Posted on 05/14/2002 5:30:58 PM PDT by gd124
Parents expose kids on titillating Web sites
By Helen Kennedy New York Daily News May 12, 2002
NEW YORK - In the $40 amateur video, Mandi dances seductively for the camera in a skimpy string bikini emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes.
Her long legs encased in red fishnet tights, the pretty brunette Texan grinds her star-spangled bottom at the lens, then gets down on all fours, pouting provocatively.
Mandi is 11.
And the video is being hawked on the Internet by her parents. Perfectly legally.
Mandi's World is one of dozens of sites parents have created recently to sell snapshots and videos of their scantily clad kids under the guise of child modeling, an enormously profitable niche that has exploded in the past year.
The sites, some featuring girls as young as 6, don't show nudity or overt sexual acts, thereby breaking no child porn laws. Technically, they show no more skin than a kid's bathing suit ad.
But the child modeling sites, which get thousands of hits per day, have a primary audience of pedophiles.
They are set up just like porn sites, with all but a few sample pictures hidden in a members-only area accessed by credit card for $20 to $30 a month. Billing, viewers are assured, will be discreet.
"In and of itself, it's not illegal," said Ray Smith, head of the U.S. Postal Inspector Program for Child Exploitation. "But just watching these children move would be sexually gratifying to those people who would be inclined to view children as sexual objects."
Entry level pedophiles?
Westchester, Conn., District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, a leading crusader against child porn, monitors the sites with concern.
"This is the entry level for pedophiles," Pirro aide David Hebert said. "It encourages them and entices them to go further. It's the first taste of the ice cream."
Lawmakers are moving to outlaw the sites.
Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., co-founder of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, introduced a bill Tuesday to ban them under child labor laws.
"With all that's happening in the church today, and with the news about trusted people like coaches and teachers getting caught in child porn stings, it really sickens you to realize that parents are dangling their own kids out there as candy for some sick mind," Foley said.
The bill would ban Web sites that charged to view pictures of children without promoting any other products.
Foley said: "If a child is modeling for Gap or Gucci, it's legal. If the site is selling nothing else than the child via photos or video clips, it's illegal."
He also is pushing for hearings, saying he would like to subpoena parents to explain to Congress why they are selling videos of their half-clad kids. "Can you imagine, as a parent, basically giving a pedophile an all-access pass to your child?" he asked.
Parents insist they are hurting no one and are actually improving their kids' lives by fattening their college funds and boosting their self-esteem.
Each Web site has an e-mail fan club, and some parents participate, updating members, often thousands of them, almost all men, on the daily activities of their little girls.
"Stacy's Pop" told 1,400 fans of blond "Stacy Starlet" all about her plan to redecorate her bedroom. He welcomed feedback.
"Please understand that Stacy is 7, and all commits (sic) are welcome, but please keep them so that she can understand them," he wrote.
Fan club members, some with screen names like "luvyunggirls," chat obsessively about the girls, raving over the latest outfits and poses and how cute missing baby teeth are.
The club moderator, concerned that Yahoo!, which hosts most of the fan clubs, would delete it, warned members: "Remember Stacy's parents, who are both involved in her Web modeling career, might want to show this club to Stacy from time to time. So keep in mind when posting any pictures or messages that a cute, innocent, precious 7-year-old angel of a child might see your posting."
More and more sites
Yahoo! routinely deletes the groups, but new ones pop up. And the men keep posting creepy requests.
"Would just like to see more of her posing prone (showing her legs and pretty feet)," one Mandi fan wrote. "It would be awesome to see her do a dancing video wearing high heels . . . with more emphasis on the hips and shaking that derrier (sic)," another wrote.
They take votes like: "What type of panties would you like Mandi to model her pretty little bum in?"
One of the first online child models was perky blond "Jessi the Kid," now a veteran at 12.
In an e-mail interview with the New York Daily News, her mother said she stumbled on the lucrative concept in 1999, after she put pictures of her daughter's ninth birthday online for far-flung friends and family. Suddenly, the site was swamped with visitors.
