Sex Abuse Scandals News Stories
Below are key excerpts of revealing news articles on sex abuse scandals from reliable news media sources. If any link fails to function, a paywall blocks full access, or the article is no longer available, try these digital tools.
Newly unsealed Jeffrey Epstein documents have described bombshell allegations about sex tapes involving Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson. In emails sent by Epstein victim Sarah Ransome – sections of which were included as exhibits in one of the filings unsealed on Monday – she said that an unnamed friend “had sexual intercourse with Clinton, Prince Andrew and Richard Branson” and that these encounters had been filmed by Epstein and that she herself had later seen the sex tapes. In the messages, Ms Ransome said that her friend later came forward to report what happened “with Epstein, Clinton, Branson and Prince Andrew” to the police in 2008 but said that “nothing was done” and “she was made to feel like a dirty whore and a liar”. A couple of months later, her friend was allegedly “approached by Special Agents Forces Men sent directly by Hilary [sic] Clinton herself, in order to protect her presidential campaign in 2008”, Ms Ransome claimed. Ms Ransome went on to allege that the friend was given a “substantial” payout directly from the Clinton Foundation “to keep her quiet”. She alleged that if her friend was to break the agreement to stay quiet, “she is dead”. The woman also allegedly tried to sue Epstein for damages but was “severely bullied and threatened” by his attorney, Mr Dershowitz – a man who she claimed “she also had sexual relations with and who was also heavily involved in Epstein’s paedophile ring”.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.
While nobody has offered hard evidence that intelligence agencies, and in particular the CIA or Mossad, were directly involved in Epstein and [Ghislaine] Maxwell's blackmailing of public figures, many of the journalists who investigated the Epstein case have concluded that they were running what is known in the intelligence community as a “honeypot” or “honeytrap” aimed at using sex to blackmail people. The current director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William Burns, had scheduled three meetings with Epstein in 2014. Epstein's private calendar showed that he had dozens of meetings with Kathryn Ruemmler, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama. Meetings with many other wealthy, well-connected individuals occurred years after Epstein became a convicted sex offender. Reporter Vicky Ward ... wrote a story about the Justice Department's 2007 “non-prosecution agreement” with Epstein. Alexander Acosta was the U.S. Attorney for South Florida who arranged the lenient sentence. “I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to leave it alone," Acosta said. In addition to his possible ties to American intelligence, Epstein may have also been connected to the Israeli Mossad. A former Israeli spy, Ari Ben-Menashe, said he was Robert Maxwell's “handler” and claimed to have introduced Epstein to Mossad. “They were agents of the Israeli Intelligence Services,” said Ben-Menashe. The CIA has a long record of using sexual blackmail. In 1975, the Washington Post reported that for years, the CIA had “operated love traps in New York City and San Francisco, where foreign diplomats were lured by prostitutes in the pay of the CIA ...Through hidden one-way mirrors, CIA agents filmed the sexual adventures and later tried to blackmail the victims into becoming informants."
Note: Read more about former Israeli spy Ari Ben-Menashe's claims that Epstein was running a sexual blackmail operation on behalf of Israeli military intelligence. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein and intelligence agency corruption from reliable major media sources.
Court documents made public on Wednesday disclosed the names of dozens of powerful men with alleged connections to convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein who died by suicide in 2019. Federal Judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan unsealed the documents, revealing the names of numerous individuals described in a 2015 civil lawsuit as associates, affiliates or victims of Epstein. The documents include references to former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, the magician David Copperfield, Prince Andrew, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, actor Kevin Spacey, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, the late New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former Vice President Al Gore, among others. The fact that people were named in these documents doesn't mean any of them face allegations or evidence of wrongdoing. Federal prosecutors say Epstein — who worked for decades as a private financier for a secretive list of wealthy clients — also operated an underage sex-trafficking ring based in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida. Epstein allegedly developed a scheme to identify and exploit "dozens" of vulnerable girls and young women, some as young as 14 years old, beginning around 1994 and continuing at least until 2004. Some of his victims later claimed in civil lawsuits that Epstein instructed them to have sex with a who's-who of powerful men. Authorities in Florida first investigated Epstein for alleged sexual activity involving minors as early as 2005.
