If you think child sexual exploitation is not a big problem, think again.
The United States ranks 2nd worldwide in hosting child sex abuse URLs (the Netherlands hosts the vast majority at 77%). Despite legislation passed in 2008 to reign in this scourge, the resources needed to enforce the law are vastly underfunded and the problem continues to grow.
Because viewers of pornography become desensitized, they demand fresher content. As the demand grows, so does the market. And for those who don’t care, the business is enticing: little overhead for a big payoff, and there’s always someone willing to trade their child’s body for drugs or to pay off a gambling debt.
Kamarie died, but many other children live through those abusive episodes, and once the photos of their abuse are posted online, they stay there forever. So it never really ends for them.
For a country who gives a lot of lip service to caring about children, we do a piss-poor job of putting our words into action.
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Kamarie Little girl, they all let you down. Less than 24 hours after your daddy let her have you (though her visits with you were supposed to be overseen responsibly), the woman who bore you let a drug dealer use your body, like he’d used other kids’ bodies before. The legal system previously let him go free because his rights trump you and me. And your brother, who the state feared unsafe was returned to your daddy by a judge who knew better. They will say you were a little forty-five pound Lolita with your smooth, brown skin. That your killer was a man with a mental illness. Your mother, a victim of drug addiction. Your father? Oh, he meant well. And the system will say that they must uphold a pedophile’s Constitutional rights, which practically guarantee the guilty go free when the crime is sexual and the victim a child not considered credible as a witness to her plight. Your last moments of life were spent knowing your parents betrayed you, as he shoved his adult cock into your five-year-old vagina, and ass, and mouth. You died of asphyxiation. The entire episode filmed to be sold to others who would observe such ugliness while jacking off. I’m sorry, Kamarie. I’m sorry to all the children we don’t protect.
Dogpaddling Through Life 
I can’t like this Jen. Bastards, hung, drawn and quartered are not enough punishment for this little girl’s suffering and so many more at their hands. They are not human and should be treated as rabid animals.
It’s not just the ones that actually do the deed that cause me to seethe, but the ones that allow it to happen and then wring their hangs like there was nothing they could have done to stop it.
I know that scenario too Jen from my fostering days…………. parents in denial or refusing to believe their children when they finally pluck up the courage to say something.
Thank you. I worked CPS and not only did they allow this shit to continue, but they gaslit me when I called them out.
Poor sweet child didn’t have a chance.
It sickens me to the core.
Meantime, people have children regardless of their (in)capacity to raise children in a psychologically sound manner, according to child-development science. Being free nations, society cannot prevent anyone from bearing children.
Kamarie’s drug-addicted mother notwithstanding, I believe that greater factual knowledge of what exactly entails raising and nurturing a fully sentient child/consciousness in this messed-up world — therefore the immense importance and often overwhelming responsibility of proper rearing — would probably make a student less likely to willfully procreate as adults.
If nothing else, child-development curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. … Still, we humans can be a suspicious, stubborn and overly proud species, especially when it comes to child rearing.
No words to adequately express the outrage.
I wrote this to put words to my own outrage. It’s messy and not at all perfect. I meant it to be. She was a child. Nothing about this crime should be nice and near.
It’s awful. Words fail me.
I’ve been mad for days and I had to write about her.
This is so so sad and unnecessary, this poor child was never brought here to this world for this kind of treatment… not any child was brought here for this .
And yet it keeps happening. We can’t seem to find the will to spend money to fight cybercrime, but we can spend more on the military budget than we did while in active conflict. Go figure.
That is so true … seems like most people in power priorities is so messed up, maybe they prefer to look away..
“The way a society functions is a reflection of the childrearing practices of that society. Today we reap what we have sown. Despite the well-documented critical nature of early life experiences, we dedicate few resources to this time of life. We do not educate our children about child development, parenting, or the impact of neglect and trauma on children.” (Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Ph.D. & Dr. John Marcellus)
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“It has been said that if child abuse and neglect were to disappear today, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual would shrink to the size of a pamphlet in two generations, and the prisons would empty. Or, as Bernie Siegel, MD, puts it, quite simply, after half a century of practicing medicine, ‘I have become convinced that our number-one public health problem is our childhood’.” (Childhood Disrupted, pg.228)
Horrible and disgusting. Pure evil in this world.
It’s just all kinds of wrong to hit ‘like’ on this post. That said, thank you for casting a light on this issue. Only with light can we hope to rid ourselves of this despicable situation.
If physically survived, emotional and/or psychological trauma from unhindered toxic abuse, sexual or otherwise, typically results in a helpless child’s brain improperly developing. If allowed to continue for a prolonged period, it can act as a starting point into a life in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammation-promoting stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines. I consider it a form of non-physical-impact brain damage.
The lasting emotional and/or psychological pain from such trauma is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside one’s head. It is solitarily suffered, unlike an openly visible physical disability or condition, which tends to elicit sympathy/empathy from others. It can make every day a mental ordeal, unless the turmoil is treated with some form of medicating, either prescribed or illicit.
But due to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude, however implicit or subconscious, basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my kids are alright?’ or ‘What is in it for me, the taxpayer, if I support programs for other people’s troubled families?’ While some may justify it as a normal thus moral human evolutionary function, the self-serving OIIIMOBY can debilitate social progress, even when social progress is most needed; and it seems that distinct form of societal penny wisdom but pound foolishness is a very unfortunate human characteristic that’s likely with us to stay.
The health of all children — and not just what other parents’ children might or will cost us as future criminals or costly cases of government care, etcetera — needs to be of real importance to us all, regardless of how well our own developing children are doing. A mentally sound future should be every child’s fundamental right — along with air, water, food and shelter — especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter. Mindlessly minding our own business on such matters has long proven humanly devastating.
It’s mind-boggling to think that this legislation passed nearly 14 years ago and while I’d like to think we made progress that progress is unlikely to help the child experiencing this abuse and trauma today. I agree, my disdain tends to be far greater for those that facilitate it than those that do it but it’s a pretty disgusting lot all the way around. Good post, albeit a heart wrenching subject to contemplate.
I used to work CPS. I witnessed a child disclose sexual abuse via closed-circuit camera with an investigator from the local sheriff’s office. As the child disclosed specifics, I watched in horror as the male investigator began to get excited and agitated. His leg twitched. He wrung his hands. I thought he was upset. Then I saw the smile on his face and I was appalled.
Wow That’s so bizarre, Jen. I can’t imagine. I appreciate you for the work you’ve done in CPS. Over my life, I’ve known a small handful of folks who did that work and I know how difficult it is from snippets they shared. Thank you for sharing your insights.