A Maltese paedophile was among 1,000 men caught pursuing online sex with children through the use of a computer-generated image of a 10-year old Filipino girl nicknamed Sweetie.
The 10-week-long operation unmasked predators in more than 71 countries, including Malta, through the use of a fake web profile that reeled the men in with the image of the little girl that never really existed.
The predators believed they were actually talking online to a real, living girl but, in reality, they were chatting to Dutch researchers from the charity Terre des Hommes.
“Limitations of time and resources prevented us from identifying more than 1,000 of the 20,172 predators with whom we interacted. The four researchers were simply overwhelmed by such a large number of predators who were constantly attempting to interact with them,” the charity said.
The charity made it clear that its researchers did not send or show any images of children to predators to convince them they were speaking to pre-pubertal Filipino girls but had relied on Sweetie’s virtual image and convincing stories about their alter egos.
Video footage and correspondence has now been handed over to Interpol
The more convinced predators were of the researchers’ cover stories, the more willing they would be to share personally identifying information.
Video footage and correspondence with these individuals has now been handed over to Interpol.
The investigation is being used as part of the Stop Webcam Child Sex Tourism, an online campaign aimed at exposing the behaviour of child predators but also at how easy it is to track them down.
As part of the campaign, the charity launched a video on You Tube in which Sweetie reveals herself as a virtual girl and, with researchers from Terre des Hommes, shows how easy it is to expose paedophiles on the internet for online sex with children.
At the end of the video is a list of the countries where the predators were from, including Malta. India (103), Canada (54), Australia (46) and Germany (44) are the countries where most of the predators came from.
“Our method does not apply any form of computer hacking, nor does it violate norms of individual privacy – it involves luring predators who are seeking to abuse children and asking them to provide bits of information about themselves. We use those clues to gather further information and create a complete profile of their identity through online research in public databases,” explained Albert Jaap van Santbrink and Hans Guijt of Terre des Hommes.
The campaign has now gone viral online, raising the alarm on the new form of child exploitation that has tens of thousands of victims in the Philippines alone.
Predators in wealthy countries are seeking out children for online sex in developing states and asking for them to strip naked before a webcam or perform sexual acts for them in exchange for a few euros.
Due to poverty in the Philippines, young children often do not report the crimes of predators because they and their families are dependent on the income provided by their involvement in such sexual exploitation.
Facts in numbers
The United Nations and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation estimate that there are 750,000 predators connected to the internet at any moment. Those predators contribute to a vast global demand for webcam child sex tourism.
Only six predators have ever been convicted for engaging in webcam child sex tourism.
Terre des Hommes, Netherlands’ four researchers, identified 1,000 predators in 10 weeks.
The police in Malta were asked whether they sought or were given any information on the case and whether they were investigating but no replies had been forthcoming by the time of writing.