Seven Convicted of Global Child Porn Trafficking in Florida

A federal court jury in Florida convicted seven people of participating in a global child pornography trafficking enterprise, according to the Department of Justice.

Jurors convicted the seven Wednesday of multiple counts of child exploitation, pornography and obstruction of justice.

Members of the organization used Internet news groups to swap and share "illegal images and videos depicting prepubescent children, including toddlers, engaged in various sexual and sadistic acts," prosecutors said.

An indictment filed in the case detailed interactions between group members as they swapped and commented on images.

"My thanks to you and all the others that together make this the greatest group of pedos to ever gather in one place," Freeman wrote in response to one posting, according to the indictment. And a posting from Castleman, cited in the indictment, read, "Thanks to all for the wonderful material that has been posted."

An Australian constable who infiltrated the group in August 2006 was among 50 witnesses testifying at trial. He told the jury that the group traded more than 400,000 images and videos of child sexual abuse before being dismantled by law enforcement, according to the Justice Department statement.

Each defendant faces a sentence of 20 years to life in prison, fines and the possibility of supervised release for the rest of their lives, authorities said. The seven will be sentenced April 14.

During the six-day trial, evidence showed the seven participated in what prosecutors called a "well-organized criminal enterprise whose purpose was to proliferate child sex abuse images to its membership during a two-year period."

"This was a wide-scale, high-volume, international trafficking enterprise that used sophisticated computer encryption technology and file-sharing techniques," Matthew Friedrich, acting assistant attorney general, said in the statement.

The seven defendants were James Freeman of Santa Rosa Beach, Florida; Gary Lakey of Anderson, Indiana; Marvin Lambert of Indianapolis, Indiana; Neville McGarity of Medina, Texas; Warren Mumpower of Spokane, Washington; Daniel Castleman of Lubbock, Texas; and Ronald White of Burlington, North Carolina, according to the Department of Justice.

The charges included engaging in a child exploitation enterprise; conspiracy to advertise, transport, ship, receive and possess child pornography; advertising child pornography, transporting child pornography, receiving child pornography and obstruction of justice, prosecutors said.

Seven additional American defendants previously entered guilty pleas, prosecutors said.

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Authorities Crack Down On School Girls For Child Prostitution

Ryann Connell
Japanese authorities finally appear to be taking steps to crack down on the widespread proliferation of child cheesecake, according to Weekly Playboy.

Just a few years ago, pictures of scantily clad high school girls would have created outrage, but it has now become common to see magazines, billboards and all sorts of other media plastered with images of G-string-clad girls in their pre-teens.

But a series of police raids late last year on producers of a photo shoot DVD starring a schoolgirl appear to have changed the situation.

"The girl's swimsuit was deliberately made to be see-through, it was so tight-fitting you could make out the shape of her genitalia and she'd been posed in such risqu? positions that the Metropolitan Police Department decided to arrest the maker for breaking the law banning child pornography even though the girl hadn't actually exposed her bust or between her legs," a reporter from a sports newspaper tells Weekly Playboy.

The arrest was the first time somebody had been picked up for breaking the Child Pornography Law without proliferating images featuring nudity. Eventually, though, the charge had to be downgraded to a violation of the Child Welfare Law, but the effect of the arrest reached far.

"Ever since the arrest, makers of products featuring teens in erotic poses have been in a state of panic. If material is judged to be overly obscene, people can be arrested for breaking the Child Pornography Law, even if the model is dressed in a swimsuit," says an employee of a medium-sized DVD manufacturer producing material featuring models under 15 years old. "DVD shops and wholesalers are now on their guard and have stopped taking materials featuring models under 15, even if the product looks like being a surefire seller."

Furi Nakamura, a journalist who specializes in covering the under-15 market, says there is a definite mood of self-restraint spreading among purveyors of photo collections and DVDs using child cheesecake.

"Situations are going to become crucial," the under-15 expert tells Weekly Playboy. "By that, I mean the situations where models are presented. Say, for example, a young model is decked out in an extremely skimpy bikini, the maker won't get in trouble if the photos are taken in an appropriate situation, like a pool or the beach. It's when you get the young models lying around on a bed, making provocative poses and stuff, that you're going to have the real problems -- even if they're wearing standard school-issue swimsuits, which aren't revealing at all. The key is going to be how natural producers will be able to make their images appear."

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Japanese Authorities To Clampdown On Matchmaking Sites

Operators of online matchmaking sites will soon be legally obligated to register with public safety authorities and immediately remove any posts that could incite juvenile crime.

National Police Agency officials are drafting changes to the law regulating matchmaking sites that will allow them to keep tighter control over the sites for lonely hearts that have often been used as fronts for such illegal activities as prostitution.

