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If you're awake and you've been following this blog for any length of time, your probably know that during the past two years, victims of child pornography (represented by the Marsh Law Firm and pioneering attorneys Paul G. Cassell and Carol L. Hepburn ) have been seeking restitution in federal courts throughout the country.

Using a long forgotten passage in the Violence Against Women Act championed by then-Senator Joe Biden in 1994, child sex abuse victims are asking federal judges to award the mandatory restitution guaranteed by this law.

Unfortunately, the Justice Department has abandoned victims of child pornography on appeal by advancing a legal standard which the courts consider unworkable. The Justice Department's position is effectively preventing hundreds of child victims from receiving any money from the tens of thousands of child molesters and pedophiles who collect and trade child sex abuse images.

In October, the Justice Department filed a Supreme Court brief opposing child exploitation victims. Last month, the Justice Department asked the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to nullify a court-ordered million dollar award to a child sex abuse victim, arguing that the legal standard which resulted in the award is too easy.

Why is the Justice Department arguing for something which the courts of appeal say is unworkable and un-provable, while victims of child exploitation are left with nothing?

Now, just last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals—at the Justice Department's urging—decided to reconsider a landmark decision in favor of victims of child pornography. The Justice Department has one more chance to do the right thing and support victims of child exploitation.

Please tell President Obama's political appointee to the Department of Justice Criminal Division, Lanny A. Breuer, to side with the victim in In re: Amy Unknown in the Fifth Circuit.

When Justice Department attorneys refused to even sit with Amy at last year's oral argument before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Chief Judge Edith Jones proclaimed:

"What I don't understand is why the government has switched sides. They were on Amy's side in the trial court, were they not? I'm not sure how they can switch sides now and say that the statute doesn't entitle her to relief. That seems very—if not duplicitous—very strange to me. And it's also in derogation of the obvious intent of that provision of the statute."

Amy and child victims like her need your help. Hundreds of victims are effectively shut-out of the federal courts by the Justice Department's wrongheaded policy.

Almost 20 years ago, then-Senator Joe Biden promised child victims that they would receive full restitution from criminals convicted of child exploitation. Ironically, Vice President Biden's own Justice Department is failing to live up to his vision in the Violence Against Women's Act.

You can help awaken the Justice Department lawyers in Washington with just a few clicks. Amy thanks everyone for their continued support. You can make a difference in her fight for justice!

For more information on this issue, visit http://www.childlaw.us/restitution/

In the January edition of Pediatrics researchers explored two issues: The Prevalence and Characteristics of Youth Sexting and How Often Are Teens Arrested for Sexting?

Prior to the research estimates of the prevalence of sexting varied considerably depending on the nature of the images or videos and the role of the youth involved.

A cross-sectional national telephone survey of 1560 youth Internet users, ages 10 through 17, discovered that only 2.5% of youth appeared in or created nude or nearly nude pictures or videos.

However, this percentage was reduced to 1.0% when the definition was restricted to only include images that were sexually explicit (ie, showed naked breasts, genitals, or bottoms). Of the youth who participated in the survey, 7.1% said they had received nude or nearly nude images of others; 5.9% of youth reported receiving sexually explicit images. Few youth distributed these images.

The researchers concluded that since policy debates on youth sexting behavior focus on concerns about the production and possession of illegal child pornography, it is important to have research that collects details about the nature of the sexual images rather than using ambiguous screening questions without follow-ups.

The rate of youth exposure to sexting highlights a need to provide them with information about legal consequences of sexting and advice about what to do if they receive a sexting image. However, the data suggest that appearing in, creating, or receiving sexual images is far from being a normative behavior for youth.

The second study examined the characteristics of youth sexting cases handled by police and their outcomes in response to clinical and other concerns about the risks of sexting behavior.

Mail surveys were sent to a stratified national sample of 2712 law enforcement agencies followed by detailed telephone interviews with investigators about a nationally representative sample of sexting cases handled by police during 2008 and 2009 (n = 675). The cases involved “youth-produced sexual images” that constituted child pornography under relevant statutes according to respondents.