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Hundreds of pages of sealed records related to Jeffrey Epstein were made public on Wednesday, revealing previously unknown details about the late accused sex trafficker. Previously, the documents had been part of Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 civil case against Ghislaine Maxwell. (Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking in 2022 and is currently serving a 20-year sentence. Epstein was facing 45 years in prison for his alleged crimes, but he was found hanged in his Manhattan prison cell in August 2019.) Bill Clinton was friends with Epstein for years, and he was widely speculated to be one of the high-profile figures who would appear in the documents. In a transcript of a deposition given by Epstein accuser Johanna Sjoberg, she said Epstein once told her that Clinton “likes them young, referring to girls.” In February 2022, Prince Andrew reached a settlement with Giuffre over accusations that he’d sexually abused her numerous times when she was still a minor. He denied the allegations, but was officially stripped of his royal and military titles. Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s former attorney who helped him clinch the 2008 “sweetheart deal” in which he avoided prosecution for sex crimes against minors, also plays a big role in the unsealed documents. According to testimony from Epstein’s former household staff, Dershowitz visited Epstein’s Florida home “very often,” allegedly going there by himself and spending time “in the presence of young girls.”
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex ring from reliable major media sources.
Three people have been arrested and charged in connection with running “high-end brothels” in the Boston area and Northern Virginia. Prosecutors said the Massachusetts brothels were in Cambridge and Watertown, and the Virginia locations were in Fairfax and Tysons, primarily with Asian women in both states. The defendants are Han Lee, 41, of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Junmyung Lee, 30, of Dedham, Massachusetts; and James Lee, 68, of Torrance, California. All three were charged with conspiracy to coerce and entice to travel to engage in illegal sexual activity. "These customers spanned a wide array of different professional disciplines," the case agent said in court documents. “Some of these professional disciplines included, but are not limited to, politicians, pharmaceutical executives, doctors, military officers, government contractors that possess security clearances, professors, lawyers, business executives, technology company executives, scientists, accountants, retail employees, and students.” Investigators also said that James Lee made deposits in his personal and business bank accounts since January 2020 that totaled $4.5 million. More than $550,000 of Covid relief funds, the agent wrote, were among those deposits. Investigators acquired records from the Small Business Administration that ... show James Lee applied for these loans for various businesses, including one listed as E.P.A. Green Services, and potentially under different identities.
Note: This case echoes the case of D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who ran a prostitution ring catering to elite clients. Jeane reportedly hung herself before all of the details of her operation could come out. Learn about other major sexual abuse scandal cover-ups that took place in the highest levels of government.
Three people have been arrested in connection with operating high-end brothels in Virginia and the Boston area that served an exclusive clientele of elected officials, military officers, government contractors with security clearances and myriad other professionals, according to federal investigators. Since at least July 2020, prosecutors allege that Han Lee, 41, James Lee, 68, and Junmyung Lee, 30, ran brothels that advertised primarily Asian women under the guise that they were nude models selling their services to professional photographers. The brothels’ clients, which prosecutors allege could number in the hundreds, also included tech and pharmaceutical executives, doctors, professors, lawyers, scientists and accountants. The allegations mirror a sex service that for 13 years catered to Washington’s political elite, including a sitting senator. Known as the D.C. Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey was convicted of running that operation in 2008. Records of her ring included the names of 815 clients, and in 2016, Palfrey’s former lawyer said her phone records “could be relevant” to the presidential election. A judge later blocked the release of those records. To make an appointment with a brothel, a prospective client had to go through a verification process that included filling out a form with their name, emails, phone numbers, employers and a reference, court filings alleged. They also had to submit a photo of themselves and credit card information.
Note: The D.C. Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey mentioned above reportedly hung herself in 2008. More recently, Jeffrey Epstein reportedly hung himself in a jail cell while awaiting trial for running a child sex ring involving powerful people. In both cases, the identities of elite sex buyers were shielded from public scrutiny by authorities. Learn about other major sexual abuse scandal cover-ups that took place in the highest levels of government.