Crimefighters hope to have their proposed revisions put before the Diet by March.

NPA officials say the existing law regulating matchmaking sites contains no way for them to be able to determine who is actually running them and they are dependent on cooperation from providers and server operators to try and obtain that information. Cops say there are many cases where they are unable to pinpoint site operators operating illegally and that allows them to go unpunished.

The NPA wants to counter that by requiring all online matchmaking sites to register with prefectural public safety commissions or be punished for not doing so. The NPA will draw up a list of requirements operators will be expected to meet and ban members of organized crime gangs or those with criminal records from involvement in the business.

To combat juvenile crime, site operators will be required to remove any posts that may lead to illegal activity. Under the current law, deletions are left in the hands of operators, but the NPA wants to make it mandatory for site operators to immediately wipe out any posts making references to children.

And law enforcers also want some way to improve age verification methods. Currently, most sites only ask users whether they are over 18 and allow them access if they say they are, making it easy for minors to use the sites if they lie. Police are hoping to make matchmaking sites a member's only business accessible through payment by credit card - which can't be issued to under 18s - or some other form of identification, such as a driver's license.

Crime connected to online matchmaking sites has declined since the law regulating the business came into effect in 2003, but there was an increase of 92 people to 1,153 cases in 2006 which prompted police to feel the existing regulations still aren't sufficient.

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Pastor Abuses 4-Year-Old Girl, She Acted Sexually Provocative Toward Him, He Claimed

A retired Canadian pastor likely on track to leave a McHenry County courtroom Friday with probation for sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl instead found himself behind bars after he told a judge that the girl acted sexually provocative toward him.

“I tried to avoid the encounters. On a couple of times, I thought I was being sexually harassed,” Kenneth R. Cooke, 73, told a judge. “I think there is psychological evidence today that children, even in their younger years, could become interested in sex.”

After listening to Cooke’s statements, Judge Joseph Condon sentenced him to three years in prison. Condon said the sentence was based partly on Cooke’s attitude.

“That just boggles my mind,” Condon said to Cooke. “You are willing to say whatever is convenient to you and what is most likely to release the pressure of these proceedings against you.”

Cooke pleaded guilty in November to aggravated criminal sexual abuse for abusing the girl in a Lake in the Hills home in 2003 while visiting from Canada.

“She will never be the same, naive, innocent child she was before the crime,” the girl’s mother said in court.

“She feels guilty and the sense of being a bad person because she has done things that she knows are wrong modeled after Mr. Cooke.”

Before Cooke ever appeared in a U.S. courtroom to answer to the charges, he fought his extradition from Canada for years, prosecutors said.

The victim’s mother said the prolonged legal proceedings had been mentally exhausting on her family.

“Every year that passed without any resolution was extremely frustrating and prevented us from moving on,” she said.

“It’s been 4 1/2 years and we are still dealing with the repercussions of this incident.”

Also during the hour-long sentencing hearing, Cooke expressed remorse and said he was misrepresented and misunderstood. When Condon asked Cooke what he meant, Cooke denied abusing the girl.

“I never touched that child in an inappropriate manner,” Cooke said.

Cooke said he pleaded guilty because he and his family didn’t believe that his ailing health could withstand a trial.

“My family felt I’d have a nervous breakdown or heart attack, so I had no other choice.”

Prosecutors asked Condon to sentence Cooke to the maximum seven years in prison.

“He is not accepting responsibility for his actions,” McHenry County Assistant State’s Attorney Sharyl Eisenstein said. “The defendant is blaming his criminal action on a 4-year-old as the aggressor.”

Cooke’s attorney, William Stanton, asked for Cooke to receive probation, a likely sentence considering Cooke’s lack of criminal history, age and health.

“He still remains a highly regarded member of his church and community,” Stanton said.

According to court documents, Cooke was a pastor in the Christian Missionary Alliance for 38 years.

With good behavior, Cooke would have to serve half of his sentence, or 18 months in prison.

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12 Year-Old Namibian Jailed For Theft Without Options Of Fine Or Alternative Sentence

Werner Menges

A 12-year-old boy has become one of Namibia's youngest prison inmates - if not the youngest - after he was convicted of housebreaking and theft at Karasburg.

The boy was sentenced to six months' imprisonment without the option of a fine or alternative sentence.

He is now being kept at Hardap Prison, where he was transferred on Thursday last week after he had been kept in custody at Keetmanshoop since his sentencing - all despite a court order that he should serve his sentence at the Elizabeth Nepembe Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre near Rundu, almost 1 400 kilometres from his home and his family.

Sources working with juvenile justice issues have over the past week expressed concern over the boy's situation in a prison that, according to them, is not equipped to deal with a juvenile prisoner as young as this.