The researchers discovered that US law enforcement agencies handled an estimated 3477 cases of youth-produced sexual images during 2008 and 2009 (95% confidence interval: 3282-3672). Two-thirds of the cases involved an “aggravating” circumstance beyond the creation and/or dissemination of a sexual image.

In these aggravated cases, either an adult was involved (36% of cases) or a minor engaged in malicious, non-consensual, or abusive behavior (31% of cases). An arrest occurred in 62% of cases with an adult involved, in 36% of the aggravated youth-only cases, and in 18% of the “experimental” cases (youth-only and no aggravating elements).

Most of the images (63%) were distributed by cell phone only and did not reach the Internet. Sex offender registration applied in only a few unusual cases.

The conclusion of this study is that many of the youth sexting cases that come to the attention of police include aggravating circumstances that raise concerns about health and risky sexual behavior, although some cases were relatively benign. Overall, arrest is not typical in cases with no adults involved.

Prevalence and Characteristics of Youth Sexting: A National Study

How Often Are Teens Arrested for Sexting? Data From a National Sample of Police Cases

Last week the United States Supreme Court ignored the extraordinary pleas of three nationally recognized child advocacy groups and granted the Justice Department's request to dismiss a child sex abuse victim's appeal for criminal restitution.

The case now returns to the district court which must follow the DC Circuit's holding that the victim in this case, Amy, does not have a clear and indisputable right to full restitution, but must instead trace precisely how her losses were “proximately” caused by each of the thousands of child molesters and pedophiles who collect and trade her child sex abuse images.

The Supreme Court's rejection means that a child pornography victim's right to criminal restitution in the federal courts will continue to be limited and denied in sixteen states and territories, including California, New York and Washington, DC. Only in the Fifth Circuit—encompassing the states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi—is restitution still mandatory.

The Court's denial—and the Justice Department's stubborn refusal to abandon a legal standard which the influential Ninth Circuit concluded "present[s] serious obstacles for victims seeking restitution in these sorts of cases"—leaves child sex abuse victims like Amy with scant chance for justice in the federal courts.

Pedophiles, child molesters and the Justice Department are likely to seize on the high court's rejection as a sign that criminal restitution for child sex abuse victims is all but impossible in the federal courts except under the most egregious circumstances.

We continue to urge everyone to Make a Difference and ask the Justice Department to stop siding with convicted child molesters and pedophiles instead of child sex abuse victims!

Just go to http://bit.ly/ChangeJustice for full details on how you can help.

For the complete background on this issue, visit http://www.childlaw.us/restitution/.

When Justice Department attorneys refused to even sit with the child sex abuse victim at last year's oral argument before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Chief Judge Edith Jones proclaimed:

"What I don't understand is why the government has switched sides. They were on Amy's side in the trial court, were they not? I'm not sure how they can switch sides now and say that the statute doesn't entitle her to relief. That seems very—if not duplicitous—very strange to me. And it's also in derogation of the obvious intent of that provision of the statute."

Now, over a year later, the Justice Department has done the exact same thing again in the Sixth Circuit. Only this time they are asking the Court of Appeals to nullify a court-ordered million dollar award to a child sex abuse victim.

Why is the Obama Justice Department siding with convicted child molesters and pedophiles instead of child sex abuse victims?

In response to this shameful position, the Marsh Law Firm has joined forces with lawyers for the victim in this case and requested immediate intervention in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to defend the million dollar judgment which was abandoned by the government on appeal.

The child sex abuse victim in this case, Vicky, is represented by Seattle attorney Carol L. Hepburn, who declared:

"It's bad enough that we so often have to fight child molesters and pedophiles all over the country just to get some measure of restitution for the victim. Now we have to fight the government too. Unfortunately the government has turned on us in one of the few cases where we won something significant which would really make a difference in my client's life. I just don't understand why the government is deciding to flip-flop and now go against the victim in these cases."

