Source :STV

http://news.stv.tv/scotland/west-central/270398-la
narkshire-man-locked-up-after-having-sex-with-schoolgirls-he-met-online/

A man who had sex with two 14-year-old girls he groomed on the internet has been jailed. At the High Court in Glasgow on Thursday, Brandon Watson also admitted preying on two other 14-year-old girls online, as well as possessing child pornography. All the offences were committed between 2007 and 2011. The court heard that 20-year-old Watson, from Blantyre, met a 15-year-old girl on social networking site MSN. Prosecutor Alison Di Rollo told the court that within 15 minutes Watson asked the girl if she was a virgin and within 20 minutes asked her to meet him the next day. The pair chatted on MSN for 12 hours and Watson induced the schoolgirl to expose herself to him and perform a sex act. He then told her to wear skimpy underwear for their meeting. At first, the girl was reluctant to meet up for sex, but Watson threatened her by text message saying he would publish explicit images of the teenager online if she didn’t have sex with him. Watson met the girl at Buchanan bus station in Glasgow on January 9 this year and took her to his home in Blantyre. He got the youth drunk with vodka before having sex with her on two occasions. Watson then walked her to the bus stop and told her not to tell anyone they had had sex.

Source :China Daily

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-08/26/conte
nt_13194557.htm

BEIJING - An organization running pedophile sites, part of a group of Chinese-language porn websites, has been smashed following a joint operation between China and the United States. Sunshine Entertainment Alliance, which was based in New York, operated at least 18 websites containing disturbing images of children, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Thursday. All of the websites were in Chinese and were advertised to Chinese-speaking audiences. Indictments have been filed against Wang Yong, 26, a permanent resident of the United States originally from Fujian province. He is accused of running the sites from his home in Flushing, New York. Wang allegedly made hundreds of thousands of dollars since 2007 by selling "memberships" that allowed individuals to post and download graphic images of children. The closure of the sites comes roughly a year after Chinese and US police agreed to work together to combat pedophile websites. "This is the first time that the Ministry of Public Security and US police have conducted joint action targeting cross-border online crimes," Deng Hongmin, deputy director of the ministry's network security protection bureau, said on Thursday. "We'll continue to strengthen joint judicial cooperation with police from various countries and fight international crime, including online pornography, gambling, fraud and hackers," she said. Wang set up a website in the US in 2002 before bringing 48 other Chinese websites under his management, forming the largest online Chinese-language grouping, according to the ministry. It included more than 1,000 forums where up to 100 million pornographic images were shared. Of these, 18 were related to graphic images of children, the ministry said.

Source :The Observer

http://www.gladstoneobserver.com.au/story/2011/08/
25/child-pornographer-gets-3-years/

THE MOTHERS of two children who were indecently photograhed for a man’s personal pornography collection had mixed feelings about his three-year sentence, delivered in Gladstone District Court yesterday. Jeffrey Frank Chadwick, 41, pleaded guilty to a series of child pornography charges, including the indecent treatment of children under 12 years of age. He was sentenced to 3 years in jail but will be eligible for parole after serving 12 months. The mothers, who cannot be named for child protection reasons, said that altough they were relieved to see him locked away, that they wished he had received a harsher sentence. "After what we’ve been through, and what our children have been through, I can’t believe he could be out in just one year," one woman said. "But I feel safer going to the local shopping centre and knowing that, for twelve months, I won’t bump into him." Crown prosecutor Joshua Phillips told the court that, on several unknown dates between Jan 1 2007 and Dec 1 2008, Chadwick had taken indecent photos of children at his house in Gladstone. Seven children were involved in the conduct, and were the friends of Chadwick’s own children. "You tell your kids about stranger danger, but I can’t tell you how devastating it was to know that I was allowing my kids to go and play at this man’s house," a mother of one little girl said. In a transcribed interview with police, excerpts of which were referred to by Mr Phillips in court, Chadwick admitted to "having a problem" and that he had taken the pictures of his children’s friends, "for his own enjoyment." He did not say what that enjoyment entailed. He also admitted to cropping the photos to focus on particular parts of the children’s bodies. He said that he would not take similar photographs of his own children. District Court Judge Wall Q.C. said described Chadwick’s behaviour as "disgraceful." "I think that your actions were predatory, pre-meditated and persistent," he said. "Your offending was prolonged, ongoing, and involved seven different children that had been entrusted to your care."