"We received so many inquiries," she wrote. "it left us dumbfounded."
Soon, Webe Web set up a professional site and was charging for the pictures, first $15 for 60 days, soon four times that.
They sell videos of Jessi playing with crafts, cooking (in a pair of thigh-high stockings) and doing yoga.
"Jessi's Mommy," as she signs herself, insisted the pictures and videos are aimed at other children and parents, not pedophiles.
"Someone once told me long ago that if you were to gear a product, any product, toward children, it would sell," she said. "Parents will buy anything to keep their kids busy and out of their hair."
Just about 'fashion'
She said the whole point is to "show kids the cool new things to do."
"We threw in some fashion files to show what the latest thing in kids wear was," she added.
She bristled at suggestions that there is something unseemly about Jessi's exposure.
"Who is anyone to tell my child at what age she can create and sell a product?" she said. "Jessi is thrilled to be earning her way to college at such an early age and, as her mommy, I can't tell you what it has done for her self-esteem."
Why would a pedophile pay for pictures of clothed kids when there are so many hard-core child porn sites out there?
For a start, you can't go to jail for having such pictures on your hard drive.
And for many pedophiles, attracted emotionally as well as sexually to the innocence of children, pictures of scantily clad little girls or boys are almost as precious as nude photos.
David Westerfield, charged in San Diego with murdering 7-year-old neighbor Danielle Van Dam, had 64,000 pictures of children on his computer. About 100 were pornographic.
3,000 hits a day
The interest is enormous. One typical site had 32 million hits in the past nine months from 357,000 visitors. Another gets about 3,000 individual users a day.
Webe Web's success has begun to spawn competitors.
At one new rival, paying members can vote on what a stable of little girls will wear for the next photo shoot. Another auctions off panties that some of the girls wear in photo shoots.
Californian Steve Stewart sells $20 CD-ROMs full of pictures of young girls at his Web site, including some of an 11-year-old in a see-through white bra that she doesn't need yet.
The owner of an Australian site devoted to "cute kids" as young as 6 denies the site is geared to pedophiles.
"We get feedback like, 'I was a parent myself, but unfortunately lost my child in a accident, and it is good to see the children just having fun,' " he said.
"Sorry, we just don't see girls, clothed, usually in bikinis, as harmful or immoral."
No bumping and grinding, for cryin' out loud. The kids' parents approve of the pictures.
But articles like this make me wonder if I did the right thing. I'd hate to think of some NAMBLA pervert getting his jollies ... UGH!!
Now full grown women are another matter.
I was born in Connecticut, and I'm shocked to learn I still live there!
No normal adult male is interested in pictures of strangers' children. This is about as low as it gets, flesh-peddling your own kids to creeps, but it seems to be a rapidly spreading sickness in this degenerate society - Jonbenet Ramsey, et al.
How about dressing your own daughter up like a tart and charging admission?
Not true. This paper will probably get sued(and rightly so) by Westerfield when the truth comes out about the Danielle van Dam case. Westerfield had about 64,000 images, about 100 looked as if they could possibly be of women under 18 yrs old(read: shaved). Huge, huge difference, epecially when you realize that even the corrected statement is spun by the prosecution to smear Westerfield.
....it really sickens you to realize that parents are dangling their own kids out there as candy for some sick mind....
Got that right, anyway.
These kids will grow up someday, and they will not have amnesia. What they don't understand now, they will understand with clarity when they have matured. These parents should fear the future judgement of their children.
I wonder how much money is being spent, and how much is being "saved for college." Some of these parents might also need to fear the judgement of civil courts when their kids are grown and wonder where the money went.
What else can be said? Most mothers would claw your eyeballs out with their thumbs before allowing such as this, and this "mother" is offended someone could think bad things about her? Well, "Jessi's mother" is less of a mother than a sow pig.
Here's a better question, should you be arrested for posting those links or viewing those pictures?
Not to worry - they're too busy right now switching parishes and helping Queen Hillary prepare her assault on the White House.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.