According to crime victims’ rights advocate Paul Cassell, a former federal judge who is currently a law professor at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at University of Utah (and who also represents Vicky on appeal on a pro bono basis):

"It is unconscionable that the government would abandon a child victim on appeal without any notice or a chance to respond. We only found out about this appeal by accident. If we hadn't intervened, no one would have protected this substantial award before the Court of Appeals. Who could have imagined that the government—which worked so hard at the trial court to obtain this award—would suddenly and without warning switch sides before the Sixth Circuit? The Justice Department simply forgot about the child victim when it filed its appeal pleadings."

Marsh Law Firm partner, James R. Marsh, emphasized that the legal fight for child sex abuse victims will continue whenever and wherever necessary:

"The Department of Justice has fought against us in the Fifth Circuit, the District of Columbia Circuit, the Supreme Court and now the Sixth Circuit. Apparently the decision to abandon child sex abuse victims is being made by lifelong apparatchiks who haven't left Washington in a long, long time. This kind of stupidity is one reason why the American people have such distrust and cynicism in our government right now. It defies any sense of common decency that some government lawyer in Washington, DC would think it's a good idea to expend taxpayer dollars to fight against the interests of child sex abuse victims everywhere in the country."

Marsh exclaimed:

"At a time when Penn State has incited international indignity, it's outrageous that the federal government is marshaling every effort to deny child sex abuse victims criminal restitution which was a central part of the law championed by the Administration's own Vice President Biden as part of his landmark 1994 Violence Against Women's Act. Now that the Senate is holding hearings on how well the nation is protecting children from abuse and neglect, they should start by asking why their own Justice Department is siding with convicted child molesters and pedophiles against the interests of child sex abuse victims."

Click here to Make a Difference on this issue!

The C-Span Video library is a tremendous resource. It has archived on the internet thousands of Congressional hearings and testimony available nowhere else.

Here is Masha Allen's testimony in May 2006 about her international adoption by pedophile Matthew Mancuso.

Unfortunately the explosive Congressional Hearing in September 2006 concerning so-called Follow-Up Issues to the Masha Allen Adoption (i.e., how a single adult male pedophile was able to adopt a five year old Russian girl with the approval of the U.S. State Department and the State of Pennsylvania) is only available in a boring old Congressional Report. Sadly, that revolution was not televised.

This just arrived in my inbox from the Massachusetts Citizens for Children Enough Abuse Campaign. It is well worth repeating here:

An Open Letter to Massachusetts Citizens About the Penn State Scandal
How We Can Prevent Child Sexual Abuse in Our State

While the Penn State child sexual abuse scandal and cover-up grab national attention, the fact is that cases of child sexual abuse continue to be exposed with unrelenting regularity in every state and community across our country. In Massachusetts alone just in the past six months, we have learned about the decades-long sexual abuse of boys treated by renowned pediatrician Dr. Melvin Levin of Children’s Hospital, the revealed boyhood sexual abuse of Senator Scott Brown by a counselor at a Cape Cod summer camp, the sexual abuse of young female tennis players by former Massachusetts coach and International Tennis Hall of Famer Bob Hewitt. Many more current incidents of child sexual abuse involving less well-known abusers appear weekly in local newspapers all across our state.

Predictably, the Sandusky/Paterno case has prompted the media to focus on who knew what and when. Legislators rush to file bills to strengthen reporting requirements, the alleged abuser is arrested and charged, and we all express sorry for the children who have been violated and for their families who are distressed beyond what we can even imagine.

But the truth is that these after-the-fact responses are insufficient to address what the American Medical Association has labeled “…a silent, violent epidemic.” It’s time to support efforts aimed at preventing child sexual abuse from happening in the first place. This is what Massachusetts Citizens for Children (MCC), lead agency for the Enough Abuse Campaign, has been working to do since the Campaign was launched in 2002.

