Interpol to set up an international databank on paedophilia

[Seeker]

"It has been decided since December 2002 to install this international database in Iterpol's offices, in Lyon (s)."


Does anyone find it mildly amusing that this means the Frog Police now have the worlds largest legal illegal porn collection?

I wonder about those french cops...

[MoonWolf]

Hope they will follow up this correctly as well. As I can see it, there are 3 types of paedophilia people:

1) The lover:
This person actually falls in love with a child. He/She can watch the child and maybe they get in touch. Any sexual acts are made because the paedophilia person believes it's good for the child; he/she doesn't mean any harm.

When they are confronted with this, they realize suddenly what they've been doing and regret all of it. Maybe they also commit suicide in shame...

2) The Sexual Driven:
These people conduct incest and/or abuse children close to them because they can, and are more selfish in their act. They don't think what is good for the child, but what is good for themselves.

3) The Hardcore Abusers:
The definitive worst ones. These are the adults you see in the child porn movies/pictures. They don't care at all what they are doing and miss some basic instructions in their minds. There are no way "justify" somehow what they are doing. The make the child porn, either with themselves in the act or be watching child-child or child-adult.

They might also fit in the 2nd group.


I haven't thought of the ones who are fantasizing about sex with childs. It's many more who are doing that, just of curiosity (how would be to have sex with a 14 year old person), but they know the limits and would never do that in real life.

These groups are how I self define them as I follow the subject closely in media. I've heard of this method of tracking pictures quite a while ago, and it's good to see it's been done.

[Seeker]

You should take Abnormal Psych...

I would make a different classification scheme for this disorder:

This was basically the theme of one of my university papers:

1. 'non-differentiators': Those that, basically, fail to distinguish between adult and child. The cases in Ontario related to hockey and coaches, Maple Leaf Gardens staff, are the best example. I believe some of these people have a kind of developmental challenge, and because of their pasts find it impossible to relate to the sexually mature. These cases are documented in the social and criminological journals for Canadians interested in the psych field.

Also, the 'Project Guardian' case and especially the research on it's aftermath: That

a) many victims do not consider themselves victimized. Why(speculation): A defense mechanism: particularly in young males the idea of being manipulated and abused in this way is so abhorrent that they would rather 'buy in' to the idea of non-differentiation. This may be covert, for example out of guilt and fear many victims performed a teary eyed act for investigators, telling them what they wanted to hear, thus concealing that they had in fact been 'co-opted' into the non-differentiation problem.

b) there is a cycle of victimization. Victims who had concealed their 'brainwashing', who had railed against their abusers, were often found themselves to become abusers in turn, sometimes within months (i.e. sex with other children, or seeking out adults for sex). When confronted, they would typically reveal their indoctrination with by trying to justify themselves.

In the case of 'child and child' it also confronted prosecutors with an uncomfortable position: people who in our society are not even supposed to understand' sex being thoroughly familiar with and wanting to have it. Various forms of court ordered therapy and supervision failed to address the basic problem: What to do with these kids who 'grew up too fast'? What about when they turn 18?

c) A 'ring' of pedophiles is difficult to fully penetrate, because of the problem of abused becoming abusers, growing up, etc.

d) treatment: Parental engagement and understanding is essential. In the case of the co-opted 'victim-victimizer' (the child who has sex with other childrenand adults because he 'wants' to, who believes he is an adults equal etc), once the truth comes out, parent-child interactions should always be supervized by a mediator and under observation. Denunciations, rejections, etc by the parents will only reinforce the childs condition (the 'I am whatever you say I am' thing). Can adults be treated? Answer: experience shows no.

2. The stereotypical 'power abuser': This is the kind of pedophile the police 'want' to find, a person motivated by the thrill of dominating and corrupting, and also by the feeling of power had by violating our societies ultimate taboos. They are violent, and their victims are easily recognized by non-professionals as 'real* victims'.

