Hot Toys November 2009
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Pat McKenna
You are a single mom with a young child. You have a job to make ends meet and find yourself dependent on the services of a nursery. You have met the staff and they are caring and friendly, and each morning that you arrive there you are met by a smiling and caring lady who knows all about your child’s quirks. She takes your precious bundle from you and you depart with great comfort and confidence that this is one aspect of your life that is well taken care of.
What in the world could possible go wrong? Vanessa George, Colin Blanchard and Angela Allen. That’s what can go wrong.
A case in the UK has demonstrated how women can become involved in pedophilia and the implications for all those dependent on the trust of women in voluntary and professional positions when this occurs. Generally pedophilia is a male oriented crime, so the case involving Vanessa George is all the more disturbing.
The circumstances of their meeting are all too ordinary: A couple of people getting into chat having met on Facebook, they escalated their relationship to a point where they were exchanging imagery of themselves sexually abusing children through mobile phones and web cams, and innumerable texts to and fro often requesting a specific act of abuse to be undertaken.
Both Blanchard and Allen were sending images to George of themselves violently abusing girls aged five and three. George was abusing infants which suited Blanchard, a nepiophile whose computer was discovered with thousands of images of 12 to 18 month infants being sexually abused.
On one occasion, they were texting while George was at a train station. A young boy stood outside a toilet cubicle whilst his mom was inside talking out to him to ensure his safety. At that moment, George was considering abducting the boy and she and Blanchard exchanged texts pondering the possibility. In other texts they explored the idea of drugging children for sex sessions. Allen had brought a three year old girl to the streets of her town seeking people to abuse her while she watched. They were each becoming increasingly dangerous to the point of being prepared to take depraved action against children regardless of the risk.
Blanchard had previously been cautioned for the possession of child pornography in 2002, and Allen was a former prostitute. Before encountering Blanchard, there is no evidence to suggest that George was anything other than a caring wife, mum and nursery assistant.
What is really worrying is this: Before the day that they stood in court they had never actually physically met, and in fact they resided over 200 miles away from each other. This is the new trend in Internet pedophilia. Traditional pedophile ‘rings’ operate through closed networks that are hard to penetrate. This evolving form of contact between people using pseudo profiles and false identities through Internet and phone relationships makes it very difficult to detect because the logistics involved for police are huge.
The three were caught finally because a work associate of Blanchard discovered child porn on a shared computer while he was away on business. The case has caused real shock and concern because it highlights the vulnerability of parents who need to be able to trust the huge number of women who provide care for children everywhere.
Another particularly distasteful aspect of this case is the fact that George will not disclose the identities of the children that she actually abused, leaving many parents fearful that their toddler was a victim. And if that was not bad enough, it transpires that on George’s release from prison, she will be given a new identity, potentially moving to a new country to set up a new life because she can claim under human rights legislation that she cannot return to her former life due to adverse publicity etc.
Can this story get any worse?
Yes, there is a real sting in the tail, and it is the estimate of the amount of women pedophiles now actively abusing children. The Lucy Faithfull Foundation, a child protection charity dealing with female sex offenders in the UK estimates that now up to one in five pedophiles are women. If you extrapolate some numbers from actual statistics and guestimates then the UK with a population of plus 60 million has approximately 64 thousand female pedophiles.
If you accept that the US has about 5 times the UK’s population then numbers begin to get downright scary. Either way the implications are frightening for any parent. I have said it before and I will say it again: The sexual abuse of children for the Internet market is a much bigger problem than people realize, and when this Web 2.0 generation matures over the next 20 years, increasing stories of the scale of this abuse will emerge and shake us all.
Is there a pedophile on every street corner? Absolutely not. But they are out there, they live and work somewhere, many are married with their own children, we really don’t know who the majority of them are, and few if any of us would ever suspect a caring woman in a nursery.
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About the Author: Pat McKenna is an IT Security Consultant specializing in Child Safe Computing through ChildWatch.ie.