A public opinion poll conducted in 2007 by the Campaign documented that:

• 80% of citizens believe child sexual abuse is a serious problem in our state
• 75% said they believe it is preventable
• 64% said they would be willing to participate in local community trainings about child sexual abuse and how they can prevent it—up from 48% in a poll conducted four years earlier

Clearly, citizens like you are critical partners in getting the word out that child sexual abuse can be prevented and that in Massachusetts, through the Enough Abuse Campaign, we have the tools and the tested strategies to get the job done.

As a parent, grandparent, or concerned citizen, we are asking you to:

1. Educate yourself about the real facts of child sexual abuse so that you can be an informed advocate for your children and all the children in your family and community.
2. Get involved with the Enough Abuse Campaign, a Massachusetts effort that has been recognized nationally as an effective model to mobilize communities and educate parents, youth, and a range of professionals and other adults about child sexual abuse and how to prevent it.
3. Support the Campaign with your dollars so we can achieve our goal: By 2015 every city and town in Massachusetts will be actively engaged in learning about child sexual abuse and preventing it.

A new front has opened in the battle to control child pornography on the internet. Members of the Anonymous hacktivist movement have recently taken down more than 40 secret child-pornography websites and revealed the names of more than 1,500 members of one of the illegal sites.

According to Security News Daily:

The Anonymous campaign began Oct. 14, when members of the hacktivist group found a cache of child-pornography websites while browsing a secret website called the Hidden Wiki, a guidebook to hundreds of underground websites invisible to search engines and regular Internet users. The hackers singled out Lolita City, a file-sharing site used by pedophiles, and leaked the names of the site's 1,589 active members to Pastebin on Tuesday (Oct. 18), the Examiner reported.

Member of Anonymous deciding to hack a website whose stance they don't agree with is by no means shocking news. In the past year, Anonymous-affiliated hackers have gone after the New York Stock Exchange, the Westboro Baptist Church, the Recording Industry Association of America and government sites in Malaysia, Egypt, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.

However, in targeting child pornography sites, and in explaining its methods of attack, these Anonymous-affiliated hackers have revealed a deeply disturbing side of the Internet unknown to most people.

The so-called "darknet," from which this "Operation Darknet" hacking campaign takes its name, is any part of the Internet that is hidden from view — not just hard to reach, but deliberately concealed. In this instance, a darknet appears to have grown out of the free TOR routing service, which offers anonymous, encrypted Web browsing to any user.

The TOR-based darknet has reportedly grown into a private, encrypted constellation of websites offering a variety of shady and illegal services, from fake IDs and steroids to email hacking and tip on how to call in police raids as pranks. There's even a hidden site called "The Last Box" that bills itself as an "Assassination Market."

Not many people know about the "Darknet," and if you do you're probably up to no good. Anonymous' success in penetrating and disrupting Darknet is significant since only the most technically sophisticated hackers could perform such a feat. Unfortunately, given the scope and seemingly endless proliferation of child pornography, it is unlikely that Anonymous can or will have any lasting impact. Their actions do, however, demonstrate to law enforcement and others the possibility of a new approach to dealing with online child exploitation.

Read the entire story here.

Two recent articles expose a political effort by pedophiles to gain acceptance and legitimacy. Last week FoxNews reported that a group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals are lobbying for changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, the guideline of standards on mental health that's put together by the American Psychiatric Association. According to FoxNews:

The organization, which calls itself B4U-Act says its mission is to help pedophiles before they create a crisis, and to do so by offering a less critical view of the disorder.

"Stigmatizing and stereotyping minor-attracted people inflames the fears of minor-attracted people, mental health professionals and the public, without contributing to an understanding of minor-attracted people or the issue of child sexual abuse," reads the organization's website.

B4U-Act said that 38 individuals attended a symposium in Baltimore last week, including researchers from Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and the universities of Illinois and Louisville. According to the group, which said to not endorse every point of view expressed, the speakers in attendance concluded that "minor-attracted" individuals are largely misunderstood and should not be criminalized even as their actions should be discouraged.

Speakers also argued that people who are sexually attracted to children should have input into the decision about how pedophilia is defined in the DSM, which they said is supposed to be a guide to promote “mental health vs. social control.”