Source :Thisiswiltshire

http://www.thisiswiltshire.co.uk/news/headlines/91
93262.Jail_for_serial_child_rapist_from_Chippenham/?ref=mr

A man who repeatedly raped a young girl and sexually abused another child has been jailed for 18 years. Stephen Hunt started to abuse the first girl when she was just eight or nine years old. The abuse continued until he started to rape her when she was 14. The 39-year-old from Chippenham also sexually abused the other girl when she was about seven years old. Hunt denied the charges but was found guilty by a jury of six men and six women at Swindon Crown Court last month. He was living in Melksham when the sex offending started in the mid-1990s. The abuse of the first girl stretched for about a decade, while he molested the other child between the start of 1999 and the end of 2001. The court heard that as a result of being repeatedly raped the girl had suffered feelings of self-loathing for many years, as she could not bring herself to tell anyone what was happening to her until years later. Hunt, of Oaklands, Chippenham, was found guilty of seven counts of rape and six of indecent assault. The jury failed to reach verdicts on three other counts of rape, which were left to lie on file, and he was cleared of an indecent assault. Marcus Davey, defending, said there was little he could put forward in mitigation as Hunt knew he was facing a lengthy jail term. He said that his client had no previous convictions. Mr Davey urged the court not to impose imprisonment for public protection, meaning his client would only be released when the parole board deemed he was safe. When he is eventually freed, he said, he will be under the close supervision of multi-agency public protection arrangements. The court heard he will also be made subject to a sexual offences prevention order which will severely restrict his liberty when he is released. Judge Douglas Field said he felt there was a “significant risk of serious harm to young girls from further specified offences”. But he said he thought that could be managed by a long period in jail coupled with the sexual offences prevention order. Jailing him, he said: “I have decided that, bearing in mind the circumstances, I should treat you as dangerous within the meaning of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. “I have decided the risk you pose to young female children can be met by a long period of imprisonment and a sexual offences prevention order.” Hunt will have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and will be on the barred list, preventing him working with children or vulnerable adults.

Source :Voxy

http://www.voxy.co.nz/national/hotel-group-and-chi
ld-protection-agency-join-forces/5/97995

Today the ACCOR group of hotels throughout New Zealand and Fiji registered as signatories to the global responsible tourism code of conduct known as The Code through the local Code representatives, ECPAT Child ALERT. At a meeting of their hotel managers in Auckland Paul Richardson, Vice President for Accor in New Zealand and Fiji committed their organisation to meet the requirements of The Code to protect children from sexual exploitation through tourism. This includes training of staff, monitoring and reporting, as well as the raising of guest awareness. They now join almost 1,000 members from the tourist industry around the world in 42 countries who have adopted this corporate social responsibility. Within the framework of its sustainable development policy and its Earth Guest Programme, Accor is committed to help combat child-sex tourism and the group has now signed the code in more than 40 countries. Mr Alan Bell, Director of ECPAT Child ALERT welcomes the ACCOR membership and hopes that others in the travel and tourism industry will also demonstrate their support by becoming signatories also. "This is a responsible and timely move by a major international organisation to add this dimension of corporate responsibility to their already fine record of setting high professional and social standards in their business operations." The sexual abuse of children associated with the travel and tourism industry is a global phenomenon known as Child Sex Tourism (CST) and results in countless thousands of children being exploited by travellers in many tourist destinations. The abuse includes all forms of sexual exploitation including prostitution, pornography and trafficking. "New Zealand is fortunate that law enforcement exercised by the Police, Customs and Internal Affairs monitors and enforces the law to a degree that we do not experience child sex tourism to the same degree as some other countries. However it is wise to be proactive and to be alert to the risks as we are not exempt from this sort of child abuse. The measures become of particular importance during times such as the upcoming Rugby World Cup where there will be a lot of overseas visitors moving around the country with a probability of increased alcohol consumption and crowd behaviour." says Mr Bell. ECPAT Child ALERT is a registered charitable trust working to prevent the sexual exploitation of children.

Source :Al Jazeera

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandp
ower/2011/07/201172795838377646.html

Children of the cannabis trade investigates how Vietnamese children forced to work underground in the booming cannabis trade, held hostage by debt and poverty, are often prosecuted as criminals rather than victims of trafficking when discovered. With the Vietnamese government now announcing a nationwide push for export labour, and the increasing demand for home-grown cannabis in the UK, the exploitation of Vietnamese children for criminal profit in the drugs industry is a disturbing trend that shows no signs of abating. Here Mei-Ling McNamara, the producer of this episode of People & Power, writes about the making of Children of the cannabis trade. For almost a decade, police in Britain have been struggling to cope with an explosion of criminality connected to the country's flourishing but illegal cannabis trade. This has grown rapidly in recent years because of a huge rise in the number of secret indoor cannabis farms - hidden away in suburban dwellings and disused premises across the country. As the authorities shut down more of these operations every year, so more spring up in their place - many of them tied into an expanding network of organised crime, corruption and violence. Back in 2004, the police made an especially sinister discovery about the trade - that Vietnamese children and teenagers were being trafficked across the world for use as slave labour in the farms. Remarkably, Vietnamese crime gangs run many of the illegal cannabis operations in the UK and often use children - exploitable because their families are in debt bondage to moneylenders in their native country - to work on a production process that exists to meet spiralling demand for the drug on the streets of Britain. The cannabis farms can be extraordinarily profitable, but little if any money is lavished on the premises or on the conditions under which the children toil. Set up in private residences or industrial sites, often gutted for the purposes, the operations can involve thousands of indoor cannabis plants. Boys and girls - some as young as 13, many not older than 16, are forced to work as 'gardeners', trapped inside the buildings, 24 hours a day, tending and watering the plants behind blacked-out windows with no ventilation. Eating, sleeping and working under heat lamps and exposed daily to toxic chemicals, they run a constant risk of electrocution and fire. And all the time they face the violence, intimidation and extortion of gang members who are determined to wring everything out of them until their debts are paid off - if that day ever comes.

