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The following article was provided to MAP by the office of Michigan Attorney General Jennifer M. Granholm for readers of News 'n Views. Prosecutors from the Attorney General's High Tech Crime Unit recently filed charges against a mid-Michigan man for operating a fee-based child pornography website. The case illustrates the usefulness of Michigan's RICO statute as a potentially effective tool for fighting the commercialization of child sexual exploitation and child sexually abusive material, which the Internet has allowed to flourish. Several characteristics of the online world make it easier and more convenient for child pornographers, pedophiles and predators to exploit children that it was in the days before the Internet. A recent report in Newsweek Magazine summarizes this reality in language that bears repeating: "Suddenly, pedophiles could use their own commuters to make instant copies of pictures - grabbed from an Internet club on a website located in, say, Moscow - and send them to like-minded friends around the world. Men who had fantasies that they were once ashamed to admit or afraid to act upon now found a community in online clubs and chatrooms devoted to preteen sex. No longer did pedophiles have to prowl the seedier sections of the city for photos or films; they could meet friends and download, in their living rooms, child pornography made with film-free digital cameras (no need to risk exposure at a photo store)...Scarier still, sexual predators interested in older kids no longer had to lurk near a school or neighborhood hangout. Via the Internet, they could enter a home, introduce themselves to a teenage child, and carry on a long process of seduction." Sadly, the nightmarish threat to children reported by Newsweek is also supported by recent statistics. A study by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center showed that of 1,501 children surveyed, 19 percent reported having received an unwanted sexual solicitation that made them feel "extremely upset or afraid," and 3 percent received an aggressive solicitation involving off-line contact or attempts or requests for off-line contact. With respect to children being exposed to sexually explicit materials, 25 percent reported unwanted exposures to sexual materials and 6 percent experienced exposure to material that made them "very or extremely upset." If the dangers posed by the one-to-one child solicitation, or individual instances of trading child porn images over the Internet aren't horrible enough, how much more dangerous and qualitatively more egregious is the operation of a globally-accessible website, operated for financial gain, and dedicated in part to making thousands of child porn images instantly available to a multitude of dues-paying members? When an individual operates a business which has as its main purpose the distribution of child porn for financial gain, this is a criminal enterprise that must be attacked with the most powerful legal weapons available to prosecutors: statutes that carry enhanced penalties matching the aggravated threat represented by this form of conduct. The Michigan RICO statute is the appropriate statute because it treats this more dangerous activity with a harsher sentence than is available for child porn distribution, alone. Moreover, the Michigan RICO statute permits the government to seek forfeiture of the financial gains realized by the defendant through the operation of the criminal enterprise, thus enabling law enforcement to permanently shut the system down by seizing the money and equipment which perpetuates the enterprise. This remedy is particularly well-suited to remove the significant financial rewards that child pornographers seek when they use the advantages of e-commerce to exploit children. We must not forget that an image of child pornography is nothing more than a crime scene photo: a snapshot of a child in the moment of exploitation. A website of child pornography operated for profit is even worse: an electronic gallery of child exploitation. In an age where the exploitation of children is facilitated by technological advancements, law enforcement must keep pace in its response by utilizing the most effective tools available to protect children and deter their predators. |
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