Critics of the conference say it was a thinly veiled attempt to make children of any age sexually accessible to adults.

That same week, the New York Times ran an op-ed entitled "Sex Offenders: The Last Pariahs" The author, Professor Roger N. Lancaster, argues that:

Our sex offender laws are expansive, costly and ineffective — guided by panic, not reason. It is time to change the conversation: to promote child welfare based on sound data rather than statistically anomalous horror stories, and in some cases to revisit outdated laws that do little to protect children. Little will have been gained if we trade a bloated prison system for sprawling forms of electronic surveillance that offload the costs of imprisonment onto offenders, their families and their communities.

This sounds reasonable until you consider that Lancaster ignores recent research which indicates a substantial rate of recidivism by convicted child sex offenders. According to Lancaster "only a tiny proportion of sex crimes are committed by repeat offenders."

A recently reported study of individuals incarcerated for possession, receipt and distribution of child pornography, however, found that these offenders were significantly more likely than not to have sexually abused a child via a hands-on act.

The study’s authors suggest that online criminal investigations, while targeting so-called “Internet sex offenders,” likely have resulted in the apprehension of concomitant child molesters. Upon being discovered these offenders tend to minimize their behavior. They may attribute their search for child pornography to “curiosity” or a similar benign motivation. They may “accept responsibility” only for those behaviors that are already known to law enforcement, but hide any contact sexual crimes to avoid prosecution for these offenses, or to avoid the shame and humiliation that would result from revealing their deviance to family, friends, and community. Only later do the majority of sex offenders who enter treatment acknowledge that they were not, as they initially claimed, merely interested in sexual images involving children; they were, and are, sexually aroused by children.

Further, as prior research and the current findings suggest, it appears that the manifestations of their deviant sexual arousal was not limited to fantasy. Rather, when an opportunity arose either incidentally or as a result of planned predatory efforts many offenders molested or raped children and engaged in a variety of other sexually deviant behaviors. Michael L. Bourke & Andres E. Hernandez, The ‘Butner Study’ Redux: A Report of the Incidence of Hands-on Child Victimization by Child Pornography Offenders, Journal of Family Violence (2009) 24:183-191.

In addition, one study of sex offenders found an overall recidivism rate of 31.7%. Kingston, Drew, et al., Pornography Use and Sexual Aggression: The Impact of Frequency and Type of Pornography Use on Recidivism Among Sexual Offenders, Aggressive Behavior, Volume 34 (2008).

The predicted odds of recidivism increased by 177% among the offenders that viewed deviant pornography such as child pornography. Moreover, the predicted odds of violent recidivism, including sexually violent recidivism, increased by 185% for this group. The predicted odds of any type of sexual recidivism increased by 233% for the group that admitted to viewing deviant pornography. This increased risk of recidivism among sexually deviant offenders has also been found in earlier studies, including a meta-study from 1996 (updated in 2004). See Hanson, R. Karl, et. al., Predictors of Sexual Recidivism: An Updated Meta-Analysis, Public Works and Government Services Canada (2004).

Indeed, a study slated for publication in December, followed 201 registered male child pornography offenders 5.9 years after release from prison. In this extended follow-up, 34% of offenders had new charges for any type of reoffense, with 6% charged with a contact sexual offense against a child and an additional 3% charged with historical contact sex offenses (i.e., previously undetected offenses). Predictors of new violent (including sexual contact) offending were prior offense history, including violent history, and younger offender age. Approximately a quarter of the sample was sanctioned for a failure on conditional release; in half of these failures, the offenders were in contact with children or used the internet, often to access pornography again. Angela W. Eke, Michael C. Seto & Jennette Williams, Examining the Criminal History and Future Offending of Child Pornography Offenders: An Extended Prospective Follow-up Study, Law Hum Behav (2011) 35:466-478.

And remember, these studies only count repeat offenders who were caught. Given the huge and well-documented under-reporting of sex crimes by children, the recidivism numbers are likely to be much higher.