*note all of the victims are 'real' but this type is one we are much more comfortable with, the one that is coerced through violence, threats, or bribery...rather than the ones seen in Project Guardian who are coerced through subtler methods. The child who is beaten or threatened, the 14 year old offered $5000, the drug addict....these are victims we are 'comfortable' with.

But project guardian shows us that there are other victims that it is tougher to deal with. The 12 year old who talks about how much he loves c _ _ _ instead of the latest video games, who can make even hardened officers blush with a stream of profanity, who would be a threat to the community if unsupervized near normal children, etc....those kids are victims too.

3. The 'trainer': Another power tripper, this is the (typically a male) who has the notion that he is 'training' or 'toughing' a child who 'soft', that it's actually for the childs own good. Typically multi-generational (often within a family or organization like church or team), this type was played by Kevin Bacon in the movie 'Sleepers'.

Another example is Eric and Lyle Menendez's father, especially his ideas on what they did in the Roman legion to 'toughen up new recruits' (don't ask).

BTW, (I'm probably violating my conf. agreement) I was involved with the aftermath of the project guardian cases during my participation in the london community sentencing group when I was volunteering with St. _____'s Society, in conjunction with the Crown prosecutors office. And yes, a lot of the kids were really really messed up and in hindsight a lot of the officers were really naive. The world is a crazy place, and there is no way I'm having kids. A cat is much less responsiblity.

[Dr Strangelove]

Ah, but does the software work, or will it be just as good as those wonderful programs that translate language on the internet?

[Dinner]

Even when I was a teenager I was more interested in the unobtainable older woman then with the 16-18 year old girls around me. This doesn't mean I didn't date those same 16-18 year old girls every chance I got but still...

[Dr Strangelove]

Does this mean that the French police are going to be going into people's computers via the internet searching for images that match those in their database? Will the program be able to distinguish innocent pictures, say of someone's kids at the beach from the real thing? I presume that when the database "gets a hit" an actual person will take a look at the picture in question to determine if it's really pornographic. If the database catches something suspicious that turns out to be innocent will the police keep tabs on the site or file just in case something turns up?

If you had an enemy, could that person download kiddy porn into an inconspicuous file on your computer and have a reasonable hope that you'd get caught with it?

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Seeker
You should take Abnormal Psych...

a) many victims do not consider themselves victimized. Why(speculation): A defense mechanism: particularly in young males the idea of being manipulated and abused in this way is so abhorrent that they would rather 'buy in' to the idea of non-differentiation. This may be covert, for example out of guilt and fear many victims performed a teary eyed act for investigators, telling them what they wanted to hear, thus concealing that they had in fact been 'co-opted' into the non-differentiation problem.

When the abuser and victim are members of the same family it may be difficult for the child to come forward because the family is literally the source of his or her life. To accuse somone in the family and thereby threaten the stability of the family may feel almost like contemplating suicide to the child or in fact even more threatening since many such families put the onus on the victim.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Seeker
.

b) there is a cycle of victimization. Victims who had concealed their 'brainwashing', who had railed against their abusers, were often found themselves to become abusers in turn, sometimes within months (i.e. sex with other children, or seeking out adults for sex). When confronted, they would typically reveal their indoctrination with by trying to justify themselves.

This doesn't quite explain the cycle of victimization. Is it because the victim was behaviorally conditioned to enjoy that sort of gratification, or an acted out but displaced reprisal against the victimizer?

[Spiffor]

Dr Strangelove :

I don't think the internationalization of the database involves a radical change in the way the police will inquire for kiddie porn. The only change is that a new and apparently efficient technology is now available to inquirers worldwide rather than nationwide.

This technology happens to have been developed by a French company and first used by the French police, but it doesn't mean the Frog police will have any new rights on non-French pedophiles than before. Only that national polices will have a better coordination when chasing international networks (and this technology will probably benefit national polices when chasing intranational networks)

[Seeker]

The notion of a 'displaced reprisal' strikes me as sounding a lot like 'psychiatry', it sounds suspicious to me...in psychological matters I would lean to the conditioning camp.

