Texas Man Convicted for Running Website Since 1996 Detailing Child Sex Abuse
(The AEGIS Alliance) – Thomas Alan Arthur, an age 64 Texas man, was convicted by a federal jury on Thursday for trafficking stories and photos of child sexual abuse on a clear web site he had been running since 1996.
Trial evidence confirmed that Arthur had run a website referred to as Mr. Double since 1996 and started charging individuals to access the website two years later. The website contained a lot of stories about and drawings of kids, toddlers, and infants being tortured, raped, and murdered. Arthur allegedly permitted every story before they were posted and used the site as his sole supply of income for the past 20 years.
Arthur had the site hosted on a server within the Netherlands. U.S. authorities were notified by Dutch authorities that had further evidence used to convict Arthur in his trial that lasted three days. He was apprehended from his residence in Terlingua, Texas close to Big Bend National Park on the state’s south-central border.
This case was introduced as a part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 to fight against the rising epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, the Department of Justice stated in a press release.
The initiative is led by U.S. attorneys’ offices, the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, and the departments’ Project Safe Childhood program that works with marshals and federal, state, and nearby local assets to better find, identify and rescue victims in addition to apprehending and prosecuting individuals who exploit youngsters online.
Child rape is, unfortunately, a typical problem within the U.S., the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) mentioned. Every 9 minutes in the U.S., agencies with Child Protective Services substantiate or discover strong evidence indicative of children being sexually abused, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ 2016 Child Maltreatment Survey reveals.
One in 9 girls and one in 53 boys below the age of 18 experienced sexual assault or abuse by the hands of an adult, a 2014 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health shows. An estimated 93 percent of the perpetrators are known to the victims, often as an acquaintance or member of the family, a 2000 U.S. Department of Justice report entitled, “Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement” says.
Prison inmates who are known for having a sexual attraction to minors generally face a “living hell” behind bars, usually occupying the bottom rung of the prisoner hierarchy. Other inmates will typically defecate in their jail cells, use them as sex slaves or target them for violence and homicide as a strategy to acquire an elevated status.
Such offenders are sometimes placed into protective custody, however, even there they’re despised by numerous prisoners who derisively refer to them as “Short eyes,” “chomos,” “tree jumpers,” or “Chesters,” a slang neologism constructed from the words “child” and “molester.”
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
