Sweetie, the computer-generated Filipino girl. Image courtesy of Terre des Hommes
More than 1,000 men have been caught attempting to pay for a child to perform sex acts online, after a Dutch charity created a fake user account for a computer-generated young girl.
The sting operation by children’s charity Terre des Hommes lasted ten weeks, with the fake user posing in video chat rooms as a 10-year-old Filipino girl called “Sweetie”.
The fake account was contacted by over 20,000 people from around the world, with 1,000 men from 71 countries offering her money to take off her clothes on camera and perform various sex acts. The names of these men, which included 254 from the US and 110 from Britain, have been passed to police.
The predators were identified using a variety of digital tools and public information from the users’ Skype, facebook, and other social media accounts.
Describing the issues facing those looking to prosecute predators, a spokesperson from Terre des Hommes said:
Immediate action must be taken to stop the spread of Webcam Child Sex Tourism. With the power that we are harnessing from technological advances and increasing global interconnectivity, comes the responsibility to protect the world’s most vulnerable children from exploitation
The charity also created a short documentary about the sting operation:
