Il n’y a pas de sirènes sur internet….

À: Dominique Lott

Cc: Maître Fritsch; Maître Mifsud

Objet: Il n’y a pas de sirènes sur internet….

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Monsieur le Maire,

J’ai lu l’article ci-dessus à votre sujet dans Le Parisien. (Text

Votre avocate a dit que vous avez « succombé aux sirènes d’Internet ». Ce qu’elle n’a pas dit, c’est qu’il n’y a pas de sirènes sur internet, du moins pas sur la partie d’internet où vous étiez. Dans la partie où vous êtes allé, il n’y a que des enfants victimes de violence sexuelle, et vous avez choisi de les voir comme des objets sexuels. Nous savons avec certitude qu’il y a 10 000 enfants violés et agressés sexuellement, parce que vous les avez vus, vous les avez délibérément téléchargés et vous les avez partagés avec le reste du monde, propagés leur douleur et leur souffrance.

J’ai aussi trouvé intéressante la façon dont vous avez réussi à tout ramener à vous. Vous avez démissionné comme maire, vous allez voir un psychologue et, bien sûr, vous avez plaidé coupable et déclaré « Ça ne sert à rien de le nier », mais pour nier quoi exactement? Nier que vous avez délibérément cherché ces dossiers de viol et de sodomie? Nier que vous avez expressément installé un logiciel spécial pour accéder à ces fichiers? Nier que vous avez utilisé des mots clés pour rechercher des dossiers d’abus sexuels d’enfants aussi jeunes que 8 ans? Nier que les dossiers que vous cherchiez contiennent l’abus sexuel le plus choquant d’un vrai enfant quelque part dans le monde ? Nier avoir trouvé ça excitant sexuellement ? Nier que vous avez délibérément contribué à la propagation et à la diffusion de ce matériel dans le monde entier pour attaquer la dignité et le bien-être de ces jeunes gosses? Que votre désir de vous masturber vous a fait oublier que c’était contre le Code criminel, le Code social et le Code de la nature lui-même ?

En tant que maire d’Echenon, vous étiez un pilier de votre communauté. Un agent de l’État et un Officier de Police Judiciaire. On pourrait dire que vous avez un rôle spécial à jouer dans la protection des personnes vulnérables de votre ville, comme les enfants. Mais ces enfants n’étaient pas dans votre communauté, ce qui rendait plus facile de voir leur douleur et leur souffrance, de les voir sexuellement et de vous faire plaisir. Il est clair que vous voyez les enfants comme des objets sexuelle et donc vous devez être considéré comme un risque pour eux. Et pour tous les enfants, y compris ceux de votre propre famille.

Des Sirènes et beaucoup d’autres créatures fantastiques comme des licornes et des phénix existent sur l’internet surtout lié à Harry Potter. Une des autres créatures qui exist est un détraqueur. Ce sont des monstres qui se nourrissent du bonheur des humains, laissant derrière eux que la dépression, la tristesse et l’anxiété. Peut-être que Maitre Élodie Mifsud aurait dû utiliser la métaphore d’un détraqueur plutôt  qu’une sirène pour justifier vos activités en ligne.

Dominique Lott. Photo by LBP/Bruno THIEBERGIEN
Dominique Lott. Photo archives LBP/Bruno THIEBERGIEN

Même le procureur demande une peine avec sursis pour vous. Je ne pense pas que vous le méritiez. En vous faisant passer pour une victime des sirènes et des dangers d’Internet dans cette affaire, nous ignorons les vraies victimes. Ce sont les enfants prépubères dans les fichiers que vous avez obtenus exprès en ligne. Vous devriez aller en prison et le tribunal devrait ordonner que l’on retrace chacun de ces enfants et qu’on leur donne la possibilité de vous poursuivre pour atteinte à leur dignité et atteinte à leur vie privée. Ce n’est qu’à ce moment-là que justice sera rendue.

Veuillez recevoir, Monsieur/Madame, mes salutations distinguées

Mick

10 years is a long time (for an abused child)

Thea Puymbroek 1978 -1984

On the 22nd of August 1984, Police were called to the Holiday Inn in Eindhoven because a porn actress had been found dead of a cocaine overdose. She was later identified as Thea Puymbroeck. She was 6 years old.

What transpired during the investigation was that many, many red flags were missed by all those we expect to see them. Police, social services, and indeed her family were all aware that she was being abused and was being exposed to sexual and drug abuse. Coby Kruijswijk, a neighbour, and the person who cared for Thea most during her short life had been in touch with anyone who would listen about the abuse. Nobody listened. Thea finally died while a movie was being made of her sexual abuse in a hotel and her death was put down to a drug overdose. One would like to think that we could do better today, with increased awareness and increased investment in social services, procedures and laws. One would like to think….

