A senior advisor to the United Nations’ UNICEF organization is blaming child abuse around the world on "an explosion of child pornography." Gopalan Balagopal said November 8 that the Internet has sparked pedophilia, including child prostitution and the sale of children to the porn industry.
"The problem is growing in several parts of the world such as Asia where the number of people using the Internet is rapidly increasing," Balagopal told reporters as a three-day world meeting on child porn, prostitution, and trafficking began. "Over the last few years we have already seen child pornography on the Internet and the abuse which results become enormous problems in countries such as the United States and Russia."
British children's charity National Children's Homes also said child porn Web sites are directly to blame for a rise in child sex offenses, estimating about 55 percent of the Internet child porn business is U.S.-based with 23 percent originating in Russia.
But associate director John Carr also said people around the world access the sites, if not contribute to them.
"Before, [child porn] was very hard to get hold of," Carr said at the conference. "You had to know a friend or be in a pedophile ring, but now anyone with mild curiosity or no awareness at all can find child pornography on the Net." As one example, Carr cited an American site closed down in 2001 that was believed to have 250,000 members from 59 countries.
He added that over 70 percent of those convicted of pedophilia crimes told various surveys they committed their crimes after seeing Internet child porn, and that a rising demand for children in the sex industry and the number of pedophiles is being handled more and more by organized crime groups, particularly in Russia and Eastern Europe. Carr said one Russian-based site pulled in $2 million a month from child porn before it was shut down by law enforcement.