Clearly, sound public policy should not be based on "moral panic," supposition or shoddy evidence. Unfortunately for B4U-Act and Lancaster, the research is all too clear. Criminals who represent a clear and present danger to our communities need continued incarceration and close monitoring. That's reason enough for everyone.

More than six years after the international law enforcement community began desperately searching for the child pornography victim known as the Disney World Girl, justice remains allusive for Masha Allen. Despite two Congressional investigations in 2006 and pressure from Nancy Grace and Oprah, none of the perpetrators involved with her international adoption have been brought to justice.

Despite the involvement of almost 30 lawyers since Masha was rescued from Matthew Mancuso in 2003 (including the prosecutor and lead investigator in the much-hyped Caylee Anthony investigation), not one of the many child welfare institutions and organizations who were involved with Masha's international and domestic adoptions have paid one dime for her care and recovery.

And despite a federal law named for her, not one case has been brought on her behalf under Masha's Law which guarantees $150,000 from each of the thousands of child molesters who collect and trade her images each year.

Neither a high-profile 2008 exposé in Wikileaks nor aborted investigations by ABC News in 2009 and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 2010 have been able to shed any light on the abject failure of the American justice system to vindicate the rights of one of the most notorious victims of child trafficking in this country's history.

Ms. Allen will turn 19 in just a few days. With each passing year, her ability to collect anything from anyone diminishes substantially. The tolling she enjoyed as a minor under the Pennsylvania statute of limitations ended when she reached legal adulthood last year. Law suits for intentional torts typically must be brought within a year. Claims for fraud, personal injury or professional malpractice must be brought before Masha turns 20. This includes a lawsuit under the Notice of Claim relating to her failed domestic adoption by Faith Allen which we filed back in 2007.

Masha's millionaire father also has somehow escaped civil liability for what he did to Masha. And while other victims are collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in mandatory restitution in the federal courts, Masha has sought and received nothing.

Now Masha's Law itself is under attack. In 2009, Jesse Walker, the influential editor of Reason magazine (which espouses "free minds and free markets"), wrote an editorial entitled The Blurry Boundaries of Child Porn. Walker correctly summarizes Supreme Court jurisprudence which makes child pornography outside the scope of First Amendment protection when he recognizes that "[t]he viewing [of child sex abuse images], in this analysis, is itself a perpetuation of the abuse."

Walker continues:

Such arguments undergird Masha’s Law, named for Masha Allen, a Russian orphan who was held prisoner, raped repeatedly on camera, and advertised in the kiddie porn world as “Disney World Girl.” The measure, which became law in 2006, allows adults who were victimized by pornographers as minors to sue people who download the resulting images.

Emotionally, it’s a compelling concept. And where invasion of privacy is the concern, civil remedies certainly make more sense than criminal prosecutions. But the idea opens a can of worms. If the issue is privacy, shame, and being haunted by ineradicable images, wouldn’t the same argument apply to the abused prisoners photographed at Abu Ghraib? To hostages filmed by their captors and aired on the news? To anyone humiliated in front of a camera? Should an inadvertent Internet celebrity, deeply embarrassed that people are chuckling at a clip of his light-saber dance, have standing to sue the viewers?

That last example might seem absurd, but it actually veers close to the pornography debate. Because the child porn laws set the age of maturity so high, they cover not just the victims of coercion but exhibitionists who voluntarily put photographs of themselves online. There also are people who post pictures that are salacious but don’t include the “lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area” invoked by the law. They do not necessarily intend for anyone but their friends to see the photos. But the Internet doesn’t always work that way.

After analogizing Masha's child sex abuse images to teen-aged girls in bikinis and equating them with a video clip of a "light-saber dance," Walker declares "Is it the role of the government to preserve her peace of mind? … I’m not convinced that’s reason enough to punish the people who merely see those recordings, as opposed to the people who actively participate in the abuse of prisoners like Allen."

