72 charged in online child pornography ring, Violence Against Women and effects

"the bulletin board distributed the equivalent of 16,000 DVDs of child pornography, adding that the department had recovered more than 1 million images in the U.S. alone."

"In the United States, more than 20 percent of women have experienced intimate-partner violence, stalking or both. A full 17 percent have reported rape or attempted rape, according to background information in the study."

72 charged in online child pornography ring

Fifty-two have been arrested in the U.S. and abroad and 13 have pleaded guilty in the case, the result of a crackdown by the Justice and Homeland Security departments. Twenty remain at large.
By Andrew Seidman, Washington Bureau
August 3, 2011

Reporting from Washington—
The Justice Department has charged 72 suspected members of an online child pornography ring that encouraged its members to engage in sexual acts with children 12 and under and submit gruesome, violent material to build a massive private database of images and videos on the Internet.

The crackdown is the result of a joint effort by the departments of Justice and Homeland Security launched in December 2009 to target about 500 people in 13 countries on five continents for their suspected participation in "Dreamboard," a members-only online bulletin board that was created to encourage the sharing of graphic images and videos.

"The members of this criminal network shared a demented dream to create the preeminent online community for the promotion of child sexual exploitation," Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement, "but for the children they victimized, this was nothing short of a nightmare."

According to court documents filed in Louisiana, where the ring originated, administrators for Dreamboard set up strict barriers to entry and created a sophisticated membership system that offered incentives for further contributions to the website. Individuals had to post child pornography in order to join the site. To maintain membership, individuals were required to continue to upload images of sexual abuse....

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the bulletin board distributed the equivalent of 16,000 DVDs of child pornography, adding that the department had recovered more than 1 million images in the U.S. alone.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-child-porn-20110804,0,5337258.story


Violence Against Women Can Take Lifelong Toll: Study
Research shows how rates of mental and physical illness rise, quality of life falls

By Serena Gordon HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Aug. 2 (HealthDay News)

Women who've suffered from gender-based violence are more likely to develop anxiety disorders or other mental woes, experience physical and mental disabilities, and have worse quality of life than other women, new research shows.

Gender-based violence includes rape and other forms of sexual assault, intimate-partner violence (such as spouse abuse) and stalking.

Risks for these long-term problems rose with the intensity of abuse. For example, women who'd experienced three or four types of gender-based violence had 10 times the odds of developing an anxiety disorder than women who haven't experienced such violence, the study found. The odds of a woman who'd been subjected to such violence developing a substance abuse problem were almost six times higher than for a woman who hasn't experienced gender-based violence....

Results of the study are published in the Aug. 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association....

In the United States, more than 20 percent of women have experienced intimate-partner violence, stalking or both. A full 17 percent have reported rape or attempted rape, according to background information in the study.

The data for Rees' study came from a national survey done in Australia on mental health and well-being. The survey included over 4,400 women between the ages of 16 and 85 years old.

In that group, 1,218 women (27 percent) reported experiencing at least one form of gender-based violence, while 139 had been exposed to three or more forms of gender-based violence.

The average age that women were first raped was 13 years old and 12 years old for sexual assault. The average age that women were beaten by a partner or stalked was 22 years old.

The more violence a woman was exposed to, the greater her risk of developing mental illnesses, according to the study.

http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=655484