Oh they will help to some degree when asked to, but the business is far more interested in just deleting the profiles of the child porn swappers than in actually going out of its way to make sure that those offenders are brought to the attention of the proper authorities. Which is kind of like trying to treat cancer with sticky plasters and then still calling yourself a serious doctor. Raymond Bechard, an American author and a campaigner against child pornography on Facebook, has said in the media that an FBI agent told him that Facebook can take up to eight months to respond to requests about users posting child porn onto the site. One of the police officers I was myself in contact with said plainly that Facebook aren’t reporting it to them, they are just deleting the profiles.
And to prove that Facebook are shirking their responsibilities, let me cite a number of cases of paedophiles who have used the site to distribute and collect child sex abuse images and who have ended up in court for such. Many of these individuals were ones that I was aware of during my time reporting on them. We’ve already dealt with Paolo Ghelardini and how he went through 19 different accounts before Facebook thought him a serious enough character to bother reporting to the cops (if indeed they did at all), but these are some of his associates in that very same web from that time, and so as Facebook was banning Ghelardini’s profiles they certainly knew that this web existed.
Let’s start with Shane Pattison, from the town of Marshall in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. 22 when he was jailed in August 2012 for five years after pleading guilty to the largest number of child pornography charges ever brought in Canada. On Facebook he called himself ‘Shane Ispedo’ and a screencap taken by an activist of his profile in November 2010 shows 167 individuals on the friend list of an account that leaves no doubt as to what its owner is all about. The profile picture is of a girl of about five, while a quotation on display goes: ‘old enough to pee old enough for me.’ His short bio reads ‘i am a man into all things young looking to meet people into young love to have fun open minded love kids.’
The court heard that from October 2009 to November 2010 he had been distributing videos and images of extreme child abuse, including the torture and rape of babies only a few months of age, to hundreds of contacts using Hotmail, peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, and Facebook. He had also had online conversations with some of these contacts about fantasies they shared about the torture, mutilation, and murder of small children.
Despite being in the same paedophile web as Ghelardini, Pattison was only brought to the attention of the Canadian cops because of an already existing investigation into child pornography distribution that they were running. Lucky too that those cops noticed him and didn’t wait until Facebook bothered to tell them of his existence, as Pattison’s arrest led them to Robert Hull from Idaho, then aged 35. Hull had been sexually molesting a four-year-old girl he had been babysitting and had sent a video of the abuse to Pattison. He is now serving 15 years for the abuse along with distribution of the images he took of it; and his arrest in turn led police to the house of another offender, an unnamed 41-year-old from the city of Prince George, Canada, who was abusing his seven-year-old daughter and sharing the images with Hull.
Hull, too, was a member of the same open child porn swapping web as Ghelardini, and like Paolo Ghelardini he also had experienced the loss of numerous accounts and yet had escaped being reported to the police by Facebook for his activities. Hull’s victim was identified and Hull himself arrested in December 2010, the month after Pattison’s arrest. He had though been active on Facebook for some months before that, and screencaps taken by some activists then capture the different profiles he had went through. Like a fair number of the paedos to be found on the Internet, Hull made no attempts to hide his identity and in the various profiles screencapped throughout November 2010 by an activist it can be seen that he used his real name, and sometimes his real photograph - along with advertising his likes as ‘PTHC’ and ‘R@y Gold,’ among others.
The court documents of Hull’s case relay part of an email exchange between him and Pattison that took place between November 6th 2010 and November 10th 2010 and which had the title ‘Facebook.’ Disturbing as this conversation is, I will reproduce it - first of all to show that they had made contact on Facebook at least from that time, and secondly to show just what kinds of creatures are being allowed to network with each other on the world’s greatest social networking site.
Hull: Can tact [sic] me at ********@208867****@mms.att.net please. This is my mobile e-mail address.
Pattison: Ok.
Hull: Have you ever seen a 6 month old get fisted?
Pattison: ya loved it and would love to see it again.
Hull: Did you get my mobile email?
Pattison: ya
Hull: I need to have some fun ;-)
Pattison: me to found a girl i am going to kidnap rape torture before killing
Hull: How old is the girl you found?
Pattison: 5yo
Hull: Get any pictures like you promised?
Pattison: have not yet they have not been around
Hull: How badly did you destroy her little body?
Pattison: really bad
Hull: Did you get any pics?
Pattison: nope when I went back all that was left was her bloody shit and piss filled panties
Fortunately, it was found that Pattison had apparently been lying about carrying out actual physical abuse, although it was discovered that he had been actively searching for babysitting jobs at the time of his arrest. But with Hull, the abuse was very real. Could it have been stopped earlier had Facebook done all that it could have instead of just closing down his profiles?
