A children's rights group has designed an unique strategy to catch pedophiles who use the Internet to exploit poor children living in third world countries. Terre des Hommes, a Dutch child-protection association, created a virtual Filipino 10-year-old girl that lures in men willing to pay children as young as 6 years old to perform sex acts using a webcam. While the child predators think that they're chatting with a young girl online, the agency is actually gathering information on the perps.
Within two and a half months, the group used the life-like digital girl they called "Sweetie" to coax 20,000 people who prey on children. Of those, 1,000 could be identified from their Facebook pages and other bits of information they provided during their dirty conversations online.
According to Terre de Homme, webcam sex with minors is a phenomenon that's proliferating quickly in developing countries. The practice generally involves men from wealthy Western countries paying children from poor countries for online sex shows.
"These children are usually forced to do this by adults or by extreme poverty," Hans Guyt, director of campaigns at Terre des Hommes Netherlands, said in a statement according to CNET. "Sometimes they have to testify against their own family, which is almost an impossible thing to do for a child."
In their effort to raise awareness and combat this growing epidemic, Terre des Hommes is asking people to sign a petition calling on governments to crack down on the live-chat sexual exploitation of children. Law enforcements agencies, on the other hand, are less thrilled about the organization taking on the role of vigilante investigator.
While Terre des Hommes claims it wants to work with law enforcement and has given Interpol the identities of the men who sought to victimize this little girl, the international police agency has implied it may not be able to do much with the information they gathered.
"Whilst Interpol recognizes the important role of NGOs in child protection, it is important that any criminal investigations should only be undertaken by law enforcement professionals," Interpol said in a statement Tuesday, reports The Daily Beast. "This ensures that enquiries are conducted by individuals specifically trained in investigating these types of crime and that any evidence gathered is in accordance with national legislation and can therefore be submitted to the courts."
Also concerned that the evidence gathered won't hold up in court, Europol, the European-wide law enforcement agency based in The Hague, released a similar response to the digital project.
"While we value the active interest of a broad range of actors in combating child sex abuse online, we believe that criminal investigations, using intrusive surveillance measures, should be the exclusive responsibility of law enforcement agencies," wrote the Europol in a statement.
Watch a YouTube presentation of the Sweetie sting below: