Meet "Sweetie," the
computer-generated avatar of a 10-year old Filipina girl created by Terre des Hommes, a children’s rights group in
Netherlands, to expose the problem of fast-growing online child sex tourism. Researchers
claimed that the Internet has been used as a “private world” for these child
predators to exploit children.
According to Terredes Hommes director of projects Hans Guyt, this “novel approach” has identified
more than 1,000 suspected paedophiles in 71 countries--including 254 from the U.S.,
110 from the UK and 103 from India--who offered to use their credit cards to pay "Sweetie" to perform online sex acts.
Here is one of the conversations between the researcher presenting as
“Sweetie” and one of the users:
Sweetie: “What u want see?”
User: “U."
Sweetie: “What u pay for?”
User: “Naked.”
The user later agreed to pay $20 through wire transfer for the sex act.
Tricking these suspects believing they were dealing with a real 10-year-old girl, the group was able to obtain information volunteered by the suspected paedophiles, such as names, social media profiles, Skype account, video footage and phone numbers. The researches then passed the information on to Interpol for further investigation.
For more information about “Becoming Sweetie” project, check out the Youtube documentary and the project PDF.
Sweetie: “What u want see?”
User: “U."
Sweetie: “What u pay for?”
User: “Naked.”
The user later agreed to pay $20 through wire transfer for the sex act.
Tricking these suspects believing they were dealing with a real 10-year-old girl, the group was able to obtain information volunteered by the suspected paedophiles, such as names, social media profiles, Skype account, video footage and phone numbers. The researches then passed the information on to Interpol for further investigation.
While being disgusted by the alleged paedophiles,
a question came to my mind: can they actually be charged based on their sexual
interaction with a virtual character? Many people may agree with the use of
sting operation as a way to stop the atrocity of child sex tourism, but many also
raised the questions on the counter-productive side of this approach. Some
people also questioned how did the researchers confirm these suspects did not
know “Sweetie” was an animated character. What about those video games that
people kill virtual characters and shooting innocent children? Would charging
someone with engaging in sex acts with a virtual character be akin to charging
someone with murder because they were shooting innocent characters in video
games? I personally am glad that the researchers were able to identify these
individuals. If they could prove that these individuals believed the character was
not fictional, I would not be opposed to the idea of further investigating them
if they have crossed the line into child pornography. What do you think?
For more information about “Becoming Sweetie” project, check out the Youtube documentary and the project PDF.
This is very fascinating and bear with me as I through in my two cents. Now, I don't know the exact laws regarding pedophilia but I do know this must fall in with the 'intent' of the perpetrator. As is well known, to be considered a pedophile you don't need to engage in sexual acts with children, but just show evidence that you gained sexual arousal from them. Having pics of children on your hard drive is illegal and therefore one could serve time as a result. So, in this case the assumption must be that the pedophile thought they were real and therefore was exploiting a real child based on intent. As for the video game scenario and the killing of virtual persons I don't think this falls into line as the person's intent was to kill virtual persons. But, what if you thought they were real and you were killing them with some sort of weapon you controlled via the computer, a drone perhaps? But then this makes me wonder, what if I am a pedophile and I create a fake, very human, digital avatar that looks like a child and I use it for my personal enjoyment? Is this punishable? No actual child is being used and exploited, the only real person affected in this case is myself? Or is this another slippery slope? Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteI read about this, and I think it's a clever way to catch up with crime as it changes with technology. Though, I'm not sure Adam's hypothetical situation with the avatar would be punishable, but I could definitely see the crime of pedophilia evolving further.
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