Jerry L Cannon was a church pastor from Kentucky and 63 when he was sentenced to 17 ½ years in July 2011 for distributing and receiving on Facebook child pornography. This one was well known to me and I had reported to my American law enforcement contact a fair few of his profiles, but it was a report to the police by a resident of the city of Fairhope, Alabama, that started off an FBI investigation into him, and – glaringly - not a report from Facebook which, the court at his sentencing heard, had banned 13 of his profiles over time.
Richard Wareham, also known on Facebook as ‘Knob Knobson’ and ‘Knobby Knobson,’ was one who the group I was a part of was responsible for getting arrested. 52 years of age, Wareham was before his arrest a librarian at Paddington Children’s Library, London. Information collected on him and an image of his disgusting saggy self masturbating his mouse-like penis that he had sent to a lady from the group who Wareham thought a child led to his arrest after I made some reports to the police. ‘Knobson,’ as I still think of him as, was particularly active in that Facebook ring, and particularly repulsive even compared to the rest of his evil little friends. He is also another who went through a number of profiles on the system.
Here’s a message he posted on January 14th 2011:
Knob Knobson ANY LONDON MOM'S AND DAD'S WILLING TO SHARE THEIR DAUGHTERS WITH ME?? I'm friendly, trustworthy, kind and attentive. Private message me if interested. Also looking for girls with their own mind to contact me for meeting up for adult fun together, any age. Have a great day!! xx
The next day he messaged one of the women from the group with this:
Knob Knobson Sounds good enjoy!!! I'm working and then home relaxing, i need some rest after a long week. I saw a cute 3-4yr old yesterday.....came in with her Mom, and while Mom wasn't watching i was groping myself so the girl could see.......i was on my own for a while so it was all good, then while Mom was looking for books in a corner i got my cock out and masturbated in view of the girl but she didn't see me, i was hoping she would turn around and look.........but i came anyway!! She had a great face. Just thought you'd like to know!! lol
Despite all this, and despite being found with 50 child porn images and six child porn videos on his computer, the judge at his trial, Judge Alistair McCreath, decided that a jail sentence would only make Wareham ‘worse’ and
so decided to spare him jail, giving him a suspended eight-month sentence instead.
Well done, Judge McCreath - that’ll learn him. And others too.
The contrast between the sentence handed out to Jerry Cannon and that handed out to Richard Wareham – as in many other cases - shows that America is, in the main, way ahead of Britain - and indeed it seems much of the world - when it comes to how seriously these predators are dealt with. I could hardly speak with anger once I learned of Wareham’s ‘sentence.’ I wonder how cops who have to risk their very sanity in viewing the images these fuckers create and trade among themselves feel when ‘sentences’ such as that handed out to Wareham are the end result of all the psychologically damaging work which they have to undertake.
Another arrest was made and charges brought in March 2011 of an airport worker from the USA who had used on Facebook the names ‘Tom Gibbons’ and ‘Tom Gibson’ with which to distribute and collect images of child pornography. He was also familiar to us in the group and I had made a number of reports to the American policeman about him, although the report of his arrest cites a tip from the Delaware County District Attorney's Office as having sparked off the investigation into him. Either way, it wasn’t from Facebook, who once again had banned a large number of his profiles. So far his case has not come to court. His real name is something close to his Internet pseudonyms.
John Wilson, from Greenbush, Maine, and 23 when he was arrested in February 2011 was regularly, perhaps daily, being banned from Facebook for posting ‘softcore’ child pornography during my time reporting on him and his like. After his arrest, the police said they believed him to have gone through 15 profiles, but I would estimate the real number to be far higher than that. He would use the aliases ‘John Robert,’ ‘John Lemay,’ ‘John Howarth,’ ‘John Carter’ and probably a whole lot of other ones too to make profiles on Facebook with ‘softcore’ child pornography pics on display, along with invitations to contact him so as to swap the harder stuff. Sometimes he would just use his own name and picture with which to advertise for fellow child porn swappers. No one is saying that this lot are either sane or smart.
In this case it was tips from both members of the public and Facebook that led to the police investigation into him. Which may appear fair enough, but I do wonder how long it took for Facebook to report him? Something tells me it wasn’t after the first profile was brought to their attention. At any rate, still not exactly a great score for the social network so far. Wilson was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in February 2012.
John Huitema, 39, and known on Facebook as ‘Ben Wwantsit,’ Barry Wwantit,’ and ‘Ben Barry’ was another one who we were able to get arrested, and thank Christ we were too. This one thing made my whole stupid adventure into the darkness worthwhile for Huitema had been sexually abusing a two-year-old girl and posting onto Facebook the images of it, much to the delight of his friends on the social network. ‘Very nice baby’ posted one of them underneath one photograph of the abuse. Another comment read: ‘nice one I know men who pay for a baby.’
His ‘Ben Barry’ profile had been banned just before he became ‘Ben Wwantsit.’ I have a screencap of the outside of this same profile that shows his friend list and the profile picture. Among his friends on show are ‘Lovell Kids,’ along with some who have images of prepubescent girls as profile pictures. ‘Ben’s’ profile picture is even more chilling in the context, as it is of him with his face close beside the very same toddler whom he was abusing, his eyes staring straight at her. On his next profile, when he became ‘Ben Wwantsit,’ he was posting pictures of himself abusing the little girl as he changed her nappy.
