A boyfriend or a pimp??



This picture is posed by model

There is a growing problem both in the UK and worldwide: a culture of abuse that sickens those people brave enough to find out more about it; a culture of sexual exploitation.

 Children (mostly girls, but not always) as young as 10 years old are groomed, trafficked and sexually exploited by older men. When I say ‘older men’, I don't mean 50-60 year olds, I mean men in their mid 20's - young enough to make the excuse of being a boyfriend.

The victims are offered drinks, cigarettes, drugs etc. but later are made to repay the favours by having sex with friends of the man concerned. This in many situations is the beginning of years of sexual abuse.

The link to a story in the Daily Mail from earlier this year tells of horrific abuse to a young girl who was prostituted out by a group of Asian men. Sadly this is not a ‘one-off’ by any means.

According to the United Kingdom Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC) approximately 35 accused go through the legal system each year under charges of human trafficking.

Barnardos quote a figure of approx 75 victims of trafficking a year with as many as 1,000 victims falling prey to pimping or prostitution.

 The problem is, from what I can understand from the Crown Prosecution Services, that because it is so difficult to get a conviction for charges of human trafficking it is more common to try for a lesser conviction of rape. This of course masks the true extent of the problem and leaves the accused with a much more lenient sentence and able to return to their disgusting activities within months of the court case.



Although this problem is rife in parts of Northern England it does happen all over the country, victims are alienated from their families and find it incredibly difficult to rebuild their lives if they are lucky enough to escape from the culture of abuse.

 Sources:



http://www.barnardos.org.uk/what_we_do/our_projects/sexual_exploitation.htm

http://www.cropuk.org.uk/what3.htm

 http://www.soca.gov.uk/about-soca/about-the-ukhtc

Police think they've found NC girl's remains

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

By MITCH WEISS 

The Associated Press

Friday November 12, 2010

HICKORY, N.C. — Investigators said Friday they believe they have found the remains of a disabled North Carolina girl who was reported missing about a month ago.

Hickory Police Chief Tom Adkins said investigators matched a bone found a couple of weeks ago with 10-year-old Zahra Baker's DNA.

"I've been dreading this moment from early on in the investigation," Adkins said. "We have recovered enough physical evidence to think we have found Zahra."

Police also found a child's remains earlier this week in western North Carolina in an area near where Zahra's stepmother once lived. The remains will need to be tested to make sure they also belong to Zahra, Adkins said.

The freckle-faced Zahra, who had bone cancer that forced her to use a prosthetic leg and hearing aids, was reported missing by her parents Oct. 9. They said she was last seen in her bed at their home in Hickory, about 50 miles northwest of Charlotte.

A couple of weeks later, her prosthetic leg and the bone were discovered in some brush, about five miles away from where the other remains were found buried.

"Investigators, agents, officers and staff who worked on this case are devastated that we were not able to find Zahra alive and bring her home safely," Adkins said.

Adkins did not take any questions at the news conference and police have not said how they think Zahra died.

Zahra was born in Australia and moved to North Carolina about two years ago after her father, Adam Baker, met his soon-to-be wife, Elisa Baker, online. Zahra's friends and relatives in Giru, Australia, described her as an outgoing, happy girl despite the cancer, and said she didn't want to come to the U.S.

Soon after Zahra was reported missing, investigators cast doubt on accounts given by Zahra's father and stepmother. Police had trouble finding anyone other than Zahra's parents who had seen her alive in the weeks before her disappearance, and a suspicious early morning fire occurred at the family's home several hours before she was reported missing.

It was then that police discovered a ransom note addressed to Adam Baker's boss on the windshield of Baker's car. Police went to that man's house, and found him and his daughter to be fine. Elisa Baker, 42, admitted writing the bogus ransom note and has been charged with obstruction of justice. She is still being held in jail.

Adam Baker, 33, was arrested on charges unrelated to Zahra's disappearance and is free on bail. He is facing one count each of assault with a deadly weapon and failure to return rental property, two counts of communicating threats and five counts of writing worthless checks, authorities said.

Neighbors and relatives have said that Elisa Baker had a short temper and was abusive toward her stepdaughter. Caldwell County Department of Social Services investigated the family because Zahra went to school with bruises and a teacher alerted school officials, who have said they are prohibited by law from discussing the case.

Zahra's friends and family in Australia were less than thrilled when she moved away, especially since her medical treatments were free there. Kim Wright, who came something of a surrogate mother to Zahra in Australia, told The Associated Press they became friends four years ago at a cancer fundraising event. She was sitting in a chair waiting for her head to be shaved to raise money when Zahra approached, took her hand and told her not to be scared.

