Self-Produced Child Porn

There's a disturbing article in today's New York Times about teens who use webcams to start their own home-based pornography businesses. They call themselves "camwhores."

The business has created youthful Internet pornography stars - with nicknames like Riotboyy, Miss Honey and Gigglez - whose images are traded online long after their sites have vanished. In this world, adolescents announce schedules of their next masturbation for customers who pay fees for the performance or monthly subscription charges. Eager customers can even buy "private shows," in which teenagers sexually perform while following real-time instructions.

The lure is the prospect of easy money. Many teenagers solicit "donations," request gifts through sites like Amazon.com or negotiate payments, while a smaller number charge monthly fees.

The central figure in the story is a boy named Justin, now 19, who entered the world of cybersex five years ago shortly after acquiring a webcam he originally hoped would help him connect with other teenagers. He didn't attract the attention of any adolescents but did catch the eye of a number of adult men. One of them helped him set up an account on PalPal.com and promised him $50 to sit in front of his camera bare-chested. Eventually his "audience" grew to 1,500 paying customers (Justin earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in under 5 years) and the requests became more sordid.

One of the most alarming things about this story (and there are many) is the description of the people who paid for Justin's services:

In its investigation, The Times obtained the names and credit card information for the 1,500 people who paid Justin to perform on camera, and analyzed the backgrounds of 300 of them nationwide. A majority of the sample consisted of doctors and lawyers, businessmen and teachers, many of whom work with
children on a daily basis.

As Justin's business grew, he became technologically more savvy, adding more sophisticated cameras to his computer system which he hid in his room. There's a sobering lesson for parents in all this:

Justin's mother, Karen Page, said she sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Her son seemed to be just a boy talented with computers who enjoyed speaking to friends online. The Webcam, as she saw it, was just another device that would improve her son's computer skills, and maybe even help him on his Web site development business.

"Everything I ever heard was that children should be exposed to computers and given every opportunity to learn from them," Ms. Page said in an interview.
She never guessed that one of her son's first lessons after turning on his Webcam was that adults would eagerly pay him just to disrobe a little.

A video interview with Justin is also available (check sidebar of article).
 


Earlier this month Al Mohler wrote a commentary about the dangers associated with the explosion of teen blogging in which he said, "Responsible Christian parents will establish clear boundaries and rules for their childrens' use of the Internet. There should be absolutely no expectation of privacy when it comes to what their teenagers are doing and writing on the Internet. The stakes are simply too high." In light of this new phenomenon, the extent of which is unknown, such a warning is all the more urgent.