This bothers me.......
Apr. 28th, 2005 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
patgundWas reading a very disturbing article on the LA Times website.
Sifting Clues to an Unsmiling Girl
The article was about the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit's search for child molestors and child pornographers, and the lengths they will go to, to find the victims and rescue them.
Two quotes really stood out in my mind though.
#1: "On one wall is a "Star Trek" poster with investigators' faces substituted for the Starship Enterprise crew. But even that alludes to a dark fact of their work: All but one of the offenders they have arrested in the last four years was a hard-core Trekkie."
As a Star Trek fan myself, I'm sickened and disgusted by the fact that vermin like this might also be fans as well. The same feeling I get when I hear about rapists and molesters at a convention or in the SCA - the feeling like my hobby has been somehow sulled by their mere presence.
#2: "For hours at a time, Krawczyk looks at pictures of abuse that the average person could not even imagine. His immersion in this sordid world doesn't leave him unaffected.
"Sometimes you just want to take a shower after doing this," Krawczyk says. "Sometimes you want to throw the computer across the room. But when we do get a bad guy, it gives you great satisfaction. He wouldn't have been caught any other way."
This struck a very personal note with me. Several years ago I worked for a company called WebSideStory. At the time, they had an adult version of their hitbox software, and were doing public rankings of the adult sites using their software. As part of my job, almost every day, I had to spend sometime going after "cheaters" - those who had hacked the software, who had hidden the icon, or who had images that violated their terms of use.
And I would find child porn as well. Which meant collecting as much data about the site and user as possible, then freezing my computer and calling the police to come in and confirm it. Most times the servers would be in Russia, but a lot of times there was a US contact somewhere on the site. The police's job was to find that.
As much as I have a pretty strong "fine, whatever" attitude towards most forms of porn, finding that stuff would always leave me, at best, sick to my stomach. At worse, I felt filthy and irrational for just having stumbled across it. Sometimes I'd have nightmares for days afterwards, and the only thing I would want is to be held as tight and close as possible.
And sometimes I *still* have nightmares about the stuff I found. I can't even think of the type of....being....that would do something like this to a child as a human being - they're vermin with no value at all, and IMHO should be exterminated as such, quickly and cleanly, no anger or pity. Just like stepping on a cockroach.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go shake on my bed for a while and try not to remember those images.
Sifting Clues to an Unsmiling Girl
The article was about the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit's search for child molestors and child pornographers, and the lengths they will go to, to find the victims and rescue them.
Two quotes really stood out in my mind though.
#1: "On one wall is a "Star Trek" poster with investigators' faces substituted for the Starship Enterprise crew. But even that alludes to a dark fact of their work: All but one of the offenders they have arrested in the last four years was a hard-core Trekkie."
As a Star Trek fan myself, I'm sickened and disgusted by the fact that vermin like this might also be fans as well. The same feeling I get when I hear about rapists and molesters at a convention or in the SCA - the feeling like my hobby has been somehow sulled by their mere presence.
#2: "For hours at a time, Krawczyk looks at pictures of abuse that the average person could not even imagine. His immersion in this sordid world doesn't leave him unaffected.
"Sometimes you just want to take a shower after doing this," Krawczyk says. "Sometimes you want to throw the computer across the room. But when we do get a bad guy, it gives you great satisfaction. He wouldn't have been caught any other way."
This struck a very personal note with me. Several years ago I worked for a company called WebSideStory. At the time, they had an adult version of their hitbox software, and were doing public rankings of the adult sites using their software. As part of my job, almost every day, I had to spend sometime going after "cheaters" - those who had hacked the software, who had hidden the icon, or who had images that violated their terms of use.
And I would find child porn as well. Which meant collecting as much data about the site and user as possible, then freezing my computer and calling the police to come in and confirm it. Most times the servers would be in Russia, but a lot of times there was a US contact somewhere on the site. The police's job was to find that.
As much as I have a pretty strong "fine, whatever" attitude towards most forms of porn, finding that stuff would always leave me, at best, sick to my stomach. At worse, I felt filthy and irrational for just having stumbled across it. Sometimes I'd have nightmares for days afterwards, and the only thing I would want is to be held as tight and close as possible.
And sometimes I *still* have nightmares about the stuff I found. I can't even think of the type of....being....that would do something like this to a child as a human being - they're vermin with no value at all, and IMHO should be exterminated as such, quickly and cleanly, no anger or pity. Just like stepping on a cockroach.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go shake on my bed for a while and try not to remember those images.