We should never forget that what underpinned the death of Thea was an insatiable desire from some people for new child sexual abuse material (CSAM). That desire still exists today.

The 2021 Octopus conference on Cybercrime by the Council of Europe has just finished and as usual they had a some very useful presentations about online sexual abuse. As an organization, they do a lot of fighting against online child exploitation with the Budapest convention being the first to include Child Sexual Abuse Material as a cybercrime (content) and the excellent Lanzarote convention specializing in child exploitation in general and strongly in online child exploitation. 2021’s Octopus conference reminded me of Thea as she had featured in a presentation I gave to the same conference 10 years ago. You can find it here.

As I have already stated, it is important to remember, what happened to Thea in 1984 was fueled by a market for pornography featuring children – children being abused. At that time high quality movies and magazines of child abuse were being produced but there were still significant challenges in distributing it, obtaining it and because of laws passed not long after Thea died, producing it. Soon after this the internet exploded onto the world stage and all barriers both physical and morally were lifted. The internet fueled a resurgence of CSAM availability that the world had never seen and this continues unabated to this day. New material featuring child even younger than Thea appears online every day everywhere on the internet. In fact it is safe to say that no platform is immune. CSAM produced in 1984 is still circulating on the internet as is material produced in 1994, 2004, 2014 and indeed 2021. Each child featured was sexually abused and each child featured must grow up and become an adult knowing that images and movies of their abuse is circulating online. Think about that for a second.

Child Abuse is a stain on every society. The recording of that abuse and it’s subsequent sharing online is an aggravated stain on every society and everyone associated with the internet. The cyber-utopianism that sees company after company come to market without taking into consideration or dealing with the misuse of their platforms is another aggravating factor. It’s a no-brainer but it’s a cost to the bottom line, so they ignore it until forced not to.

What is perhaps disheartening about the text of the talk I presented in 2011 is it is full of optimism, proud of the progress we had made to that point in removing CSAM from the Internet (especially the web). I also evoked the challenges that remained such as the failure of self-regulation, the lack of investment by law enforcement, a lack of understanding among policy makers, prosecutors and Judges about the seriousness of the issue and the challenges imposed by encryption. All of those remain today, along with new challenges of which there are many. (Think #cyrptocurrency.)

The closing lines of my talk in 2011 were as follows;

Advocacy for sex with children, access to Child Abuse Material and access to children continue unabated on the Internet. Only by all sectors of society working together can we hope to improve.

Nothing in that statement has changed in 10 years. Is it likely to change in the next 10? The EU commission is working on regulation for the online service providers that should bring change in the same way GDPR did. If the EU does its job properly and does not allow the hard-line privacy advocates to win the day it should be revolutionary and protect countless children from further abuse, revictimization and prevent people from accessing material which is fuelling ongoing actual abuse of real children. Finding and removing child sexual abuse material from the internet should be the job of those who own the networks that creates the network of networks. They are the only ones who can. They are also the only ones who can ensure the privacy of users.

Somewhere in the middle there must be ground where both of these ideals can be satisfied and this plague arrested so that in 2031 we’ll have more to cheer about.

the language of child abuse

They say you can’t have an omelette without breaking eggs.  Similarly, you can’t have child pornography[1] without abusing a child; a real child, being real abused.

With this in mind, most professionals working in this area no longer use the term child pornography and use instead the term child sexual abuse material or CSAM. 

This makes it instantly recognisable for what it is, photo, video and text depictions of a child or children being sexually abused.  From the mid 1980’s countries began to make this material illegal through strong legislation that reflected societies abhorrence at the fact that it existed at all and the advent of the internet accelerated this process.  The UN, the Council of Europe and the EU all have strong legal instruments in place for their members.

In policing circles, we have worked hard to “re-see” this material as crime scenes in themselves rather than just evidence of crime for the person possessing or distributing it.  It is only right that we put children first and work to identify the child in the material, to stop the abuse as early as possible.  It is also right to see the material from the child’s perspective and not that of the abuser.  Abusers, including those who possess and distribute the documented abuse, see it as pornography, designed to titillate sexually, to arouse.  We must take that “regard” away by removing the word pornography. 

This is all contained in the Luxembourg Guidelines[2] a terminology guide to harmonise the terms and definitions related to child protection.  You will find this discussion on page 38.

Calling it porn denigrates the actors who “star” in these blockbusters, those human beings who did not consent, were not rewarded and who suffer life changing mental and sometimes physical scars. 

By calling it Child Sexual Abuse Material you acknowledge the reality for the child, remind the degenerate who made it what they’ve done and signal your and societies’ disgust that they stoop so low in our name.

You choose.


[1] As defined in the Directive 2011/93/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2011 on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography

[2] Pulled together by ECPAT Luxembourg after significant input from a large number of experts in the area of child rights and child protection. http://luxembourgguidelines.org/