October 2005
Volume 10, Issue 10
Ten police forces across Canada have joined a national initiative to combat child pornography over the Internet. The child exploitation tracking system (CETS) was launched earlier this year by the Toronto Police Service, RCMP and Microsoft Canada. The system will be ready to go soon in Saskatoon.
Participating jurisdictions will make their investigations available through the database for other police forces to use. Creator, Sgt. Debbie Altrogge, says that this new system will help combat Internet pornography which may transcend jurisdictional boundaries.
The importance of a national child exploitation tracking system is seen in the results of the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect released by the Public Health Agency of Canada on October, 4th. The results showed 125% increase in child abuse this year from 1998. However, this figure does not necessarily mean such a dramatic increase in the number of cases of abuse occurring. Improvements in reporting, better investigation mechanisms used and increase in awareness of child malnutrition are the factors that partially explain this figure. Also, the current study included neglect and domestic violence in the definition of the child abuse.
Reported numbers of sexual abuse investigations involving victims under the age of 16 in Canada, excluding Quebec where data is collected in a different manner, actually decreased from 4,322 in 1998 to 2,935 in 2003. The incidence per 1,000 children dropped from 0.89 per cent to 0.62 per cent over the same period. As a percentage of all investigated incidents of child abuse and neglect, sexual crimes fell from 9 per cent to 3 per cent. The reason for this might be the effectiveness of the prevention efforts, said Audrey Rastin of the Toronto Child Abuse Centre, "or perhaps sexual abuse is only being reported less as offenders become more savvy. We don't want to give the community the impression that sexual abuse is no longer a problem. It's still a very serious problem and in our agency, requests for services have not gone down, in fact they have increased."
The study reports increased awareness among the general population of child abuse in Canada. However, the majority, 54% of people surveyed, said they would not report unless they saw something substantial happen. The report found that 103,297 substantiated cases of child abuse and neglect reported across Canada in 2003. Among these cases, 30% are cases of neglect, 28% involve exposure to domestic violence, 24% physical abuse, 15% of cases are of emotional maltreatment, and 3% of cases are those of sexual abuse.
Child pornography has been in the news most recently when Philip Louis King, a former kindergarten teacher, was found repeatedly watching child pornography often before his young pupils would enter the classroom. He was found guilty of "professional misconduct for reprehensible and appalling behaviour" while he was teaching in a Canadian-run private school in Hong Kong and suspended in 2003. However, it did not stop him from getting his Ontario teaching license back. He will soon be back in "good standing," as decided by a three-person disciplinary panel in Ontario College of Teachers.
Usually, cases when teacher is involved in child porn watching are not only reviewed at a College of Teachers, but also sent to criminal court. King's case however, was never tried in a criminal court. He claimed he did not break any laws in Hong Kong while being involved in these activities "due to a different culture". Although this defence did not work for him, the decision was made to only suspend him for three years but not to revoke his teaching certificate. In its decision, the panel found there was no evidence he had ever abused children and that he had performed his teaching duties "very competently and professionally."
Head of Toronto's child porn unit, Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie said that such rulings fail to recognize the serious risk to children posed by adults who enjoy child porn: "Every one of these pictures represent a child being tortured and memorialized. It is disgusting and it is wrong. And the thought of them sending children, vulnerable children, back to those individuals – it's too big a risk to take."
Yet, another disturbing case involving child pornography on the Internet was reported recently, when more than 10 complaints were filed to Cybertip.ca, a national reporting centre. The complainants received a spammed email containing graphic photographs of the rape of the young girl. The image is automatically uploaded when the email is opened. The email generated the false name of the sender and has no subject to it. Director of Cybertip.ca Signy Arnason said the email was linked to a now defunct website which was shut down several days after emails surfaced across Canada. About half of all child pornography complaints received by Cybertip.ca are related to e-mail spam. Toronto police get about 20 to 30 similar complaints a week.