In the wake of a guilty plea by a child porn lover to abducting, sexually assaulting, and killing a 10-year-old Toronto girl, Ontario Provincial Police are getting more child porn fighting money for its Project P division.
Community Safety Minister Monte Kwinter confirmed for reporters June 21 that the Project P division will get an additional $1 million, raising the unit's annual budget to $2.4 million.
Last week, Michael Briere pleaded guilty in the case of Holly Jones, whose murder shocked Toronto and provoked even more shock when Briere's plea included graphic details of his crime – including his admission that he was moved to hunt for such a young girl after a session of viewing Internet child porn on his computer.
Briere's plea provoked an almost immediate call around the country for a crackdown on Internet child porn and those who possess child porn. Holly Jones' parents, in fact, were reported to be preparing a legislative proposal aimed at doing just that, which they were said to be hoping to present to Parliament before the year is over.
The Toronto Globe and Mail said June 21 that Ontario police and federal attorneys alike would begin looking into new ways of shutting down Internet child porn operations.
Briere's videotaped confession and plea included a comment that it was only too easy to obtain child porn materials. "The simplicity of getting [it... is] close to mind-boggling," his statement said. "I have never understood how come the whole thing wasn't shut down, just because the nature of it. You search for the word 'baby' and it will find stuff there."
The calls for a harder crackdown in the wake of the Briere plea are not receiving universal approval. The National Post said in a June 21 editorial, "An Evil Beyond The Law," that just about all the reforms on earth would not have saved Holly Jones' life, and that it isn't entirely clear whether tightening the penalties or broadening the scope of how child porn is defined – something else called for by critics in the wake of the Briere plea – would actually prevent such a murder.
"It is already a crime to produce, deal in or possess child pornography," said the Post editorial. "This means that, from what Briere has told us, when he downloaded child pornography on the night of Holly's murder, he was breaking the law. So was the individual who had produced the despicable material. In other words, these odious acts are already covered by the Criminal Code, which makes an exception only for fictional works where no real children are exploited, such as a book like Nabokov's Lolita. So, how would the proposed changes have saved Holly?"
The issue has been raised in Canada's national elections. The leader of the country's new Conservative Party, Stephen Harper, is charging Prime Minister Paul Martin with calling elections for June 28 in order to keep from being signed into law a bill that would reportedly close the "artistic merit" exemption – which the Conservatives call a loophole – in current Canadian child porn law.
Harper and his party – formed through the merger of two rightward parties, and now said to hold a 32-29 lead in pre-election polls – withdrew a press release headlined, "Paul Martin Supports Child Pornography?" But Harper insisted the drift of the release itself – that Martin and his Liberal Party have been too soft on child porn – remains true.
"I don't think that any parent or any Canadian would buy that kind of an implication," Martin told the Washington Times, "and I don't think they would buy that implication in terms of me."
The Times said the Liberal-led government did tighten child porn restrictions but still came under fire after Canada's Supreme Court in 2001 legalized personal use of written or visual child porn that does not involve actual, real children.
In other news on the fight against child porn and Internet pedophilia:
INDIANAPOLIS –A 50-year-old man is in jail facing child exploitation charges, after neighbors said he offered money and candy to their children in exchange for showing them porn and even for taking some pictures themselves. Frank Anderson was described as having lived a number of years in a school zone, above a youth center, with nothing but a cat, a camera, and "a host of pornographic material."
MINNEAPOLIS –Former youth counselor Donald Leonard Keys has been convicted of felony charges involving pictures he took in 2001 of a sixteen-year-old boy he met in an Internet chat room. Keys faces a maximum 15 years in prison at his as-yet unscheduled sentencing.
LIMA, Ohio –Jason Lugwig spent the weekend in Allen County Jail, pending a June 21 arraignment date for coming to meet with what he thought was a 14-year-old girl he met online – who turned out to be an undercover police officer. Lugwig is said to be the 30th arrested in Lima police's crackdown against Internet predators.