We are all products of our conditioning. So I would say behavioural conditioning is the cause, which means it should have a relationship to time and reinforcement; so a person abused multiple times by many individuals is more likely to be conditioned.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Spiffor
Dr Strangelove :

I don't think the internationalization of the database involves a radical change in the way the police will inquire for kiddie porn. The only change is that a new and apparently efficient technology is now available to inquirers worldwide rather than nationwide.

This technology happens to have been developed by a French company and first used by the French police, but it doesn't mean the Frog police will have any new rights on non-French pedophiles than before. Only that national polices will have a better coordination when chasing international networks (and this technology will probably benefit national polices when chasing intranational networks)

They claim to have software capable of extracting salient features of pictures and comparing them to the database. My guess is that means that the software will look for skin toned portions of images that have the morphology of sensitive parts of children's anatomy. I'm curious if they're going to be using this software to search the internet. Will they just look at websites, or actually look into people's computers? Thanks to broadband the later might be possible. How good is the software at accurately distinguishing offending porno pictures? Would it set off an alarm when it encounters pictures of kids in bathing suits? If the system falsely identifies innocent summer vacation pictures as porno, would officials reviewing the system's findings simply ignore the system, or would they investigate further.

[Spiffor]

Here's the tidbit about it on the French police ministry's page :

Fight against child pornography

15. We reaffirmed our concern in the face of the growing use of the Internet to sexually exploit children. We are determined to act with the greatest firmness against child pornography crimes. We praised the work carried out by our experts, which is in accordance with the orientations we set out in Milan (2001) and Mont-Tremblant (2002).

16. We praised the development of a G8 strategy against sexual exploitation of children on the Internet. The strategy defines eight objectives in terms of collecting information, identifying victims, locating suspects, legislations, police tools, cooperation with private players, prevention and international cooperation. We approve this strategy, applaud the substantial efforts already made to implement it, and ask our experts to monitor work undertaken in this area

17. Major progress has been made on the creation of an international image database that can be used to identify victims and persons suspected of paedophile acts. The feasibility study requested by the G8 concluded that such a tool would enable police forces to more effectively combat the sexual exploitation of children on the Internet and that it can be created. Secretary General Ronald K. Noble confirmed Interpol's willingness to host this database, which should be in addition to existing national databases or the ones being created in several G8 States. Financial, technical and legal issues still need to be defined. We ask our experts to accelerate as much as possible their work on the implementation study.

(cool, it's directly in English, i don't have to translate ). I don't think it invloves to change the way investigations are made. However, they seem to put more emphasis to "collecting information". There is just no tell on whether they'll use the database in this part, or if they'll just collect the database to analyze already acquired pictures.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Seeker
The notion of a 'displaced reprisal' strikes me as sounding a lot like 'psychiatry', it sounds suspicious to me...in psychological matters I would lean to the conditioning camp.

We are all products of our conditioning. So I would say behavioural conditioning is the cause, which means it should have a relationship to time and reinforcement; so a person abused multiple times by many individuals is more likely to be conditioned.

Oh, like psychology is soooo much more effective than psychiatry.

Kids have the same basic nervous system as adults, though they lack mature glands. At adolescence certain sensory nerve endings undergo further development and there may be changes in the CNS too. Kids though are probably able to feel some sexual sensations though, as any parent knows ("Hey, don't do that, it's filthy!"). It stands to reason that an adult physically manipulating a child might teach him or her things that he or she doesn't yet know what to do with. Such knowledge placed in a child's fantasy prone mind could lead who knows where, particularily when you consider that the act of manipulating the child may involve some degree of violence.

[Boris Godunov]

In my own transversing of the porn universe, I've happened upon those dark, terrible vestiges of kiddie porn (you must be very wary of what you get from Kazaa!). I've always wanted to report these things and make sure the sick bastards were caught, but I'm very much not willing to give myself any potential trouble. Look what happened to Pete what's-his-name over in the UK...