Sources who have seen the boy have described him as looking even younger than his age - he is reported to be able to pass as an eight- or nineyear- old child.

SEVERE

The Namibian Prison Service has been approached for comment since Tuesday, but one of its senior officers indicated yesterday that he would only be able to comment on the issue today.

The boy was 11 years old when he was arrested and charged with housebreaking with intent to steal and theft in connection with a burglary at a shop at Karasburg in August.

Two older suspects were also accused of involvement in the burglary.

burglary was committed when the then 11-year-old climbed through a window of the shop and stole goods from the shop.

The boy's trial ended in the Karasburg Magistrate's Court on October 19, when he was sentenced to an unusually severe sentence for a child his age: six months' imprisonment at Elizabeth Nepembe Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre, without any option of paying an alternative fine and with no part of the sentence suspended.

His case has since then been sent to the High Court on review.

High Court staff indicated yesterday that the case was still in the hands of a reviewing Judge.

The Judge will have to decide whether to confirm the conviction and sentence or to change the decision of the Magistrate who presided over the trial of the boy and his co-accused.

REPORT

A brief pre-sentence report, written by a Karas Region school counsellor, was placed before the Magistrate before the sentencing.

It indicates that the boy is a child with serious behavioural problems and a difficult family background.

In the report, the school counsellor recommended that the boy be sent to Elizabeth Nepembe Juvenile Rehabilitation Centre.

She reported that the boy's father, who is disabled, cannot provide proper care to his son.

While he was attending school, the boy was doing so "on his own conditions," the counsellor reported.

She added that at the age of eleven the boy was still in Grade 2, and still could not read.

He was staying in a school hostel this year, but the hostel "as an alternative care option does not really work, as it is not possible to provide (the boy) with the individual attention a neglected child as him need (sic)", the counsellor reported further.

In a report from the school attended by the boy it was said that his mother had died.

The school in addition reported that the boy was "more on the street" than at school, and claimed that he "takes part in everything - smoking, drugs, alcohol abuse, burglaries".

The boy "does not want to bend under authority - he does as he pleases", according to the school report.

"He is very aggressive at times and just wants to 'bully' small ones over their own things", it was further stated in the school's report.

The school's report also indicated that the boy was dealing with deep emotional problems.

"He has at times tried to commit suicide - at home and also at the hostel," it was stated.

NOT THE FIRST TIME
By going on review to the High Court, the boy's case is following where various other cases involving juvenile offenders have gone in the past.

In one of the most publicised of these cases recently, the court in early March this year set aside a six-month prison term that had been imposed on two San girls, aged 17 and 15, after they had pleaded guilty to a charge of housebreaking with intent to steal and theft.

In a review judgement on that case, Judge Sylvester Mainga stated that an underlying principle in accepted guidelines on the sentencing of young offenders "is that child offenders should not be detained except if the detention is a measure of last resort, in which case the child may be detained only for the shortest appropriate period of time".

Judge Mainga also stated: "When imposing sentence on a child, the child's best interest is of paramount importance."

He remarked that in the two San girls' case, a prison sentence was inappropriate.

In another review case involving a youthful offender, the High Court in February set aside a four-year prison term that had been imposed on an 18-year-old girl who had also admitted guilt to a charge of housebreaking with intent to steal and theft, and replaced it with an effective term of one year of imprisonment.

In his judgement in that case, Acting Judge Annel Silungwe stated: "(E)xtra care is needed in determining a suitable sentence for a young (or juvenile) offender where the possibility of reform is great and the result of an indiscriminate exercise of the court's discretion is potentially irreparable."

He also stated: "(I)f the young offender can be dealt with in a manner which will present a reasonable chance for his rehabilitation, such action will, in the long run, be in the interests of society.

Thus, in sentencing a young offender, a fine balance is needed for the simple reason that the interests of society cannot be served by disregarding the interests of the young offender."

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Former Deputy Senate Speaker Chalerm Promlert, Five Years Jail Term Upheld

The Supreme Court upheld a 36-year jail term given to former deputy Senate speaker Chalerm Promlert, five years after he was accused of having sex with underage girls.

The court found Chalerm, 71, guilty of sexually abusing four girls under the age of 15 between Nov 23, 2000 and Jan 3, 2001.

It upheld the Appeal Court's decision in January this year, which added 20 years to the 16-year sentence the lower court gave Chalerm.

The court said he should be punished more severely because he broke the law while he was a senator.

''The defendant was well aware that what he did was a serious crime,'' the court said.

The former deputy governor of Surat Thani, who had been free on bail of 2.5 million baht pending his final appeal to the Supreme Court, acknowledged the verdict with a pale face.

