday
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Print Edition
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US special agents identified 123 victims of child sexual exploitation during a five-week-long global crackdown on child pornography that resulted in the arrests of 245 people in the United States and overseas, US officials have said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents launched "Operation Sunflower" to rescue child victims and find people who trade and produce child pornography. The operation took place across the US and in six countries and involved children as young as two years old.
"This operation is ultimately a tale of the perverse, pervasive and violent exploitation of children, very young children, to satisfy the dark pleasures of a group of twisted adults," said ICE Director John Morton. "The grim reality is that online child exploitation is a very real part of our modern lives and is going on throughout the world right now on a grand scale."
ICE's Homeland Security Investigations special agents rescued 44 children directly from their abusers. Most of the 123 victims of exploitation were from the US but about a dozen were in foreign countries.
Morton would not say which foreign countries were involved in the operation although he did say some of the arrests of the suspects took place in Mexico.
"The problem of child exploitation is hardly confined to the US," Morton said. "Almost every case we touch and investigate has a very strong overseas component."
Increased usage of the Internet has allowed a much greater immediacy to pornography, Morton said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents launched "Operation Sunflower" to rescue child victims and find people who trade and produce child pornography. The operation took place across the US and in six countries and involved children as young as two years old.
"This operation is ultimately a tale of the perverse, pervasive and violent exploitation of children, very young children, to satisfy the dark pleasures of a group of twisted adults," said ICE Director John Morton. "The grim reality is that online child exploitation is a very real part of our modern lives and is going on throughout the world right now on a grand scale."
ICE's Homeland Security Investigations special agents rescued 44 children directly from their abusers. Most of the 123 victims of exploitation were from the US but about a dozen were in foreign countries.
Morton would not say which foreign countries were involved in the operation although he did say some of the arrests of the suspects took place in Mexico.
"The problem of child exploitation is hardly confined to the US," Morton said. "Almost every case we touch and investigate has a very strong overseas component."
Increased usage of the Internet has allowed a much greater immediacy to pornography, Morton said.
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