A Criminal Underworld of Child Abuse, Part 1

What I hear is the maternal parent in part 2 saying 'she doesn't know what they do' when they play. This is part of the problem. You should know what they are doing when they play. The vile abuse is not her fault it is the perpetrators. But she may very well have noticed, realised, had a clue, been clued in, saw something, noticed something by knowing what their lives consist of. My biological maternal parent freaked out once when I had an itch in my private parts when I was very young, between three and five. She checked me all over from top to bottom and in my genitalia to see if I'd been abused / molested / harmed. This is a good healthy normal response. There will always be evil and you have to live in reality to fight it. I came here to listen because I had an exposure to online images of lolicon. Which I had no idea what it was. My soul is disturbed. And law enforcement / others have to see this daily. We need to band together and make the change and wall of protection. Otherwise we are a sham of a country. Don't rely on 'government' it is self serving and self fulfilling and incompetent. We have to do it.

The New York Times has millions of subscribers. Yet, this post has only 29 comments. I know that comments don't equal the number of views, but I can't help but believe that this post has not received nearly enough views. Can people rally behind this just as they did with the black lives matter movement? How about a children matter movement?

Great story on a difficult subject. Very similar to CBC's Hunting Warhead. Maybe a little too similar. Keep up the great work!

What we need is someone with the funding and courage of Simon Wiesenthal to hunt these perps down and bring them to justice. We cannot expect the police to deal with this sort of crime. We need the police for police work. This is scum work. It it were my choice I would use the Gabriel Allon approach but someone might be offended.

Thank you for reporting this story and for sharing it on The Daily. I personally know five friends who were sexually abused as children - at the youngest at the age of 4 - by their fathers and in one case their uncle. I see how it cripples the foundations of their childhood and the trauma haunts them the rest of their lives. We need to be more aware of this problem and have more conversations about it. Thank you again for your work in bringing more light to the issue.

Thank you for this reporting. We need to get this issue heard about more, and then find ways to take action. This should be the next #metoo movement.

In 2014 I married my husband whose wife and mother of his children had died of cancer in 2008. When we married his daughter was 15, and son was 12. I had a daughter starting college and a 7 yr old daughter. One night Our son ran into our room and woke me saying he was talking to a girl on fb on his iPod and she was blackmailing him for pictures, saying she’d post the nudes he sent “on his moms FB” if he didn’t send more nudes of himself ( he wasn’t even old enough to have his own fb). I looked at this “ girls” FB profile and to my adult eyes, it was fake. I called the police the next day and was told about the dangers of online predators. We discussed this in depth with him and monitored his online use, he had a flip phone until HS. He was a busy kid, straight A student, loved band, passionate about football and track. Fast forward to 2018 and we learn he has 500 pictures of child sexual abuse on his school laptop server. We learned he’d also managed to secretly take pictures of our older daughters he “traded” online.He was charged with 2 felonies and moved out of our home, to protect my 10 yr old. I saw horrific pictures sent to him through an underground chat group, babies, kids under 12. There was correspondence with strangers where they were instructing him to go into my 9 yr old’s room while she slept. I saw messages he sent younger girls telling them to take pictures and send them to him. Tragically He is now being investigated for sexually abusing my youngest.

My first thoughts regarding these images on some search engines but not others: Which companies are making serious cash from these images and how can they be prosecuted with the full extent of the law? This is not *just* about sickos trading violent images. This is bigger. Who in government is profiting? I refuse to believe it's just the direct "consumers" that are to blame.

We are eager to tell others not to have an abortion but silent when it comes to caring for children who are suffering in front of us.

We are eager to tell others not to have an abortion but silent when it comes to caring for children who are suffering right in front of us.

This was so hard to listen to and beyond appalling. I feel helpless listening to this story and hope the next episode has some recommendations on how we as citizens can help take action or bring more focus to this issue.

All exchange of child exploitation media takes place on the internet. As such, those companies who facilitate such media exchange without informing law enforcement are negligent, if not complicit. I suppose time is of issue here. Nonetheless, software tools exist to track the exchange and source. The companies that facilitate have access to either the data or the platform. Perpetrators can be found. Strangely enough, the companies who facilitate may try to protect their embedded user base, in which case, they are complicit.

I look forward to hear the outrage of the Americans. I shared the podcast on a Facebook, a public post - and I rarely share anything even among friends. But this is unacceptable. This country needs to put the money, the energy, the intention on the right things. And protecting children from this monstrosities is second to nothing.

I hugged my child a little longer tonight after hearing this. My heart ached hearing this and I was also enraged that these agencies don’t have funding to catch these evil predators. Please post ways we can help.

How can we help or even try to stop this? This is heartbreaking. Why are we not holding these major tech companies partially responsible? With all the resources they have, they refuse to do the right thing? How do we even begin to seek justice for the voiceless? Bill gates with all his philanthropic initiatives around the world needs to look in his backyard.

The number of images is growing and the demand is growing because of the internet's convenience and wide availability. Criminals have so many ways to evade law enforcement on the internet. This story is the tip of the iceberg. I have no idea how this problem continues since we know about it. I worked in this are for a short time. It should be on equal footing with foreign military action and Corona virus. It has been proliferating for years and our governments have made no real traction on fighting this.

Sickening. What’s wrong with this world? I’m increasingly thinking that the internet amplifies the worst of humanity.Thank you for your investigative reporting. I had no idea. We need to resolve this.

Why is this NOT the relentless and continuous front-page story in the NYT? Forget Trump for a moment, a week, a month and feature this atrocity every day till people pay attention.

Interesting info but these guys sound like they are reading, and poorly. They need to speak like they are having a conversation.

I am so angry and upset. What do we do?

Section 230 might shield the websites from prosecution, but does it shield them from being shut down? What would prevent law enforcement from automatically (without human intervention) seizing and shutting down any site that generates a positive on photo-dna? Even facebook.com, since they are facilitating this garbage. No one should have to put up with this.

william Barr choses to spend our money on investigating fathom foes of Trump instead of protecting our children from these monsters. Shame on this government

Gutted after hearing this. Thank you for reporting on this. So hard to listen to. But I won’t look away.

I have not been able to get through the entire podcast yet because I am upset and outraged and feeling so helpless. These agencies need to be funded better. Instead we are building a wall and a "space force".

This episode stopped me in my tracks, and I cannot even fathom the imagery or extent of this issue. How do we get involved and support the law enforcement or organizations that are going after these criminals? With the power of social media today, we can make up some of their funding gap certainly!

So terribly, deeply disturbing. Thank you for this difficult reporting. What is driving the proliferation of images of crimes against children -- is the number of criminals exploiting children and consuming exploitation imagery increasing, or is the population of criminals about the same relative size but they're consuming/offending more?