Perhaps what Walker desires is a "free market" in child pornography which will "free the minds" of the tens of thousands of child molesters and pedophiles who actively collect and trade child sex abuse pictures and videos.

Walker's vision, however, is hardly "free" or fair to the victims. Until the legal system insures that victims like Masha Allen can recover for the very real harms caused by the horrific abuse inflicted on them by the production, distribution and collection of child sex abuse images, the "market" is neither free nor fair.

And as we've seen in the Masha Allen case, if Congress, Oprah and 30 lawyers can't bring justice to one victim, then deregulating the market for child pornography is hardly the answer. Sadly, Walker's unfettered "free market free mind" is currently much closer to reality than the victims' "peace of mind." Unfortunately, for Masha Allen and thousands of other victims of child pornography, justice remains long in coming.

More PR than facts, this Department of Justice video discusses the Department's national strategy to prevent and combat the sexual exploitation of children. (For some bizarre reason, the video's imagery exclusively shows Black males as offenders. In reality, the vast majority of defendants who produce, distribute and collect child pornography are White males between the ages of 35 and 60. The video also mixes child prostitution, the online solicitation of children, and child pornography; they are all very separate problems with different perpetrators and victims.)

­Francey Hakes, National Coordinator for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction, talks a lot about prevention, hyping the oft-lauded "public-private" partnerships as a "solution" to these problems. I have yet to see any peer reviewed studies of programs or initiatives which can hinder or stop an adult pedophile child molester from raping and sexually abusing a child (often to produce child pornography).

In answering the question, "can we persuade them not to do this sort of stuff," Dr. Michael Bourke, U.S. Marshals Service Chief Psychologist, provides the most honest assessment when he states "I think the answer is fairly multifaceted, but the short answer is that there is no cure for pedophilia, there is no cure for these fantasies and these drives per se. There is however, for any of these individuals, a possibility of managing that behavior …"

In response, the moderator declares "so treatment does work, that's one of the things I did want to get across, treatment does work … treatment does work! We can meaningfully intervene." In response, Bourke explains "Right, well there are individuals who with those proper things in place, have a choice not to re-offend."

Sounds like a successful strategy to me. If you carefully consider Bourke's words: pedophiles cannot be cured, some of these guy might be able to manage their illicit behavior, and some of these might choose not to re-offend. Note he said "re-offend." Given the secretive nature of this crime, just how many of these perpetrators will get caught? And who would ever advocate or accept that an "incurable" murderer be released with the hope that they will successfully "manage" their homicidal urges?

Perhaps Ashley Natoli, Community Supervision Officer in the DC Sex Offender Unit, says it best when she notes that "a lot of these offenders, they are masters of manipulation and deception, and that's, in most instances, in a lot of instances, how they ended up offending in the first place, because they have an incredible ability to groom these victims and they have mastered the art of manipulation."

Thank goodness the probation officers get it.

Unfortunately most of federal judges don't. Each year thousands of white middle-aged men who produce, distribute and collect child pornography are arrested and sentenced in the federal court system. (Almost 100% plead guilty.) Most of these men will eventually be released. And most of them will not receive any peer reviewed treatment for their incurable pedophilia. Some of these men will be monitored at various levels by probation for a few years or for life.

The outcome of this social policy is untested and impossible to predict. Unfortunately, however, the federal justice system regards a few years of incarceration along with a determinate period of probation supervision as a "solution" for the child molesters and pedophiles who appear before them daily. And incredibly, there is a vigorous effort happening right now before the United States Sentencing Commission to REDUCE sentences for child pornography.

In truth, it's not really the judges' fault. There is scant information about these offenders and treatment in peer reviewed journals. (Unfortunately what few studies exist are often overlooked or ignored.) The "lock-up, release and monitor" paradigm—which is the only real option right now—is untested and unchallenged. Until we have more data and better answers on recidivism rates, treatment methodology and peer reviewed outcomes, the federal justice system will continue to engage in a dangerous social policy with offenders who everyone agrees are incurable.