When I was told this by some of the women who had been keeping an eye on him, I forwarded this directly on to the ITN person whom I had contacted, who then put me in touch with a Ceop (British anti-child porn squad) officer. Him, I then sent this info on to, along with all the personal info that the women in the group had managed to lure out of ‘Ben’ about himself, and on either that same day or the next the cops had come through the door of Huitema’s Glasgow home and taken him into custody. This was in January 2011 and even though we suspected that he had been arrested because of his sudden disappearance (of course the cops never shared much with me on these things, nor would I expect them to), it wasn’t until May that year that we got confirmation of it after some news reports were published of his appearance in court to plead guilty.
Jesus but it felt good knowing that we got that fucker arrested. I really felt then that I had been a cog in a paedo-killing machine, that everything had been worth it. Whatever other shit and madness of mind this all has brought on me, being a part of that is a shining bright light in the darkness that can never go out. Seeing how the processes worked and knowing how our work led to his arrest was overwhelming. Magic out of that horror. Maybe that was wrong to feel such joy considering what he had done and what horrors lay behind those feelings of joy, but still an all it felt great knowing that we had all worked together to help put him behind bars and have that child rescued from his clutches, and from the clutches of his evil Facebook friends who were whooping with delight and encouraging him to do more as he posted up the images of the abuse. We all dreaded to think what else he would have inflicted on that baby were it not for us.
Unfortunately, but I suppose not too surprisingly, the sentence he received – four-and-a-half-years and afterwards deportation back to his native Holland - was an insult to the severity of his crimes, which also included the possession of 7,269 indecent images of children. Nevertheless, the child was saved from any further horror at his hands and hopefully the memory of it all has been lost to her.
If Facebook had gotten an investigation going earlier though, when he was ‘Barry Wwantit’ and ‘Ben Barry’ and before he became ‘Ben Wwantsit,’ could the abuse of the toddler have been stopped before it happened? The images he posted onto his ‘Ben Wwantsit’ profile may have been the first time that he abused the girl, or they may not have been. I don’t know. But he certainly could have been stopped earlier had Facebook kicked up a racket about a paedophile on its site who was using a profile picture of himself with his face next to a two-year-old girl. For as they banned his ‘Ben Barry’ profile, they certainly can’t claim not to have seen this.
Facebook says that it reports the paedophiles on its site to the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), an American anti-paedophile charity (and the same one as Cyber Tipline) which itself reports then to US law enforcement any illegal activity it finds in what is reported to it. So why was information from NCMEC not cited in any of those cases about paedophiles who had spent long months freely going through Facebook account after Facebook account? Someone is not doing their job right here, and – going by their previous behaviour - I know which particular entity I believe it to be. And NCMEC itself may say that Facebook is reporting to them all the paedophile profiles it bans on its site – and there certainly are a small number of cases of American paedophiles being arrested because of reports Facebook made to NCMEC - but how does the organisation know that the social network is reporting every single one of those profiles? Did it report to them all those of Paolo Ghelardini, John Huitema, and Robert Hull? And if so, how were those paedophiles allowed to go on abusing the children they were openly boasting of molesting or getting ready to molest? (I have been given a screencap of a page from one of Hull’s old banned profiles: it is a full page of non-pornographic pictures of a very young girl and it seems clear by what he was saying about her that this was the girl whom he was abusing).
There were many, many more of those entities who were quite openly trading child pornography at that paedophiles’ party then and who still may be doing it to this day. And even if some or all of those 55 suspects arrested as part of the investigation initiated by New Zealand were a part of the main Facebook ring, then that is still only a relatively small number of the total amount of offenders. This is not the fault of the anti-paedophile police themselv
es; they do their best in what is probably the hardest job in the world, something that cannot be done for the reason of money alone. There just needs to be more of them doing that job is all, but resources are always ‘stretched.’ And no wonder, the United States alone is estimated to lose some $42 billion annually in a ludicrous police ‘war’ against a relatively harmless green plant the smoking of which some people gain some small pleasure from. Most other governments in the world, in what is nothing less than a case of mass, global insanity, also invest large stockpiles of treasure and human resources into this same absurd little spin on the magic roundabout of ‘crime-fighting,’ resources that if instead deployed into waging what one US politician once called ‘the real war on terror we should be fighting’ could do so much better. But then again, the world has always been stupid and hardly a world worth fighting for, except that some of the evils in it are indeed worth fighting against. Be nice if the rulers of the world could someday know just exactly what those evils are. If personal freedoms were not legislated against and the money and time spent on such absurdities were instead spent on fighting child abuse, the changes would be phenomenal.
Hackers on Steroids Page 20