Meta’s top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, ignored warnings for years about harms to teens on its platforms such as Instagram, a company whistleblower told a Senate subcommittee. Meta instead fosters a culture of “see no evil, hear no evil” that overlooks evidence of harm internally while publicly presenting carefully crafted metrics to downplay the issue, said Arturo Bejar, an ex-Facebook engineering director and consultant. Bejar is the latest former insider to level public allegations that the tech giant knowingly turns a blind eye to problems that its policies and technology cannot cheaply or easily address. [Bejar] first became motivated to study the issue because of unwanted sexual advances his own 14-year-old daughter received from strangers on Instagram. “It is unacceptable that a 13-year-old girl gets propositioned on social media,” Bejar testified, citing a statistic from his research finding that more than 25% of 13-to-15-year-olds have reported receiving unwanted sexual advances on Instagram. Lawmakers on Tuesday ripped into the social media giant. “They hid from this committee and all of Congress evidence of the harms that they knew was credible,” said ... Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Missouri Republican Josh Hawley blasted Big Tech companies for spending “gobs” of money ... to thwart bills that would restrict the industry’s power. He also accused Meta of “cooking the books” on data related to mental health harms.
Note: Read how Instagram connects a vast pedophile network. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption from reliable major media sources.
Lynn and Paul were sitting in their Seattle home one night earlier this year when their son, Michael, a 17-year-old high school football player, burst into the room and made a beeline for his mom’s purse. “I’m being blackmailed,” he said. Michael had fallen prey to what online safety and law enforcement experts call financial sextortion, in which predators befriend victims online under false pretenses, entice them to send incriminating photos and then demand payment under threat that they’ll expose the photos to family and friends. The number of sextortion cases targeting young people “has exploded in the past couple of years,” with teen boys being specific targets, said Lauren Coffren, executive director of the Exploited Children Division at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). NCMEC, which serves as a clearinghouse for records of abuse, received more than 10,000 tips of financial sextortion of minors, primarily boys, in 2022 from the public as well as from electronic service providers, such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, which are required by law to report cases. By the end of July 2023, NCMEC had already received more than 12,500 reports. The repercussions of the abuse are devastating: At least a dozen boys died by suicide in 2022, after they were blackmailed, according to the FBI. Meanwhile, social media companies are playing catch up to stem the tidal wave of sextortion scams targeting children.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Instagram, the popular social-media site owned by Platforms, helps connect and promote a vast network of accounts openly devoted to the commission and purchase of underage-sex content, according to investigations by The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Stanford University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Instagram doesn't merely host these activities. Its algorithms promote them. Instagram connects pedophiles and guides them to content sellers via recommendation systems that excel at linking those who share niche interests. Certain accounts invite buyers to commission specific acts. Some menus include prices for videos of children harming themselves and "imagery of the minor performing sexual acts with animals." At the right price, children are available for in-person "meet ups." Current and former Meta employees who have worked on Instagram child-safety initiatives estimate the number of accounts that exist primarily to follow such content is in the high hundreds of thousands, if not millions. In 2022, the [National Center for Missing & Exploited Children] received 31.9 million reports of child pornography ... up 47% from two years earlier. Meta accounted for 85% of the child pornography reports filed to the center, including some 5 million from Instagram. Instagram has permitted users to search for terms that its own algorithms know may be associated with illegal material. In such cases, a pop-up screen for users warned that "These results may contain images of child sexual abuse."