The 'Secret' is the bond established by the abuser with the child victim. It ensures that nobody knows of the abuse other than the abuser and the abused. It is kept in place by embarrassment, fear or respect.

Embarrassment that friends or family will find out what happened. An emotion sometimes secured with photographs.

Fear for the safety of the child and their family should they disclose anything - fear that the abuser will inform - parents - friends, about the behaviour their child has been pulled into and subjected to.

Respect or love for the abuser - strange as this may seem - for the attention and concern that they have shown the child that the child craves and does not receive at home. Over time, absent a good relationship between child and parents, the abuser seduces the child, earning their trust and friendship.

For this reason the child will keep the secret intact out of a need for the attention received from the abuser and the fear of losing a friend should the abuser be caught.

Check out AbuseWatch.eu for more information on how to understand and stop child sex exploitation.

Child advocate Wendy Murphy has a compelling blog entry about the Casey Anthony acquittal entitled "Not Guilty Verdict is the Right Result - But We're Not Done Yet."

Murphy argues that "Justice for Caylee is still possible, notwithstanding the acquittal, if people call for full disclosure of the entire investigative file - including an unsealing of the evidence thus far hidden from public view. Release of the photographs of Caylee that were seized from the Anthony home and placed “under seal” by the court would be a good place to start."

Law enforcement may have discovered "sexualized" images of Caylee on the Anthony family computers which were placed under seal to avoid prejudicing the jury. Murphy believes that "The style of Caylee’s death was more mob hit than parental homicide."

Murphy's most powerful argument for the Caylee Anthony child-sex-ring-victim theory is:

In fact, while a child might die after having her mouth taped shut, the most rational view of the duct tape evidence suggests the child died before the duct tape was applied and that the tape was meant only to hold in decomposition fluids. When a dead body beings to decompose, fluids emanate from places like the nose and mouth, and they emit putrid odors. The best way for a killer to delay detection is to seal the nose and mouth.

It’s certainly possible that at age 19, a high school dropout like Casey with no experience as a killer, nonetheless knew how to seal a dead body like a master murderer. And it’s true that her failure to report Caylee missing for more than a month is powerful evidence of her consciousness of guilt. The question is - guilt about what? It’s just as possible Casey did not kill her child; that she was afraid to call the cops - and that her fear was related to those sealed photographs.

As Casey’s brother Lee testified at trial, Casey was told that Caylee was taken from Casey to “teach her a lesson”. If, as I wrote in an earlier column, Casey knew the people who had Caylee, and stayed quiet in the hope they would give her child back, her failure to report Caylee missing makes sense.

Child pornography can be a big business which is much cheaper and safer than drug smuggling or human trafficking. A vulnerable mother with a drug debt and a small child is the perfect target for child pornography producers. There are hundreds of cases in which parents "sell" their children for drugs or cash. The children of prostitutes often end up involved in prostitution and child pornography. It's tragically easy to dispose of the "evidence" in a country where hundreds of thousands of children go missing each year.

Murphy has surprisingly taken some heat for her theory, but anyone who knows the reality behind the sordid world of child pornography and exploitation will find her analysis neither far-fetched nor hyperbolic.

In an interesting aside, the prosecutor in the Anthony case is also the prosecutor who vowed to send Masha Allen's rapist, Matthew Mancuso, to the Florida death chamber. Mancuso initially faced eight counts of capital sexual battery which could have made him eligible for the death penalty. Despite the fact that there were pictures of him raping his 10 year old adopted daughter at Disney World, Mancuso was allowed to plead guilty to attempted sexual battery. According to Florida law, "criminal attempt" means a person who attempts to commit an offense but fails in the perpetration of that offense. Inexplicably, Mancuso was allowed to plead down from a death sentence to just 14 years in prison.

The Mancuso case also contained controversial sealed evidence in the form of two highly unusual video-taped depositions of Faith and Masha Allen. Shortly after the depositions, the Florida state's attorney agreed to the lowest possible plea. Maybe having pictures as evidence doesn't matter after all.