Odd Baby Pictures
I watch Ellen almost everyday. I think she is one of the funniest women on TV, maybe the funniest. But today I was watching and she was talking about Easter and showed some pics sent in by viewers of babies in "bunny" type suits. I was shocked the pictures had an inappropriate vibe to it. I am very much a child advocate and the more I learn the more I realize that sexual images of children are hard to pinpoint because for most of us we just see a cute baby but for the pedophile they are looking through sexual eyes at the child. Therefore, some images just lend themselves well to child pornography. I didn't feel good about the images and decided to send her a message. This is what I wrote below:
Hey Ellen, I love your show and I have been a big fan of you since your sitcom days. Today I was watching and was frankly surprised by the baby pictures you showed. One was of a naked baby with bunny ears and a cotton ball on its bum and another was a shot from the back of a baby with a cut out in its diaper showing its bum. I realize you love animals and I think you love kids. Do you really believe those images are appropriate? The one with the cut out is clearly referencing cut out underwear which is a very grown up sexual piece of clothing and the one with cotton ball is pretty much a little playboy bunny. You are a fan of Oprah's and she addresses child pornography regularly. While those images may seem cute they are very much the kinds of images of children, taken innocently and sometimes not so innocently by parents that circulate around the web to stimulate pedophiles. This may sound extreme but it is the casual way we treat images of children and spread them around the Internet and TV that allows pedophiles to flourish in secret. Next time, please think twice. What we think is cute isn’t always the safest for children.
Oprah had a show on about Internet predators. A wonderful Officer from CANADA! who works for our wonderful Child Exploitation department was on the show. I must say this unit from Ontario has cracked some of the most disturbing child abuse cases ever and they have become leaders in the fight. So I was happy to see him on Oprah. The officer said they find that people posting images of their children on Face Book, My space, Blogs are leading ways that pedophiles find images of children to use for sexual exploitation. He said if people want to share photos with friends and family, privacy settings should be high. Clearly people do not understand how serious this has become for children. Children are being exploited in their own beds by fathers, step-dads, friends and sometimes mothers and this is being broadcast live on the web. Strangers can now find pics of kids they don't know to masturbate with. We have to treat children's images with sensitivity.