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Maya Jones* was only 13 when she first walked through the door of Courtney’s House, a drop-in centre for victims of child sex trafficking. When she was 12, she had started receiving direct messages on Instagram from a man she didn’t know. She decided to meet him in person. Then came his next request: “Can you help me make some money?” According to Frundt, Maya explained that the man asked her to pose naked for photos, and to give him her Instagram password so that he could upload the photos to her profile. Frundt says Maya told her that the man, who was now calling himself a pimp, was using her Instagram profile to advertise her for sex. The internet is used by human traffickers as “digital hunting fields”, allowing them access to both customers and potential victims, with children being targeted by traffickers on social media platforms. The biggest of these, Facebook, is owned by Meta, the tech giant whose platforms, which also include Instagram, are used by more than 3 billion people. In 2020, according to a report by US-based not-for-profit the Human Trafficking Institute, Facebook was the platform most used to groom and recruit children by sex traffickers (65%), based on an analysis of 105 federal child sex trafficking cases that year. The HTI analysis ranked Instagram second most prevalent, with Snapchat third. While Meta says it is doing all it can, we have seen evidence that suggests it is failing to report or even detect the full extent of what is happening.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
A US Virgin Islands investigations into the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to an American bank issued subpoenas to four wealthy business leaders on Friday, extending its reach into the highest echelons of tech, hospitality and finance. The subpoenas issued to the Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Hyatt Hotels chairperson Thomas Pritzker, American-Canadian businessman Mortimer Zuckerman and former CAA talent agency chairperson Michael Ovitz are crafted to gather more information about Epstein’s relationship with JPMorgan Chase. The Virgin Islands’ lawsuit against JP Morgan, the world’s largest bank in terms of assets, alleges that the institution “facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of – and were in fact part of – a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls in and beyond the Virgin Islands”. “Human trafficking was the principal business of the accounts Epstein maintained at JP Morgan,” it said. The disgraced financier ... owned two private islands – Little Saint James, or “Epstein Island”, and Great Saint James – in the American territory, and authorities there have secured a $105m settlement from his estate. The demand for any communications and documents related to the bank and Epstein from four of the wealthiest people in the US comes days after it was reported that Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan’s chairperson and chief executive, is expected to be deposed in the case.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring from reliable major media sources.
The former attorney general for the Virgin Islands, who recently secured a $105 million settlement from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, was recently fired following months of friction between her and the U.S. territory’s governor over the handling of the investigation into the disgraced financier, according to people briefed on the matter. Denise N. George, the former official, was dismissed by Albert Bryan Jr., the governor of the Virgin Islands, on New Year’s Eve, four days after her office sued JPMorgan Chase in federal court in Manhattan for its dealings with Mr. Epstein, who died of an apparent suicide in 2019 while in federal custody. The timing of Ms. George’s firing fueled media speculation in the Virgin Islands and beyond that the suit against JPMorgan was the immediate cause. In late December, Ms. George’s office sued JPMorgan in federal court in Manhattan, claiming that bank was derelict in providing banking services to Mr. Epstein during the time he was charged with sexually abusing teenage girls and young women at Little St. James and elsewhere in the U.S. The lawsuit accused JPMorgan of facilitating and concealing wire and cash transactions that should have raised suspicions that Mr. Epstein was engaging in the sexual trafficking of teen girls and young women. The lawsuit contends the bank essentially turned a “blind eye” to Mr. Epstein’s conduct because it was profitable. JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank by assets, was Mr. Epstein’s primary banker from the late 1990s to 2013.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on banking corruption and Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking ring from reliable major media sources.
Five years nearly to the day since the New York Times and the New Yorker published their explosive exposés on Harvey Weinstein and his myriad misdeeds – all of them leveraging his vaunted position in Hollywood to extract sex and force humiliation on hopeful actresses – Weinstein and several other men accused as part of the broader #MeToo movement are seeing the inside of a courtroom. Weinstein, who was already sentenced to 23 years in prison for rape and sexual assault in New York, now faces trial for similar crimes in California. Paul Haggis, who won an Oscar for directing the film Crash ... goes to trial next month in a civil suit filed by a film publicist who says he raped her. And Kevin Spacey is also facing a civil suit filed by actor Anthony Rapp, who says Spacey got on top of him and made a sexual advance when he was just 14 and Spacey was 26. All three men have a few things in common. They are (or were) among Hollywood’s most powerful men. They are a tiny minority among men accused of assault as part of the #MeToo movement to actually see the inside of a courtroom. And they all demonstrate both the benefits and the limitations of the legal system adjudicating sexual assault claims. Is this justice? No, not for everyone; not even for most. It also probably doesn’t give many feminists much pleasure to hear that men like Weinstein are now suffering the same cruelties and dehumanizing humiliations our criminal justice system has long leveled on more invisible men.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
The government of the U.S. Virgin Islands alleges in a lawsuit filed this week that JPMorgan Chase "turned a blind eye" to evidence that disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein used the bank to facilitate sex-trafficking activities on Little St. James, the private island he owned in the territory until his 2019 suicide. In a more than 100-page complaint filed by U.S.V.I. Attorney General Denise George in the Southern District of New York in Manhattan on Tuesday, the territory alleges that JPMorgan failed to report Epstein's suspicious activities and provided the financier with services reserved for high-wealth clients after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for prostitution in Palm Beach, Fla. The complaint says the territory's Department of Justice investigation "revealed that JP Morgan knowingly, negligently, and unlawfully provided and pulled the levers through which recruiters and victims were paid and was indispensable to the operation and concealment of the Epstein trafficking enterprise." It accused the bank of ignoring evidence for "more than a decade because of Epstein's own financial footprint, and because of the deals and clients that Epstein brought and promised to bring to the bank." "These decisions were advocated and approved at the senior levels of JP Morgan," it said. The bank allegedly "facilitated and concealed wire and cash transactions that raised suspicion of — and were in fact part of — a criminal enterprise whose currency was the sexual servitude of dozens of women and girls," according to the complaint.
