What you are about to read is not for the faint of heart.

A network with tentacles all over the world, the highly secretive nature of the industry makes it difficult to gauge the actual size of the child pornography market.

But, estimates suggest that for every possessor or distributor arrested, there are 70 more, and there are 70 more because it’s a “multibillion-dollar industry and among the fastest-growing criminal segments on the internet,” reports Mail & Gaurdian.

Honestly, I don’t understand how parents can put images of their own children anywhere on the Internet; you never know who has access to them.

The topic has once again reared its frightfully ugly head as Johannesburg man Robert de Vries stands trial for “107 counts of possessing, creating, importing and distributing child pornography,” reports Mail & Guardian:

De Vries, who is accused of peddling child pornography from as far back as 1998, was caught while selling the images and video clips internationally.

And that’s just the tip of the ice berg.

Miranda Jordan-Friedmann, founder and director of Women & Men Against Child Abuse (Wamaca), explained how over the past three years, the “number of images involving the severe abuse, including the penetrative and sadistic sexual abuse of younger children, has quadrupled”:

“She says that South Africa “suffers from the reputation of being the dumping ground for the worst kinds of pornography”.

Yeah, that means we have a serious problem on our hands.

But how? How does something like happen? Read this:

On a Thursday afternoon in January this year, Eva Wolmarans* did what she does every weekday: she picked up her 11-year-old daughter, Maria*, from school. But on that seemingly regular Thursday afternoon, Maria, strapped into the backseat of their car, hesitantly held her mother’s gaze in the rearview mirror and said: “Oom Walter peter met my [Uncle Walter fiddles with me.]”

Oom Walter was Wolmarans’s partner…

Then she was hit with another shocking truth — that, for years, her daughter’s sexual abuse had been filmed and photographed. He had photographed her in the bathtub, Maria said, filmed her “laying naked on the bed [while he] opened her legs and … did things”.

Determined to find evidence against the alleged abuser, Wolmarans went through his computer. She discovered in excess of 400 files containing child pornography. “And that was only on one of his hard drives,” she says, incredulously.

Although her sleuthing resulted in him being arrested, the images will always haunt her…

But while culprits can be caught, charged and confined, the long-term effects for the children cannot: if not now at the hands of a sadist, then decades from now from drugs, alcoholism or suicide.

So says Rees Mann, the executive director of South African Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse (Samsosa):

“Psychologically, they all see themselves as worthless. They tend to blame and judge themselves, especially if they continue into prostitution,” says Mann. “When they are very young and don’t know anything else, this is the way life becomes for them. They often don’t see any other choice, so they then move on through the sex industry.”

If you suspect anything like this is happening to anyone, or by anyone, you know, be a good citizen and report it to the police.

[source:mg]