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CommentWednesday, June 1, 2005

Yahoo! In the Throes Of Kiddie Sex Lawsuit; Ads Pulled

Houston television station KPRC aired their investigation of Yahoo!'s chat services, showing an unsettling relationship between corporate advertising and various child sex chat rooms.

The expos led to two wallet crushing results, a $10 million filed on behalf of child victims, and huge corporate entities pulling their ads from Yahoo!. The lawsuit accuses Yahoo! of profiting from child pornography.

The TV station reported gut-wrenching chat room titles like "Girls 13 And Up For Much Older Man," "9-17-Year-Olds Wantin' Sex," and "5 To 13-Year-Old Kiddies Who Love Sex." Worse, the station reported, these chat rooms were ad supported.

Chatters who wanted to enter "5 To 13 For Older Men" were greeted with a Star Wars Diet Pepsi ad prior to entering.

The perverse chatters were using the rooms as a forum for meeting children for sex, kidnapping, and photo swapping.

Pepsi maintained that they were completely unaware of the situation and pulled their advertising immediately.

"We were completely unaware that our advertisements were associated with these chat rooms in any way," Pepsi released in a statement.

Georgia-Pacific responded likewise, after Yahoo! acknowledged that Brawny paper towels were advertised in a room entitled "6 To 11 Year Old Girls Into Older Men."

Other companies who pulled advertising include State Farm Insurance and Countrywide Mortgage.

Currently, there is no legislation in place that provides for prosecution of the chat room organizers. Only civil liability can be assessed under current law.

"Short of changes in the law in Congress, we may be limited about what we can do in this area," U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said, further alluding to an inability, from a legal standpoint to shutdown sex sites presented under Yahoo!'s services.

News Tags: Yahoo, Ads, Lawsuit, Sex

How in the world they were

How in the world they were unaware? More like didn't care I would say!

Thanks a lot for your

Thanks a lot for your article that raises a very important issue for parents. Is it safe to let your child browse through the internet? Here I've got some statistics from a survey by the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center:
# Victims: 76% of victims in Net-initiated sexual exploitation cases were 13-15 (1% were 12), 75% were girls.
# Offenders: 76% were 26+, 47% more than 20 years older than their victims; but deceiving victims about the age difference "was a rare feature of these crimes."
Found in chat profiles: 76% of relationships started in chat rooms, including sites oriented to teens, chat sites for specific geographic areas (e.g., Bay Area, Chicago area), sites about dating & romance, and sites for gay men and women
# Grooming: 64% communicated with their victims more than one month, most "relationships" evolved into "multiple forms of contact": 79% had phone conversations, 48% sent pictures online, 47% sent gifts or money. "Investigators described victims in half of the cases as being in love with or having close feelings of friendship toward offenders."
# Little deception: 21% of offenders hid or misrepresented their motives, but "most of these deceivers were open about wanting sex with their victims." A few posed as friends and then assaulted their victims.
# Face-to-face: "Most cases progressed to face-to-face sexual encounters" - 93% of the face-to-face meetings involved illegal sex.

my safe space: http://www.edenfantasys.com/

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