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For
Immediate Release
Calgary:
"Due to liberal attitudes about children, crime
and sex for the past 25 years Canada has the distinction
today of being ranked fourth amongst users and distributors
of criminal material called child porn (it is not porn,
it is rape and abuse). This is unacceptable for a civilized
nation," says Brian Rushfeldt, Executive Director
of Canada Family Action Coalition (CFAC).
"Every
image is evidence of a crime as stated in our Criminal
Code. Distributing it is also a criminal act. But the
government has not acted with full force on this activity.
And to add to the dangers posed to children, internet
service providers distribute this criminal material
with immunity", said Rushfeldt.
CFAC
is calling on the government, not to violate rights
and freedoms, but to apply criminal law to protect children.
The wording in the criminal code must be changed to
read "child rape and abuse" rather than pornography.
Also law must require the reporting by an internet server
of IP addresses. And requiring ISPs to block criminal
activity has nothing to do with rights and freedoms;
it has everything to do with applying laws that any
civilized country ought to do to protect vulnerable
children. Some data indicates that more than 30 per
cent of those who view child pornography go on to prey
on children. "Every image taken of a child being
raped and abused is a crime scene not just an internet
image," said Rushfeldt.
Investigators
seem horrified, calling their findings in the latest
international sting a "social epidemic." In
Ontario alone it is reported that more than 15,000 Ontarians
are using their computers to distribute child rape and
abuse images. And every one of those is distributed
by an internet service for a fee. "A special task
force in the U.S. – with help from a global network
of investigators, including Toronto police – has
discovered that in a four-month period last year, more
than 4,000 computers in this city were involved in trading
images of ‘child sexual abuse,’" says
the head of the task force in the Toronto Star. It was
also reported in the Toronto Star, “More than 44,970
computers nationwide are actively engaged in trading
child pornography, the data show. And Canada ranks fourth
in the world behind Luxembourg, the Netherlands and
Bermuda for the highest distribution rates per capita
of such illegal images."
Further
investigation revealed that, "In Canada, pornographic
images involving children have been traced to more than
205,305 unique IP addresses.” And every IP address
is a person who can be identified. Just as a car license
plate or a phone number is registered to a person, so
is an IP address.
Liberal
attitudes breed a society of crime and degradation.
This was understood several thousand years ago in King
Solomon's era in Israel. A saying recorded from that
era says this: "When a crime is not punished people
feel it safe to do wrong …" It has been apparent
to many in Canada for years that refusal to give strong
sentences to child sex criminals only allows them back
on the street to abuse and rape more children. A more
sure way to protect children is to remove child sex
predators from society permanently.
The
previous Progressive Conservative and Liberal governments
for years failed to take any meaningful action. CFAC
is calling upon the Conservative government to now implement
laws, policies and regulations that will require ISPs
to report all known websites and email addresses distributing
criminal content to the law enforcement, to block all
known child sex sites, to increase sentences for convicted
criminals, to have a clear and usable registry, and
publicize the names of child sex criminals. It is clearly
time for action, not studies; action, not partisan dithering;
and action, not soft rehabilitation ideology.
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For
interviews, call 403-295-2159 - Brian Rushfeldt
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