“A man who was sexually abusing a young girl in his home was arrested after he transmitted images of the assault via the Internet to an undercover detective… The girl, a preschooler, was rescued two hours later in what Toronto police’s child exploitation unit said was its first case of observing a live assault. ‘My first reaction was that I wanted to reach through the monitor and grab the child,’ said Detective Paul Krawczyk, the undercover officer who witnessed the alleged assault Sunday. He alerted police in St. Thomas, a city in southwestern Ontario where police believed the man lived, and they were able to track him down in two hours. ‘To see this child and look that child in the eyes and realize that the child was live somewhere, being abused, we had to save the child right then,’ Krawczyk said at a news conference. ‘The minute we realized what was happening, we went as fast as we could.’ Krawczyk belongs to Toronto’s Child Exploitation Section, acclaimed for its work tracking down child pornographers on the Internet. Microsoft teamed with the detectives last year to launch a software program designed to help police forces around the world hunt down child porn Internet traffickers. ‘The message to all pedophiles, and people who want to sexually exploit children on the Internet is that we are on the Internet 24/7, we know where you are and we will find you,’ Krawczyk said.” — USA Today (US)

Combining news stories provides a fuller view of the case. Some papers claimed that the victim was the man’s daughter. The abuse happened on a Sunday afternoon. Somehow authorities were able to discourage the perp via IM to break it off without tipping him off to the fact that he was about to be arrested. They were able to obtain the IP address of the computer transmitting the images, and this led cops to the perp’s apartment building. Once there, they must have used good old-fashioned legwork — a description of the perp and a canvas of the residents — to figure out whom to arrest. The victim is now with her mother.

It’s no shocker to realize that perverts often have exhibitionistic tendencies, that the joy of their sins is intensified by the knowledge that others are able to see them or participate in them vicariously. But at the same time, you have to wonder how people believe that, in this day and age, they can get away with broadcasting a real-time video of a crime. Maybe it adds to the thrill somehow, but knowing that you’re only an IP address away from prison could just as well spoil the fun.

To the best of PervScan’s knowledge, this is the first time that a webcast of real-time abuse has led directly and almostly immediately to the arrest of a child abuser. It’s a sign of the times, folks. Sad as it may be for the victims, and stupid as it may be for the perpetrators, you can expect more such cases in the future. It’s the seamy side of the Information Age. Or, in this case, perhaps it would be more appropriate to say the Information Underage.

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