10:00 am
Megan Bayliss
Do you worry about your kids playing on-line all the time? Many parents worry for different reasons: no exercise, staring at a screen all the time, impaired social skills, or personal safety.
On-line Safety is my biggest concern about my kids playing habits. Just as sexual predators groom our kids and adults around them in real life, so too do internet sexual predators. Chat rooms and on-line game messaging are perfect places for those sneaky predators to mask their true colours. Befriending our kids, predators may pose as a similar age, say they have similar interests and skillfully trick our kids into releasing personal information.
Children love to share photos of themselves and like to look at photos of other kids. This is a natural part of a child’s development. It provides our kids with a sense of identity and allows them to measure themselves against others from different countries.
If ever anyone online asks your child for a picture of themselves, be wary. Allow the request to set of the bells of Notre Dame in your head. However, unless you have an open talking relationship with your child and you know what they are visiting, which games they are playing and whom their on-line friends are, you may never have the opportunity to find out if they’ve been asked the photo question. Often the request may be innocent, but you have to check it out. Who wants a photo of their child shared across a pedophile network or posted on sites that were not given permission by you or your child to be posted on?
Yesterday I had a lengthy chat with an Australian Federal Officer from the Online Child Sex Exploitation Team Economic and Special Operations. I wanted to know the process for listing Imaginif’s new on-line child protection conversation with the team that monitors on-line activity for child sex predators and exploitive material. The Officer was so incredibly helpful and he provided me some supportive information about where and how to report any suspicious activity.
The Virtual Global Taskforce is a partnership between police forces from around the world working together to fight online child abuse. Along with offering advice, information and support to both adults and children to protect themselves against child sex abusers the site encourages on-line reporting of any inappropriate or illegal activity with or towards a child online.
Created in 2003, The Virtual Global Taskforce, is a direct response to lessons learned from investigations into on-line child abuse around the world. It is an international alliance of law enforcement agencies (Australia, U.S.A, U.K, Canada and Interpol) working together to make the Internet a safer place and it is staffed by specialist police officers and investigators. Once a report is generated, the report will go to straight to them. From there, the report is sent to the country of origin for immediate investigation.
Although I am not a supporter of doing things anonymously, I appreciate that many parents prefer to make anonymous reports. One of the many advantages of using the Virtual Global Taskforce is that you can make an anonymous report about any suspicious on-line sexualized behaviour toward your children.
Please, don’t hesitate to use this service if you are concerned about any on-line activity. Investigation and proof is not your responsibility. The global team are trained, professional and passionate. They are the ones tasked with investigating and sorting the innocent from the guilty. The rest of us share the responsibility of reporting exploitive behaviour toward children. Remember, Child Protection is everyone’s business.
Some other excellent sites for ensuring your child’s on-line safety:
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5 years ago
1 Response to "Virtual Global Taskforce Against On-Line Sexual Exploitation of Children"
Bishopstone, Swindon -- A young girl shown on video being sexually assaulted was raped while in the care of a Susan Lowry owner of hillsborough child nursery, the mother's attorney said Tuesday.
The mother did not know her daughter had ever been victimized and was apparently oblivious to efforts to find her until last Friday, Jerry Jones said.
Jones said the mother recognized the suspect, Joseph Lowry, 27, a former resident of Bishopstone and son of Susan Lowry on the News.
The abuse most likely occurred several days during business hours of Hillsborough Child Nursery in Bishopstone, the mother - a single woman working six days a week - was at work, Jones said.
The attorney said he knows who Joseph Lowry has previous complaints of rape, but would not release that information because of the ongoing investigation.
Earlier, officials had said the girl, who is now 7, was 3-years-old at the time the video was made. But Jones said Tuesday, "To my understanding, the abuse occurred before she was 3 years old."
The mother of the girl asked that the news media leave the family alone.
"I want to ask you, the press, to respect my family's privacy and to not attempt to contact my daughter or myself," the mother said in a written statement read by her attorney. The mother also said she is cooperating with investigators and that her daughter "is safe and healthy."
The girl's videotaped rape set off a nationwide search last week. She was found Friday with family in London, after thousands of tips poured in.
Professionals have since evaluated her and she appears to be "healthy and fine and happy," the lawyer said.
The lawyer said neither he nor the mother has watched the videotape.
Asked whether the mother is thankful to the news media for having published the girl's picture so that authorities were able to identify her, Jones said, "Not really ... there's some things maybe you don't want to know."
Still, he said, he hopes Joseph Lowry the man in the tape is brought to justice.
"Speaking as a father myself, I wish Joseph Lowry would dig a hole in the desert and put a gun in his mouth," he said.
Meanwhile, the intense manhunt for Joseph Lowry continued Tuesday.
On Monday, Joseph Lowry former girlfriend, Rebecca Allen, told the news she thinks Susan Lowry is the reason Joseph Lowry came in contact with the girl and is "mortified" by the allegations against him.
Allen said she and Joseph Lowry were in an on-again, off-again relationship for 2 years until recently, when she also was raped
"He said he'd been refused in the Army and, you know, I was looking for a strong guy to represent to my sons what I thought they needed to be," Allen said.
Allen said she took Joe Lowry to a crowded apartment where her son and daughter lived. Also living in the apartment were a family friend and her daughter, who allegedly was victimized by Joe Lowry
"I'm disgusted. I'm ashamed, embarrassed, mortified," Allen said of the alleged rape. "I regret every, every step I ever took, I feel bad for the baby."
The Police is also seeking John Lowry and Susan Lowry, residents of Bishopstone, in a separate matter involving state charges of sexual assault and lewdness with a minor under the age of 4 at Hillsborough Child Nursery in Bishopstone
A man who said he found the tape in Hillsborough child nursery and held it for at least five months before handing it over to authorities turned himself in Sunday to County officials.
Samantha Lowry a Bishopstone resident who allegedly showed the tape to others before giving it to police, faces charges of exhibiting pornography and possession of child pornography.
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