Book Review: Caught in the Web: Inside the Police Hunt to Rescue Children from Online Predators
A young, naked girl cowers in a cage just big enough for a small dog. A man does unspeakable things to her and the images of her sexual torture and abuse are traded on the Internet like baseball cards. Due to the thousands of pictures and videos circulated online, Jessica is famous all over the world. She is 6-years-old.
In Toronto, Canada, Det. Sgt. Paul Gillespie of the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Police’s Sex Crime Unit was desperate to rescue Jennifer before she suffered more abuse, or worse, was killed as a potential witness. The clues were few: an orange wristband on Jessica’s arm; a Pokemon bedspread; a wallpaper pattern; the troop number on a Brownie uniform. All pointed to a North American location. But where?
In thirty-three hours the police tracked down her location by zeroing in on the minutest of clues in the images. Her tormentor? Her own father, a software engineer at a telecommunications firm. When his house was searched, investigators were stunned to find diagrams of his home and aerial photos of the neighborhood. They realized that they were looking at a murder-for-hire. He wanted his wife and sons out of the picture so he could be more freewheeling with Jennifer’s abuse. He didn’t care if his sons were murdered or sold into slavery, but he wanted his wife tortured and shown pictures of Jennifer's abuse before she died so that they would be the last thing she saw on earth.
Need more proof that pedophiles aren’t just skulking around playgrounds in their London Fogs? Jessica’s story is just one of too many in Caught in the Web: Inside the Police Hunt to Rescue Children from Online Predators by Julian Sher. These abusers are just as likely to be lawyers, doctors, teachers, preachers, many of the otherwise upstanding men and women we come in contact with in the daily business of our lives.
Police all over the world have come a long way since Jennifer's rescue. In the early days of these online investigations, Sgt. Gillespie got fed up one day and fired off an e-mail to the man at the top: Bill Gates. His message? “Your technology helped me create this mess; help us clean it up.” Gates’ response? “Frank, this one looks interesting. Can you see if there’s anything we can do?” From this e-mail Microsoft worked alongside police to build an internal search engine for police departments that would compile and connect data to links based on social networking. They called it CETS, or Child Exploitation Tracking System.
Caught in the Web is an important book that should be read by parents, guardians, teachers, police, and anyone else committed to children's safety. Share along in the cops' frustration as they discover the disparities of sentencing in different countries, the callous attitude of the credit card companies, and the dangerous anonymity of Freenet.
You will be haunted by stories like Shy Keenan's, whose pictures were widely circulated before she became a child advocate as an adult. "When I was a kid," she says, "I used to try to send 'Help me' messages with my eyes. It didn't take too long to figure out that no one good was looking at these pictures. And no one was looking at my eyes." Before reading this book, be aware that things read can’t be unread, but know also that forewarned is forearmed.
In Toronto, Canada, Det. Sgt. Paul Gillespie of the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Police’s Sex Crime Unit was desperate to rescue Jennifer before she suffered more abuse, or worse, was killed as a potential witness. The clues were few: an orange wristband on Jessica’s arm; a Pokemon bedspread; a wallpaper pattern; the troop number on a Brownie uniform. All pointed to a North American location. But where?
In thirty-three hours the police tracked down her location by zeroing in on the minutest of clues in the images. Her tormentor? Her own father, a software engineer at a telecommunications firm. When his house was searched, investigators were stunned to find diagrams of his home and aerial photos of the neighborhood. They realized that they were looking at a murder-for-hire. He wanted his wife and sons out of the picture so he could be more freewheeling with Jennifer’s abuse. He didn’t care if his sons were murdered or sold into slavery, but he wanted his wife tortured and shown pictures of Jennifer's abuse before she died so that they would be the last thing she saw on earth.
Need more proof that pedophiles aren’t just skulking around playgrounds in their London Fogs? Jessica’s story is just one of too many in Caught in the Web: Inside the Police Hunt to Rescue Children from Online Predators by Julian Sher. These abusers are just as likely to be lawyers, doctors, teachers, preachers, many of the otherwise upstanding men and women we come in contact with in the daily business of our lives.
Police all over the world have come a long way since Jennifer's rescue. In the early days of these online investigations, Sgt. Gillespie got fed up one day and fired off an e-mail to the man at the top: Bill Gates. His message? “Your technology helped me create this mess; help us clean it up.” Gates’ response? “Frank, this one looks interesting. Can you see if there’s anything we can do?” From this e-mail Microsoft worked alongside police to build an internal search engine for police departments that would compile and connect data to links based on social networking. They called it CETS, or Child Exploitation Tracking System.
Caught in the Web is an important book that should be read by parents, guardians, teachers, police, and anyone else committed to children's safety. Share along in the cops' frustration as they discover the disparities of sentencing in different countries, the callous attitude of the credit card companies, and the dangerous anonymity of Freenet.
You will be haunted by stories like Shy Keenan's, whose pictures were widely circulated before she became a child advocate as an adult. "When I was a kid," she says, "I used to try to send 'Help me' messages with my eyes. It didn't take too long to figure out that no one good was looking at these pictures. And no one was looking at my eyes." Before reading this book, be aware that things read can’t be unread, but know also that forewarned is forearmed.
More books on child safety and the Internet:
Computer crimesInternet and children
Internet safety
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