Child porn task force boosts arrests in R.I.

Child porn task force boosts arrests in R.I.

March 21, 2011 By Katie Mulvaney

article describes abuse

A presentation about child pornography identified Rhode Island as the state with the highest rate of trading per capita in the country. A map of the United States showed the Ocean State blotted out with dots indicating the high volume of illicit traffic....

Authorities link Rhode Island’s high rate of child-pornography trafficking to the state’s dense population and widespread access to high-speed Internet early on. At any given lunch hour more than 100 people can be found trading child pornography over the Internet in the state, state police say. After 5 p.m., as people get home from work, that number doubles....

Often, offenders work to build collections that can be traded, authorities say. A dozen images of a 5-year-old girl might be traded for one of an infant rape, for example. It is against the law in Rhode Island to produce, possess or trade sexually explicit images of children under age 18.

And as child pornography swelled into a billion-dollar business, one of the fastest growing segments of the criminal world, its victims dropped in age, authorities say. Its scenes have grown increasingly brutal. These are not images of Lolita-esque teenagers, but rather stomach-turning depictions of toddlers....
http://www.projo.com/news/content/CHILD_PORN_TASK_FORCE_03-20-11_46MKVU6_v40.1942979.html