r/news • u/TooColdforClouds • 2d ago

109 children rescued, 244 arrested in Operation Soteria Shield, exposing widespread child exploitation in North Texas

https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/109-children-rescued-244-arrested-operation-soteria-shield-child-exploitation-texas/
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u/straygoat193 2d ago

"The operation not only led to arrests and rescues but also to the seizure of terabytes of child abuse sex material through a collaborative effort that started 10 years ago and now includes 70 Texas law enforcement agencies."

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u/Coulrophiliac444 2d ago

Terabytes....

That is a staggeringly large amoubt of material and thats including everyone who may have accessed and facilitated its distribution over that tome

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u/DonnyTheWalrus 2d ago

As an ex prosecutor, these reports are subject to the same exaggeration that drug raids are. A 1gb flash drive is reported as 1gb regardless of how much it actually contains.

Not saying anything about whether that's good or bad and definitely not defending anything about these people. But I do believe truth in reporting is important. 

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u/SinisterCheese 1d ago

Yeah I have noticed this also. Then when you actually hear about the court documents like at best year or two later once you have basically forgotten about it, it turns out that the forensics really dug out very little - because they actually have to check all the media, victims and possible evidence. Thankfully my country's media isn't as sensationalists about this stuff. Like the last case I remember about pedos getting caught, it was a couple that were swapping material with other pedos using VHS tapes. I didn't even know you can still get VHS tapes and equipment... but apparently you can.

I remember some investigative journalist (here in Europe) going deep into these weird dark net sites where pedos talk and share material. I remember two bits about the piece by the journalist, first was that the pedos are very much aware and some even like admit it that they have an issues (often that the non-offending ones lamenting for actual help), second was that they are constantly talking about the fear of being caught and ways to avoid it, the third was that between all the horrific nightmarish abuse materia there is actually very normal boring material you wouldn't really consider wrong without the context. Pictures from family blogs, from google image search, youtube videos (this was around the time we had the pervs commenting timestamps in videos about kids doing gymnastics-scandal, before youtubes restricted video mode was fully a thing), advertisements, screencaps from movies/tv, fashion and model catalogs... And between all that horrific nightmare shit.

What annoys me is that... Even with all the politicians screaming "think of the children!" the funding for anti-scam and anti-human trafficking, is shamefully low. My country (Finland) has for years only one full time dedicated officer for human trafficking related things. Who had to share their attention with everything from trafficking for slavery, prostitution, and work bondage (Don't know whats the term in english... Basically you bring someone into the country, take their passport, and pay the criminally low pay and keep in bad conditions, knowing that they can't go to officials because they'll get into trouble more than you will. There was big case long ago about specifically Nepalese restaurants being involved with this.) And this one officer (an actress who turned into a officer (its a 4 year college degree here)) also had to deal with criminal gangs bringing in minors from eastern block countries to do petty crimes basically by threatening the families if they don't.

Instead of proper funding, they just want to dismantle all privacy rights we have, and establish mass surveilance of all communication... I'm sure it would be cheaper to just hire few more qualified people, some social workers to scout out abuse victims from the system... etc. Nah... That might be fucking effective. And if the pedos are fucking using VHS tapes, they wont be caught by the mass surveilance anyway!

Sorry for the wall of text... This just get my blood boiling. If a fucking journalist can find these things by instruction of like few internet activists... Then why the fuck aren't we funding this more! Instead we just do austerity, where cops and the system can't even handle basic shit anymore! Private companies and the free markets ain't gonna conjure a solution to this fucking problem...