Truly disturbing.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/08/03/us.child.porn.ring/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn
Apparently so far 72 people have been charged after the Feds busted this giant porn ring. The really disturbing bit is that the site they busted not only required members to constantly submit "hardcore" child pornography, but had a certain section with rules specifically requiring media in which the victims were crying and in pain. There were 123 terabytes of this shit there. I can't even begin to imagine what kind of fucked up shit the kids here were put through, and the things the investigators saw in the course of their probe. Attorney General Holder as well as Janet Napolitano spoke out on this, and apparently were aware of the details, including the horrific abuse of infants. How truly fucked up must something be when the US Government needs Brain Bleach?Washington (CNN) -- More than 50 members of a child pornography ring who engaged in what authorities describe as "horrific" and "unspeakable" crimes have been arrested for sexually exploiting children from 12 years old to as young as infants.
Top federal law enforcement officials say agents busted the global online pornography ring following an intense international investigation that began in 2009. The ring, based in the United States, reached across five continents and 14 countries.
Seventy-two members of the online site called Dreamboard have been charged in the United States. Officials said 52 of them have been arrested in the U.S. and abroad. The identities of the remaining 20 are unknown at this time.
An additional 10 individuals were arrested abroad on charges from other countries.
"In order to become part of the Dreamboard community, prospective members were required to upload pornography portraying children under 12 years of age or younger," said Attorney General Eric Holder at a Justice Department news conference. "Once given access, the participants had to continually upload images of child sexual abuse in order to maintain membership. The more content they provided, the more content they were allowed to access. Members who created and shared images and videos of themselves molesting children received elevated status and greater access," he said.
What particularly horrified investigators were "super-hardcore" posts that involved adults having violent sexual intercourse with "very young kids" who were being subjected to both physical and sexual abuse.
Holder said, "Some of the children featured in these images and videos were just infants and in many cases, the children being victimized were in obvious and also intentional pain, even in distress and crying, just as the rules for one area of the bulletin board mandated. They had to be in distress and crying."
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, "To give you an example of the scope of this forum, the capture and analysis of the forum revealed that the board may have been the vehicle for the distribution of up to 123 terabytes of child pornography, which is roughly equivalent to nearly 16,000 DVDs. ... Additional media recovered from the targets arrested in the United States alone has been found to contain over one million images of child pornography."
What is your take on these incidents? I personally share the view with the officials that this was a mixture of victory and sorrow, IMO kind of like Allied forces coming across the gas chambers. The details are... nauseating.
