Stop Buying Webcams for 13 year old Kids

I watch alot of news. On a typical day off I watch CNN all day while I read the news online. I would like to think that I am pretty well informed. As it turns out, I don't know crap.

I tuned into CSPAN tonight out of pure boredom, disgusted with badly written sitcoms and melodramas. I was just flipping through, when a headline caught my attention. It was apparently a committee hearing on child exploitation. There was a kid testifying (I say kid, he was nineteen years old) about a webcam business he ran from the time he was thirteen years old, until last year. Testifying with him was a reporter from the New York Times as well as his lawyer. The three of them told a story that left me frozen in my chair, unable to change the channel or focus on anything other than the speaker on the screen. It was a story about the ever growing scourge of child pornography via the internet, and the lack of movement by the Justice Department to end it.

I have to say, the testimony concerning the actual molestation wasn't the disturbing part. Sad and sick as it may seem, I am too desensitized by media and news stories to be shocked anymore. The part that made me nauseous was the lack of action by law enforcement once they had names, credit card numbers, addresses and contact information. They knew nine months ago where these people were, where the kids being raped were, where they continue to be and they did nothing.

I watched the testimony for hours. I got online and tried to learn everything I could about the case. What I found most frequently was the condemnation of self proclaimed pedophiles, or, as they had the audacity to call themselves "pedosexuals." Articulate and bold, they offered no apologies or excuses for their sexual predispositions. They called out Justin Berry as a traitor, a whore, a willing participant who used his age as an excuse to persecute his customers.

We spend millions of dollars in legislation, lobbying, protesting, boycotting and generally organizing to save the mass of cells growing in a women's womb, but we are too disturbed and uncomfortable to address the threat of child predators to actual living children. Kids can be beaten past the point of the claim of ignorance, they can be exploited and damaged by our neighbors and teachers and clergymen. This is allowed to happen by our own cowardice, and because children are so completely powerless in our society. They are no ones constituent. They have no dollars to pay for the kind of protection we enjoy.

So tonight I can't sleep. Justin Berry's testimony is still glaring back at me from the television, and I can't get past the feelings of shame at my national community for its inability to protect its babies from monsters.