Facebook back in child-porn spotlight

A full five years after a four-part series of special reports by WND News Editor Chelsea Schilling exposed the dark side of Facebook, its trafficking in child pornography, the company is back in the headlines over the same issue.

The National Sentinel reported Thursday Facebook officials "were allegedly told the site was hosting images of child pornography and terrorist content, but refused to take it down."

The report said the company could be facing criminal charges in Britain.

The Times of London said the social media company "failed to take down dozens of images and videos that were 'flagged' to its moderators, including … several violent pedophilic cartoons, a video of an apparent sexual assault on a child."

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Instead of removing the content, the paper reported, moderators said the posts did not breach the site's "community standards."

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The report cited a leading queen's counsel, Julian Knowles, "who reviewed the content [and] said that, in his view, much of it was illegal under British law."

Knowles said Facebook was at risk of committing a criminal offense because it had been made aware of the illegal images and had failed to take them down.

Knowles told the news agency one video "appears to depict a sexual assault on a child."

That would undoubtedly breach U.K. indecency laws," Knowles said.

Facebook also has been a vehicle for promotion of terror, with videos showing beheadings.

"I would argue that the actions of people employed by Facebook to keep up or remove reported posts should be regarded as actions of Facebook as a corporate entity. If someone reports an illegal image to Facebook and a senior moderator signs off on keeping it up, Facebook is at risk of committing a criminal offense because the company might be regarded as assisting or encouraging its publication and distribution," he told the Sentinel.

As part of an exclusive news investigation, WND's Chelsea Schilling located dozens of child-porn images posted by pedophiles and predators who trade thousands of pornographic photos on Facebook. The four-part series: 1) “Kids raped, sodomized on Facebook Pages,” 2) “Can Facebook’s child porn explosion be stopped?,” 3) “Investing in Facebook? You don’t have clean hands” and 4) “Facebook kid porn: Reaction hot and heavy.”

The New York Times said BBC journalist Angus Crawford's original reporting on the "sexualized images of children" on Facebook in 2016 "prompted the police to investigate, leading to a man being jailed over the issue."

He later contacted the company, raising the issue of more inappropriate images.

"But to his surprise, the Silicon Valley giant reported him and the BBC to the police," the report said.

The Times said Facebook "argued that it was just following established industry-standard procedures – and British law – by alerting the authorities to image of child exploitation, something it said it does with all such pictures."

Asked by WND for comment, Justin Osofsky, Facebook's vice president of global operations replied with a statement.

“We are grateful to The Times for bringing this content to our attention," Facebook said. "We have removed all of these images, which violate our policies and have no place on Facebook. We are sorry that this occurred. It is clear that we can do better, and we'll continue to work hard to live up to the high standards people rightly expect of Facebook.”

Read Chelsea Schilling's personal account of her heart-wrenching and hard-hitting investigation into the issue, "Let's end child rape on Facebook."

The Times said Crawford's original reporting gained the attention of authorities and resulted in one prosecution.

"This year, he followed up and found that there were still images on the website that appeared to break Facebook guidelines, which state that the social media company will remove any content that promotes sexual violence or exploitation. Mr. Crawford reported the images using Facebook's internal system, but the company took down only 18 of the 100 that he flagged," the Times reported.

Crawford contacted Facebook again and "was asked to provide examples of images that he had reported."

"When he provided the examples last week, the company reported Mr. Crawford and the BBC to the police," the report said.

It quoted Simon Milner, a policy director for Facebook in Britain, who said: "It is against the law for anyone to distribute images of child exploitation. We also reported the child exploitation images that had been shared on our own platform. This matter is now in the hands of the authorities."

WND's reporting in 2012 uncovered thousands of pornographic photos on Facebook.

Graphic images of sexualized children under age 12 and adults raping young kids are traded among circles of pedophiles on Facebook. Censored screenshots published are among the mildest of those found.

WND revealed then that child-porn deviants had shared a photo of two naked girls kissing and fondling one another outdoors. Yet another boy, who appears to be about 4, is receiving oral sex from a child roughly two years his senior.

On the Facebook user page called "Kidsex Young," one man asked others, "Care to trade vids?" Another posted a video of a naked man fondling a baby on a bed.

As part of its undercover news investigation, WND used alias Facebook profiles and located dozens of child-porn images after "friending" many likely pedophiles and predators who trade thousands of pornographic photos on the social network.

During the investigation, entire Facebook predator communities were found. Child pornographers participate in groups to meet others with similar interests. Many of the offenders would list similar interests on their profile pages, including terms such as "Thirteen," "Lolita," "Justin Bieber," "incest" and "PTHC (preteen hard-core pornography)." Their activities might include "Receiving nude pics," and they subscribe to explicit Facebook fan pages posted in plain sight.

Groups available at that time include:

Kidsex Young
Preteen Lesbians
10-17 Teen Bisexual
Incest (2,119 "likes" on April 19, 2012)
PTHC (preteen hard-core pornography)
12 to 13 Boy Sex
Young Gay Pics and Movie Trade
Gangbanging
Hot and Teen Lesbians
Bl-wjob Fan Page (1,662 likes on April 20, 2012, mostly girls, some young-looking teens)
Young Lesbians
Teen Sex
Love Little Kids
I.ncest Forever
Menfor Babygirls
Sex Little Girls
Nude Teens
F--k Young Girls
F--k Young Boys

At that time, too, and despite repeated requests, Facebook did not respond to phone calls and emails from WND about the numerous images, videos or explicit "like" groups favored by sexual deviants.

Facebook, instead, requested to hold an "off-the-record" conference call with WND's Schilling in 2015 about the issue. WND was prohibited from revealing details of the discussion. It's unclear what actions, if any, the social-media network may have taken after the call.

Michelle Collins, vice president for the exploited children division at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC, said at that time the law in the U.S. requires companies to report such trafficking.

"With the global nature of this – and companies the size of Google and Facebook and others – they have individuals using their systems from every part of the globe. So, in many cases, we have received reports from the companies that actually indicate child pornography images were uploaded from [locations around the world]. … The average last year was about three days for the content to be removed," she said.

Discover who is behind the fall of Americans' traditional sexual morality – and sanity! – with "Sexual Sabotage" from WND Books!

The problem is obvious. WND previously reported most such predators aren't merely looking at child pornography images. A 2007 Federal Bureau of Prisons study in which psychologists conducted an in-depth survey of online offenders' sexual behavior, found that 85 percent of convicted Internet offenders said they had committed acts of sexual abuse against minors, from inappropriate touching to rape.

In the original reporting, Ed Vitagliano, spokesman for the American Family Association, told WND his organization hopes Facebook will police its own explicit "likes" and groups where pedophiles find such validation.

"This is an unprecedented problem for an unprecedented innovation. We've never had a Facebook before, and now we're seeing some of the problems that arrive with every new technology," he said.

As part of an exclusive news investigation, WND's Chelsea Schilling located dozens of child-porn images posted by pedophiles and predators who trade thousands of pornographic photos on Facebook. The four-part series: 1) “Kids raped, sodomized on Facebook Pages,” 2) “Can Facebook’s child porn explosion be stopped?,” 3) “Investing in Facebook? You don’t have clean hands” and 4) “Facebook kid porn: Reaction hot and heavy.”