Police then escorted him to Pathum Thani jail.

Many of Chalerm's relatives, but not his wife, showed up to hear the verdict at the Thanyaburi provincial court.

The mother of one of the victims, whose names were withheld, said she was glad Chalerm did not walk free and thanked all the parties for their support.

Police had charged Chalerm with statutory rape in January 2001 after two girls separately identified him in a line-up as the man who paid them to have sex with him at a motel in Pathum Thani.

Chalerm spent two days in bed with the schoolgirls, one of them aged 16, at a motel in Pathum Thani's Lam Looka district. He paid each 4,000 baht for their services.

The students, aged 13 to 16, were taken to the motel by another girl, a 17-year-old school dropout.

Sex with a girl under 15 years of age brings a charge of statutory rape.

Chalerm resigned as senator in March 2001 amid mounting pressure from fellow senators and civic groups.

The Senate voted 87 to 54 to grant him immunity, splitting it into two camps and upsetting civic groups.

The court of first instance in October 2002 dismissed Chalerm's claim that he had a medical record of receiving treatment for a sexual dysfunction.

Chalerm also said that he had work commitments the days the offences occurred, but his Mercedes was spotted outside the Phaka Inn Hotel in Pathum Thani.

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Foreign Teachers Now On Child Pornography Watch In Thailand

Thai police may begin making background checks on foreign teachers after arresting two on pornography- related charges in less than two weeks, authorities said this week.

"It shouldn't be enough to wear white shirts and have a university degree. We need to know their background," said police Col. Apichart Suribunya, head of Thailand's liaison office for Interpol, the international police agency.

Paul Cornelius Jones, 39, who has lived in Thailand for seven years, was arrested Tuesday after police raided his Bangkok apartment and found a computer containing hundreds of photos of naked boys and girls, Apichart said.

His arrest came after Thai police arrested Christopher Paul Neil of Canada on Oct. 19 on charges of having sex with several young Asian boys.

Jones was arrested after a tip-off from British counterparts, who told police Jones had been sending photos of naked children to Britain over the Internet, Apichart said.

Jones had been working as a teacher at a Bangkok private school, police said.

"It's easy for teachers to gain trust and respect from people, especially in Asian cultures which hold teachers in high regard," Apichart said.

He said police would seek records of any convictions in home countries and from Thai immigration police before teachers are hired. Police also are considering background checks of foreign teachers already in Thailand, he said.

"Academic background is one thing, but we need to also check for other information," Apichart said.

There are more than 1,000 foreign teachers legally working in Thailand, he said.

Jones, of Cardiff, Wales, has been charged with distributing pornographic photographs of children under age 15, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, Apichart said.

Another officer in the Thai Interpol office, Maj. Phongphon Iamwicharn, said Jones did not appear in the photos, and that there was evidence he had sold the pictures.

Thailand became a focus of cases of sexual abuse of children after Interpol began a manhunt for an alleged child abuser, Christopher Paul Neil, earlier this month. It issued an unprecedented worldwide appeal to identify and apprehend him.

Interpol found about 200 pictures on the Internet of Thai, Cambodian and Vietnamese boys being sexually abused by a man whose face was digitally obscured. German police computer experts unscrambled the photos so the man's face was recognizable and tip-offs led Interpol to identify Neil as a suspect.

He was arrested by Thai police and charged with child sexual abuse, but police are still investigating the case.

Neil has also worked as a teacher at schools in Thailand, South Korea and Vietnam.

Several Southeast Asian countries are popular among pedophiles and sex abusers because of poverty that drives children and their parents to accept money for sexual favors, and sometimes because of lax law enforcement.

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Vietnamese Athlete Gets Five Years For Sex With A 10-Year-Old

A Vietnamese wushu international was sentenced to five years in jail Tuesday for having sex with a 12-year-old girl in a Hanoi hotel last September.

Tran Xuan Anh, 21, who won a bronze medal at the 2001 Southeast Asian Games in Malaysia, was arrested after being caught in the act.

According to the police report, Anh, a third-year student at the National Sports College No. 1 in Bac Ninh province, was riding a motorbike when he was solicited by a pimp. He accepted and went to the hotel where the underage girl was waiting.

When Anh asked her about her age, she reportedly lied saying she was 17.

The police arrived and arrested the couple along with the pimp, Le Van Tu, who got a 10-year sentence from the court.

According to Tu's declaration to the police, he had taken the girl to the hotel for another client, who, on seeing her, had backed out saying she was too young.

To cover the room rent Tu ran out into the street to solicit other customers when he met Anh.

The girl, born in 1994, lives in Hoan Kiem district in Hanoi and was studying in seventh grade when the incident occurred last year.

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