“She is perhaps 12 now, her hair still light blond, but she doesn’t smile anymore. Over the last three years, she has appeared in 200 explicit photos that have become highly coveted collectibles for pedophiles trolling the Internet. They have watched her grow up online — the hair getting longer, the look in her eyes growing more distant. ‘She’s a collector’s item,’ says Det. Sgt. Paul Gillespie of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit. ‘I know somebody out there could lead us to her. But right now, the only ones who can see her face are the wrong ones.’ To his shame and frustration, all he could do was watch as the photos kept appearing and the usual tricks to trace her failed. So he decided to try something different. A computer expert digitally erased the girl from the photos, and in February, Gillespie asked the public to help identify the locations: a hotel room, a fountain, an elevator and a video arcade. Moments after the pictures appeared on a Toronto television station, the tips began to come, and caller after caller identified a Disney World hotel in Florida. A scan of hotel records gave the police a few clues… [But] it hasn’t been enough. Now Gillespie wants to do something radical: release a photo of her face. But aside from worrying that it would violate her privacy, he must weigh whether it would put her more at risk than letting the abuse continue while they search for other leads…” —Los Angeles Times (US)

(Thanks to hludens and alanr for the link.)

This is a long and excellent followup to a story featured earlier on PervScan, Kiddie Porn without the Kid. This new story takes an inside look at Detective Gillespie’s fight against child pornography. It contains a lot of fascinating information — from the fact that Gillespie is collaborating with Bill Gates on a victim database to the odd detail that pedophiles tend to be Trekkies. You are highly encouraged to read the whole story.

The controversial point, of course, is simply that Detective Gillespie — frustrated at the difficulty of finding a girl who’s been systematically abused for years — is contemplating a radical new strategy: releasing pictures of her face. The pros and cons are obvious. The pro is that somebody might identify her and thereby rescue her from her abuser. The con is that her abuser might freak out and kill her. In addition, there is a privacy concern: publishing her picture effectively labels her for the rest of her life and also draws attention to her entire family. But this concern pales compared to the immediate possibility of her abuser harming her.

Obviously it’s difficult to decide upon the correct — the moral — course of action. If you give it some thought, though, you realize that there is a precedent. Pictures of missing children are already displayed publicly. Granted, some missing children may be runaways or may have been kidnapped by estranged parents (who presumably wouldn’t molest them). But what about the other children? If law enforcement is willing to display pictures of children who may have been abducted, why should it hesitate to display pictures of children who are already being publicly abused on the internet? If the fear is that publishing a picture might bring harm to the victim, then law enforcement has already decided that this is worth the risk in the one case. Why wouldn’t it be worth the risk in the other?

If this were made into a general strategy, the odds are good that a few children would end up being harmed. This is extremely sad — in fact, to be perfectly honest, it’s downright fucking awful. But the odds are also good that many children would be identified and rescued from their abusers. What’s more, if pedophiles knew that the faces of their victims might be published, they might be less inclined to take pictures and share them on the internet. And if there were fewer pictures available on the internet, perhaps this would have a dampening effect on what has become the child pornography community. And might this not help to save kids too?

UPDATE 14 May 2005. A young girl seen on child pornography Web sites has been found and is safe, an FBI spokesman told CNN Friday. And her suspected abuser is already in a federal prison, the spokesman said. The man, who has been identified as the girl’s adopted father, is serving the first year of a 15-year prison term, the spokesman said… Based on indirect information from the FBI, he said the blond-haired girl was located in a foster home in Pennsylvania, and that her adoptive father apparently abducted, molested and took pictures of her in sexual poses.

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