Zahra was diagnosed with bone cancer about five years ago. She had her leg amputated and a few months later, doctors discovered tumors in her lungs. She had chemotherapy, but the treatment led to a partial hearing loss. Still, she remained upbeat, attending a camp for children with cancer and inspiring her fellow campers by taking part in all the physical activities.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/police-think-theyve-found-738673.html

View Zahra's thread on the Find Madeleine forum HERE!

275,000 Missing Britons every year to face government cuts

The Independent On Sunday

Missing persons services at risk as funding is slashed
National charity to lose all its government cash as police admit their work on the issue will also be hit

By Brian Brady, Whitehall Editor

Sunday November 7, 2010

How 'The Independent on Sunday' last year highlighted

the crisis facing the charity, Missing People

George Osborne's multibillion-pound spending cuts threaten to sever a national "lifeline" that helps tens of thousands of missing people and the families they leave behind.

Britain's biggest missing persons charity has been plunged into crisis after ministers confirmed it will lose all of its £500,000 government funding. Missing People, which helps more than 100,000 callers a year, warns that the cut will cause "catastrophic" damage to its work supporting "mispers", runaways and their families...

Read more... http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/missing-persons-services-at-risk-as-funding-is-slashed-2127502.html

A miracle in Missouri

There are so many sad cases regarding missing children that we wanted to share one that was actually joyful. This article chronicles the disappearance and discovery of five-year-old Joshua Lane Bender. Joshua is more than your typical five-year-old, he is from a Mennonite family and community and has Down's Syndrome. The latter made it harder to find him since he is mainly non-verbal but the former made it more possible to find him as the entire Mennonite community of Knob Noster, MO and the surrounding areas  turned out to look for him when he came up missing on Saturday, 3 October, around 5 pm.

By Sunday morning nearly 200 people were searching for Joshua on his family's property on foot and ATVs. This number also included soldier air crews from nearby Whiteman Air Force base. Also, van loads of Mennonite families from throughout Missouri showed up to assist with the search. Even the Greater Kansas City Down Syndrome Guild came to the search area to provide the family and searchers knowledge of typical places those with Down syndrome might wander to. It would seem almost everyone that heard about Joshua wanted to be a part of his rescue in some fashion.

It must have seemed like the longest night of his mother's life as the temperatures dropped and Joshua was still nowhere to be found. He was described as having on a long-sleeved sweatshirt, but a heavy coat would have been the appropriate attire for a small boy out in the night.

As the morning dawned, the searchers never stopped their steady pace of looking for him and it paid off. Joshua was finally found by someone searching on foot about 100 yards from his family's farmhouse in a huge crop of soybeans on the 240-acre farm. Ironically, the same area had been searched before in the night but Joshua remained invisible to the searchers at the time. His father said when he was found he was cold and wet and had blue feet but there was no lasting damage to Joshua physically.

As for what happened to make Joshua lose his way, his grandfather, Glenn Bender, says Joshua is very interested in what his siblings are doing and he was convinced Joshua followed one of his brothers and got lost along the way. Joshua's grandfather also suspected that he might have gotten scared and fallen asleep, which was why he wasn't found during the night. "What he'll do when he gets scared is he'll sit down on the spot, start crying and stick his thumb in his mouth. After a while, he'll go to sleep."

His grateful parents were talking about putting a tracking device on him to prevent another occurrence like this one. They said that it is worth it to keep him safe at any cost. 

View Joshua's thread on the Find Madeleine forum  Here!

Sources:

http://www.kctv5.com/news/25260289/detail.html
http://www.nbcactionnews.com/dpp/news/state/missouri/police-searching-for-missing-5-year-old-boy

Channel 4 Interview with the McCanns

3rd November 2010

Part 1



Part 2

Madeleine McCann's parents seek support for London and Lisbon to review the case

The parents of British girl Madeleine McCann today called for support to ensure that the British and Portuguese governments will jointly review the case and "do more" to find their daughter, three and a half years after her disappearance whilst vacationing with her family in the Algarve Portugal.

In a letter, Kate and Gerry McCann urged people to support the search for "Maddie" by signing a petition seeking to pressure the British and Portuguese authorities to carry out "a transparent and independent review of all information connected with the disappearance of Madeleine".

Please sign their petition here

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This is the full text of the letter urging people to support the McCanns’ petition, taken from the Liverpool Echo.

Dear Friends and Supporters,

As I write, it is exactly three and a half years since our daughter Madeleine was so cruelly taken from us.