Note: Just days after filing the lawsuit against JP Morgan Chase, the district attorney of US Virgin Islands was fired. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's sex trafficking ring from reliable major media sources.
Scandals brought down Harvey Weinstein’s movie studio and major opioid supplier Mallinckrodt. But their wealthy owners, directors and executives were granted lifetime immunity from related lawsuits in bankruptcy court — an overwhelmingly common tactic in major U.S. Chapter 11 cases, a Reuters review found. Such immunity grants have become a pervasive but little-understood feature of the U.S. bankruptcy system. The releases are now granted by judges in 9 of 10 major Chapter 11 cases. The lawsuit shields, requested by the company or organization in bankruptcy, are called “nondebtor” releases because they are bestowed on people and entities that never have to declare Chapter 11 themselves. The recipients effectively get the benefits of bankruptcy protection without the associated financial or reputational damage. Reuters ... examined 29 U.S. bankruptcies that were preceded by mass tort litigation against companies or other entities, many of which included allegations involving dangerous products or sexual abuse. The review found that about 1.2 million claimants in these cases have signed away their rights to sue related parties or face pressure to approve such releases in ongoing bankruptcy-court negotiations. The 29 bankruptcies included those of 14 Catholic dioceses or religious orders and the Boy Scouts of America amid lawsuits alleging child molestation; [and] the collapse of opioid suppliers Purdue Pharma LP and Mallinckrodt plc over their alleged roles in a deadly addiction epidemic.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
On New Year’s Eve 2005, Justin Rose headed to Camp Lemonnier’s cantina for celebratory $2.50 beers with his fellow Marines before heading back to his “hooch” around 1:30 a.m. Sometime after daybreak, Rose woke up to find someone stroking his penis. Disoriented for a moment, he lept down from his raised bunk and gave chase as a man dressed in red dashed out of his quarters and into another tent. He found [Jase Derek] Stanton, dressed in red, feigning sleep in his bed; Rose was certain Stanton was the attacker. So Rose did what he had been trained to do. He went to his team leader, a young corporal, and reported the assault. The first question he heard was: “Are you sure you’re not making this up?” Nearly 1 in 4 U.S. servicewomen reports being sexually assaulted — a rate far higher than that of men. But sexual assault of men in the military is also widespread and vastly underreported. Each day, on average, more than 45 men in the armed forces are sexually assaulted, according to the latest Pentagon estimates. For women, it is 53 per day, according to a September 2022 Pentagon report that uses a new euphemism “unwanted sexual contact” as a “proxy measure for sexual assault.” Nearly 40 percent of veterans who report to the Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, that they have experienced military sexual trauma, or MST — sexual assault or sexual harassment — are men. 90 percent of men in the military did not report a sexual assault they experienced in 2021.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on military corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
Earlier this year, Kik Messenger user “heyyyydude1” was selling a stash of videos he’d amassed of child sexual abuse. One customer, who said he was a 35-year-old father of two, offered to buy 200 videos for $45. “How do I pay?” he asked. “Cash App,” heyyyydude1 responded, sending over his payment details and a code for a Cash App referral fee. With each transaction, and many more disturbing videos sent, the seller was unknowingly providing a pile of evidence to an undercover agent with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s child exploitation unit. Current and former police, as well as nonprofits working directly with cops to fight child exploitation, say that such crimes are often happening via Cash App, which brings in billions in gross profit every year for Block, Inc., the Jack Dorsey-run payments giant formerly known as Square. They say that whether it’s to pay for sex with a minor, to send children funds in return for nude images or to traffic a young adult victim, Cash App is often the payment tool of choice. Though it recently launched a Cash App for Teens feature, the company is conspicuously absent from collaborative efforts to fight abuse, failing to provide any tips to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), America’s national clearing house for sexual abuse material found on tech platforms. Hundreds of pages of court filings describe cases where law enforcement said Cash App was used to either pay for sexualized images or sex with minors and adults.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on corporate corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
