Call it the proverbial feather in the proverbial cap, as Adult Sites Against Child Pornography has been invited to speak at the Internet Hotline Providers in Europe Association's September meeting in Luxembourg. This is the first time ASACP has been invited to meet and speak to any mainstream association.
"Oh, they were definitely a little leery because we were coming from adult," said an otherwise enthused ASACP executive director Joan Irvine, "but they realized the type of information we could provide them could be very helpful with their mission."
Irvine said that after making initial contact with her INHOPE counterpart, and receiving a reply that they were interested in learning more about ASACP's work and efforts, the invitation to speak to the Luxembourg meeting came in the past two months.
"One of the missions of ASACP is to be in communication and providing information to other law enforcement and children's protective agencies," she said. "And we realized we needed to work with some European hotlines because so much of the child pornography is not USA based from some of the reports."
ASACP will address a broad audience including, possibly, representatives of the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a member of INHOPE. "It's important to provide the information back and forth," Irvine said. "And also for them to recognize what the U.S. adult site industry is doing to help combat child pornography."
There's only one small wrinkle - the group needs to raise money to make the trip, and Irvine isn't exactly being shy about asking for sponsors to step in and help, as FlashCash already has done. "If only four companies were willing to put up $1,000, we can go," she said.
"It's really going to be the first time a mainstream association is giving us a forum to talk about what we're doing," Irvine said. "And by the time that we get there, some of the new (reporting and verifying) technology our new (chief technology officer) is working on should be up and running, so we can be demonstrating the effort we're making."
If you would like to help sponsor ASACP's trip to speak at the INHOPE meeting, contact [email protected].