Source :Shangai Daily

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/article_xinhu
a.asp?id=5707

COLOMBO, July 26 (Xinhua) -- The Sri Lankan police said Tuesday that they are on the hunt for more than 20 local television actresses who are believed to be part of a prostitution ring. Over the past few weeks, the police have arrested four actresses who were involved in prostitution at various locations in Colombo and areas most frequented by tourists, police said. Police said the arrest of popular local actresses, both young and old, being involved in prostitution had blown the lid on what is believed to be a major undercover prostitution ring. The Sri Lankan police have now sought public assistance to locate the whereabouts of 20 actresses who have gone into hiding. Apart from local prostitutes, Sri Lanka is also known to have foreign sex workers working in clubs which mainly cater to tourists. A recent U.S. State Department report said Sri Lankan women and children are subjected to sex trafficking in brothels in the country, especially in the Anuradhapura area in north central Sri Lanka. In 2009, Sri Lanka's National Child Protection Authority estimated that approximately 1,000 children were subjected to commercial sexual exploitation within the country although some agencies believed the actual number was between 10,000 and 15,000. Agencies expressed concern that the recent increase in tourism in the very poor post-conflict areas on the east coast of Sri Lanka may increase demand for child sex tourism.

Source :Miami Herald

http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/07/25/2330456/obam
a-team-cracks-down-on-international.html

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration moved Monday to crack down on international criminal networks from Mexico, Italy, Japan and the former Soviet Union, calling them a growing threat to U.S. interests. Administration officials said the groups are alarmingly sophisticated and powerful, able to corrupt foreign governments and reach across international borders with illegal drugs, money laundering, sex trafficking and theft. Potentially worse, the gangs are developing ties to terrorist organizations, the administration said. One fear: that one of the criminal networks might help a terrorist acquire the materials needed for a weapon of mass destruction. "Organized crime is no longer a local or regional problem. It has become a danger to international stability," President Barack Obama said in a letter to Congress. "Significant transnational criminal organizations have become increasingly sophisticated and dangerous to the United States and their activities have reached such scope and gravity that they destabilize the international system," the letter said. Among its new steps, the administration said it will freeze U.S. assets of the gangs, block members from entry to the U.S., and ask Congress to update racketeering laws to make it easier to investigate and prosecute members. "These proposals will help to ensure ... that prosecutors and investigators have the capacity to keep pace with the unprecedented threats posed by criminal enterprises that target the United States, including those that operate beyond our borders," Attorney General Eric Holder said at a White House news conference. The targeted gangs were: -Los Zetas, based mainly in Mexico. With thousands of members throughout Central America, Mexico and the United States, the gang "facilitates drug trafficking into the United States and has relationships with U.S. gangs," the Treasury Department said.

Source :TVNZ

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/call-child-porn-ma
n-s-name-public-4319689

The issue of name suppression is back in the spotlight after the Court of Appeal granted it to a man caught with a year's worth of horrific child pornography. The 50-year-old from Manawatu was yesterday granted the right to remain anonymous after he argued that naming him would hurt his family. The man admitted 21 charges of possessing objectionable material, and was sentenced to six months' home detention and fined $5250 at the end of last year. The 100 images and videos he held showed children as young as 18 months involved in sexual acts, including rape. In granting him permanent name suppression, the judges said that publishing the man's name would lead to "incalculable hurt" to his family. But Denise Ritchie from the advocacy group Stop Demand told TV ONE's Breakfast this morning that the ruling sent a dangerous message - particularly considering the family members being protected had not lived with him for years. "What you've got is special protection now being offered to special people in specific jobs and I think that sets a very dangerous precedent," she said. Advertisement "The reality is all crimes hurt families, he should have thought about that before hand." Ritchie added the ruling was "specifically about the kind of jobs that his extended family members hold" and that if the public knew there would be an outcry. "These are the modern day ways kids are getting sexually abused," she said. The man was assessed as a low to medium risk of reoffending. Ritchie said part of the problem was that it appeared to be a victimless crime, but that it was in fact worse as it involved children being raped and that rape being used for sexual excitement.

Source :WAtoday

http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/spanking-scandal
-perth-man-may-face-us-justice-over-policewomans-torture-of-girls-20110718-1hlk2.html

A Perth man faces extradition to the United States after being considered "a big part" in the brutal spanking torture of two underage girls that was recorded by a disgraced Florida policewoman. Christopher Donald Lobban, 53, of Mullaloo is alleged to be the online boyfriend of Polk County Sherriff's detention deputy Robyn Leigh Pagoria, after meeting her on a fetish website. The 45-year-old divorcee, who served 20 years in the marines, has been accused of abusing her position over the girls - described as being aged between 10 and 18 – by subjecting them to multiple torture sessions at her house and then sharing with her online boyfriend video taken using her mobile phone. Advertisement: Story continues below The woman, who is also the mother of five daughters and one son, has been charged with three counts of aggravated child abuse, three counts of producing child pornography, three counts of the promotion of child pornography and three counts of possessing child pornography.