A U.S. senator is pressing the FBI for more information after a whistleblower alleged that an internal review found 665 FBI personnel have resigned or retired to avoid accountability in misconduct probes over the past two decades. The whistleblower told the office of Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley ... that the Justice Department launched the review of the FBI’s disciplinary database in 2020 following an Associated Press investigation into sexual misconduct allegations involving at least six senior FBI officials. The follow-up review found 665 FBI employees, including 45 senior-level officials, resigned or retired between 2004 and 2020 following a misconduct probe but before a final disciplinary letter could be issued, according to a letter this week from Grassley to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland. It was not clear how many of those cases involved sexual misconduct. Grassley’s office, which declined to make the whistleblower or underlying documents available to protect the person’s identify, said that was the kind of information it was still seeking but estimated the number could be in the “hundreds.” The AP investigation in December 2020 identified at least six sexual misconduct allegations involving senior FBI officials over the prior five years ranging from unwanted touching and advances to coercion. It found that several senior FBI officials have avoided discipline — quietly transferring or retiring with full benefits — even after claims of sexual misconduct against them were substantiated.
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
The EARN IT Act [is] a bill designed to confront the explosion of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) online. EARN IT would help address what is, disturbingly, a common experience for young users: routine exposure to predatory targeting, grooming, sexual violence, prostitution/sex trafficking, hardcore pornography and more. A New York Times investigation revealed that 70 million CSAM images were reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 2019–up from 600,000 in 2008–an "almost unfathomable" increase in criminality. The EARN IT Act restores privacy to victims of child sexual abuse material and allows them to sueâ€those who cause them harm online, under federal civil law and state criminal and civil law. It also creates a new commission to issue guidelines to limit sex trafficking, grooming and sexual exploitationâ€online. CSAM still exists because tech platforms have no incentive to prevent or eliminate it, because Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (passed in 1996, before social media existed) gives them near-blanket immunity from liability. While some in the technology sector [are] claiming EARN IT is a threat to encryption and user privacy, the reality is that encryption can coexist with better business practices for online child safety. We can increase security and privacy while refraining from a privacy-absolutism that unintentionally allows sexual predators to run rampant online.
Note: To understand the scope of child sex abuse worldwide, learn about other major cover-ups in revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.
MJ was just 5 years old, when her father admitted to his bishop that he was sexually abusing her. The father, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [of the Bisbee, Arizona ward], was in counseling with his bishop when he revealed the abuse. The bishop ... followed church policy and called what church officials have dubbed the “help line” for guidance. Lawyers for the church, who staff the help line ... told Bishop John Herrod not to call police or child welfare officials. Instead he kept the abuse secret. The Associated Press has obtained nearly 12,000 pages of sealed records from an unrelated child sex abuse lawsuit against the Mormon church in West Virginia. Families of survivors who filed the lawsuit said ... church leaders divert abuse accusations away from law enforcement and instead to church attorneys who may bury the problem, leaving victims in harm’s way. “Child abuse festers and grows in secrecy,” said [lawyer] Lynne Cadigan. Laws in more than 20 states [assert] that clergy who receive information about child neglect or sexual abuse during spiritual confessions “may withhold” that information from authorities ... under church doctrine. [Survivors and their families are trying to] change church policy so that any instance of child sexual abuse is immediately reported to civil authorities. Inaction by the church have raised ethical issues. “What aspect of your religious practice are you advancing if you don’t report something like this?” [investigator Gerard Moretz] asked.
Note: To understand the scope of child sex abuse worldwide, learn about other major cover-ups in revealing news articles on sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources. Furthermore, watch powerful evidence in a suppressed Discovery Channel documentary showing that child sexual abuse rings reach to the highest levels of government. Then watch an excellent segment by Australia's "60-Minutes" team "Spies, Lords and Predators" on a pedophile ring in the UK which also leads directly to the highest levels of government.
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