Hello Everyone !

 
We found this piece of potentially very good news...so of course we wanted to share it with you...but it also raises a couple of questions....
 

EU acts against child sex abuse...

The European Commission - the EU's executive arm - has set out plans for tightening EU law to protect children from sexual predators.

The proposals - yet to be adopted by the 27 member states - would make online grooming and the viewing of child pornography criminal offences.

Sex tourists from EU states who abused children outside the EU would face prosecution on their return home.

The commission is also calling for new EU rules to curb people-trafficking.

The commission says that in 2008 more than 1,000 commercial and about 500 non-commercial websites depicting child sex abuse were found - 71% of them in the US. Most of the non-commercial ones were peer-to-peer.

If adopted, the new proposals will mean free legal services for victims of abuse.

Authorities in the EU could bring people traffickers to justice even if they committed their crimes outside the EU, the commission said.

The International Labour Organisation says 43% of trafficking victims are exploited for prostitution.

Under UK law, British nationals who commit sex offences against children abroad can already be prosecuted in the UK, even if their actions were legal in the country they visited.

© BBC

Now of course we must hope that all 27 member states WILL adopt this policy, and do all they possibly can to make sure that it is implemented to the full extent of the laws of the  individual country involved. Those who exploit our children should be made to take responsibility for that and punished accordingly...no matter where they commit the offence...and of course it has to be argued that until there is some kind of commonality in the laws all over the world concerning child protection such measures are desperately needed and should be embraced as a huge breakthrough in the battle to protect our most valuable asset...our children.

But it also has to be asked....why is it NOT illegal to view child pornogrpahy now!!! We are all aware of the fact that it IS illegal to create, distribute or download such material...so is it not quite obvious that a way around this...the loophole so to speak...is to simply VIEW all the existing material that is already out there...thus never actually breaking the law and becoming open to prosecution. WHY has this not been addressed before!?! There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of child pornography images out there in cyberspace...the perfect playground for the voyueristic paedophile... WHY is it taking an EU ruling to make this illegal!

And then onto the online grooming...which currently has to step from the cyberworld into the real world to become an offence it seems!!! Grooming is DANGEROUS and serious...it is NOT a bit of anonymous fun going on out there with no consequences...it is the start of making a child or young person vulnerable enough to be abused...point of fact, not conjecture...so why does it take a child being victimised BEFORE it becomes an offence!?! Surely there is enough evidence to prove that online groomers are dangerous predators...and better to catch them BEFORE the act rather than after...so again we have to ask WHY is it only now that this is to become illegal?

Neither of these offences as it stands are against the law...and that is a very scary and sobering thought is it not. We MUST be vigilant and do all we can to protect our young people from those who would exploit and harm them...in no matter what way...and wait for the law to catch up with what we already know is wrong!!

We are as always...

Your Friends @ Stop! Online Exploitation of Children and Teenagers.....