Three and a half years without her seeing her brother, her sister, her Mummy, her Daddy or her best friends.

We are still searching for her. Our small team continues to review all available information, even though we STILL don’t have access to ALL of the information that the UK and Portugese authorities have. Our team has interviewed hundreds of witnesses, received over 1,000 calls, dealt with over 15,000 emails and maintained a computerised database of all information they have received. Despite the difficulties resulting from lack of official assistance, they "follow up" all new leads to try and get fresh information into the investigation.

It is incredible to think that for the last two years and three months NO police force has proactively been doing anything to help us find Madeleine. Crucially, there has been NO formal review of the material held by the police authorities - which is routine practice in most countries, and especially when a key piece of the "jigsaw" may have been overlooked.

We have tried in vain to get the authorities to play their part but our requests have seemingly fallen on deaf ears. It is simply not acceptable that they have, to all intents and purposes, given up on Madeleine. We need the authorities to do more.

However we know we are not alone. We have the tremendous support of family, friends and of course you the public. A lot of this support comes in the form of people saying to us, "if there’s anything we can do, just let us know" or "I’d like to help but I don’t know how". To these people, and indeed yourself, my plea is simple.

We need your support to continue to lobby the British and Portugese governments to undertake a joint or independent review of Madeleine’s case.

How can you do this?

Simply visit: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/madeleinemccann_case_review/ and sign the petition to call on the UK and Portugese authorities to conduct an independent and transparent review of all information in relation to the disappearance of Madeleine. And in turn, please spread the word and encourage as many others to do the same. Together we can, and will pull all of the loose ends of Madeleine’s case together and find her.

Thank you

Internet chats and its dangers

I am aware that this subject does not headline missing children, however there are many children and young adults who go missing and are sadly later found dead due to the dangers internet chats can lead to and the latter meet up with these chat partners. Some of them are found again, alive, with a traumatic story to tell.

Others are “groomed” over the net, and are brainwashed over months or even years. Some come back home and through counseling can manage to lead a normal life after that, others are not so strong, and even take their own lives due to frustration about the past, and see no way forward.

I would like to use a recent case from here in Germany to highlight the problem of chatting over the internet and then meeting up without a clue WHO they´re meeting with; a case of a young girl called Melanie , aged 23 years. Unfortunately she was killed in an horrendous manner, and had she followed a few simple rules of internet chats and how to do so safely, she may still be alive today.

Melanie had made a new friend in cyberworld, a man who used an “internet username” by the name of 'SARAH', so Melanie was under the impression that she was chatting to a girl. He managed to get her to trust him to the point where they made an agreement to meet up. On Tuesday evening 26^th October 2010, they met up at a Fastfood café, and for the first time Melanie realized what had happened. Too late ! She was brutally murdered and her body was hidden in the woods. A search began immediately; dogs sniffed her as far as a riverbank, and there it ended. However, the police searched Melanie´s computer and managed to get enough information to enable them to make an arrest and the culprit showed the police where he had hidden the body.

Traces on Melanie´s PC led to her murderer

Benjamin F did not sexually abuse Melanie

I will admit to also meeting up with “cyber friends “; people I had never met in my life before, only people I had chatted to on the internet. However, I had known these people for a great length of time; we had exchanged photographs of each other as well as chatted using a webcam. Only after that did we exchange telephone numbers and literally spoken with each other every now and then. I will also admit to then still feeling rather cautious as I had to fly to another country in order to meet up! My plan was to have a back-up and my family knew where I was going and also had contact with the person I was meeting at the other end. I had a lovely weekend and everything went as well as planned !

Anybody who chats on an internet site/social network , and it is suggested to meet-up personally, there are a few rules which have to be applied BEFORE doing so:

1. Make sure you know exactly who you are chatting to by using a webcam.
2. Exchange photos to enable you to make sure you have the correct person on the other side of the line. Webcams are best for that. It´s a live picture !
3. Make sure you have known this person for a longer period and collected enough information about them to make you feel at ease.
4. When a personal meet-up takes place, ensure you do not go alone the first time ! If it is a genuine person you are meeting, he/she will not mind if you do so. 

An excellent story to read about “grooming” is this :

IN LOVING MEMORY OF KRISTIN DANIELLE HELMS – a young girl who fell victim to an internet sexual predator.

Kristin began chatting to a man at the age of 14. Two years later, after helping the police to arrest this same man, Kristin took her own life.

Please do not hesitate to add a comment. I am sure there may be more rules we can put out there or suggestions to help prevent this LARGE and WORLDWIDE problem in the future.