Stop Child Porn on Facebook - Fox News

Tuesday, 10 May 2011, 3:46 PM EDT


MYFOXNY.COM - Hidden behind the happy images on Facebook is a disturbing reality. Child predators are using the site to trade illegal pictures of young children in sexual poses.

"Thousands of them are doing it every day around the world," says Raymond Bechard, who says he stumbled up on this while researching a book on human trafficking called "The Berlin Turnpike."

Here is how it works: child predators create fake profiles to conceal their real identities and then they "friend" one another to trade video and pictures.

"Ben Little, Ben Small, Ben Young, anything that could sound like a name [that] pertains to someone being a little, small child" is usually an indicator, Bechard says.

A Fox 5 investigation found their "likes" to be similar as well. For example, "liking" the book "Lolita," about a man who has an inappropriate relationship with a young girl, or "liking" Justin Bieber can both be signs.

FBI officials describe illegal photo sharing on social networks as "rampant." Nickolas Savage, assistant security chief of the FBI's cyber division, says pedophiles exchanging pictures on social networks can feed a vicious cycle.

"They can meet other people like themselves, and go off and validate their behavior," Savage says. "When they trade with others there's always a sense they need more material."

Child predators even steal innocent pictures of children that could come from their parent's Facebook profiles and unlocked photo albums.

Stolen or illegal images can be reported to Facebook right on the site. The company removes them. But Bechard thinks the company should do more.

They shut somebody out, but they don't lock the door," he says. "They just come back right in as another profile, putting up the same images and trading the same information with other pedophiles."

That is exactly what Jerry Cannon, a Kentucky pastor, did. He pleaded guilty in April to charges of posting child pornography on Facebook. Police say he used 13 different false profiles to post more than 600 images. Bechard says he reported Cannon to authorities, which is a job he thinks Facebook should be doing.

In response to an enquiry from Fox 5, Facebook offered this statement in an email: "Facebook takes down illegal content as soon as it is reported to us. In the rare case where we believe the content may constitute child exploitative material, we take it down immediately, use our innovative system to block any further sharing of that content, and actually pull it back from any person's page that it was shared with. More importantly, we share the content with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and then report the person that shared it to law enforcement."

Law enforcement welcomes tips from the public. You can report illegal images at cybertipline.com or by calling 1-800-843-5678.

Experts recommend that if you post pictures of your children on Facebook, be sure that your privacy settings are set to share with only the people you trust.

Category:

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• Zuckerberg
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• child porn
• pornography
• rapist
• rape
• pedophile
• FBI
• human trafficking
• Heather Nauert
• Fox Fox 5
• Fox 61
• Richard Lepoutre
• The Berlin Turnpike
• Obama

[PSIcodicPANDA]

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[mynamemaycontainAtoZ]

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