by Cersei Morrow

Created on: March 22, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

I am well aware of the many evils in the world, especially on the Internet. One only has to watch the news for a day to hear of the violence visited upon children. However, in my naivete, I never imagined that I would be confronted with child pornography in my home. I supposed that was reserved for the disgusting pedophile that invites it.

I was searching for a movie on a video hosting service. I typed into the search engine "Fight Club Movie". There were a lot of unrelated results, and as I was weeding through them, I came upon a title which graphically described the clip as that of a father molesting his 9 year old daughter. I will spare you the specifics of the title, obviously I didn't click on anything, I saw nothing.

Worse than actually finding this bit of filth, I was at loss of what to do. Many thoughts whirled through my head: How can this happen? How did a video clip of an innocent girl being tortured and violated become so accessible? How can anyone do this to a 9 year old baby? What can I do?

At this last question, I choose to use the same medium which presented this corruption to fight it. I was so angry. Angry that a child was abused. Angry that some abominable excuse for a human boasted of the rape of his daughter on the Internet. Angry that my child could have just as easily found this. I felt I had a responsibility to this child. If I walked away, choosing "just not to think about it", I was not only failing her, but my children and myself as a decent human being.

I was dismayed at the few helpful results to my Google search on reporting child porn. Almost ready to phone my local police department for answers, I spotted a result for the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children. On that site, there is a section for reporting child pornography, among other abuses and exploitation of children. In viewing the statistics, I was astounded to find that there are tens of thousands of reports on Internet child porn alone. I also discovered that it is illegal for any site to knowledgeably host child porn. Once a site such as YouTube or Limewire discovers a file like this on their servers, they are legally bound to turn over all information to the authorities, including identifying IP addresses of initial posters as well as those who download the material.

There are not thousands of police officers or agents out there searching for this material. Not even hundreds. Our nation has not yet decided that children are important enough to eradicate these abuses. It is up to us, the users of the Internet to decide we have zero tolerance for this type of child abuse and child pornography on our screens.

I reported the putrid file I found. It is now gone from that host. I pray that my actions in some small way has saved a child. I'll never know, but I do know that I did everything I could to help. Please, should you discover child pornography online, do your part by reporting it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

https://secure.missingkids.com/missingkids/ servlet/CybertipServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US

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