Sledgehammer – Fight Against Internet Paedophiles

The website, which has 700 hits per week, was visited by 12 million users in three days. This was a cause for alarm.

At the start of September 2007, Internet provider Iskon Internet notified the police of an unusually large amount of users at a website of a civil association. The website, which has 700 hits per week, was visited by 12 million users from 172 countries, including Croatia, from August 5 until 8. This was reason enough for the Croatian police to start the largest operation of capturing the so-called Internet predator who share or download child pornography. An investigation showed that the website, through which it all began, was hacked from a North European country and a file was created on it with 99 child pornography images, all of whom were little girls.

This proved to be just the beginning. Until February, when the Sledgehammer operation was presented to the public, the website had visits from 144,115 IP addresses, while 282 were from Croatia. It was determined that access was realised by 187 subjects from 19 Croatian counties, mostly by natural persons.

Educated people with high salaeries

The police started searching and promptly ended 133 cases, confiscating many computers and other equipment which facilitate Internet access. Seeing how examining computers is a long and complicated process, the police notified of their “hunt” nearly throughout the year 2008.

Suspects` profile mostly matched the one the police described as possible perpetrators in cases of child pornography on a computer system or network. In most cases, people with higher education were in question, with high salaries and easy Internet access. One of them was a  Vis island attorney, otherwise a 53-year-olf father of four, who was suspected of saving 120 images of pornographic content displaying children until February 2008.

The same campaign has encompassed educator I.K. (52) of the “Miljenko i Dobrila” children`s home, who had saved 61 images on his computer.

Entire group arrested

Even four suspects were brought before the Osijek County Court, arrested during an operation. These men were of different ages (57, 26, 28 and 37), who were charged with downloading and saving images of pornographic content with children and minors from August 5 until 7, 2007.

Such examples have become an everyday occurrence in Croatia, thus, fear appeared that there is at least one perpetrator in every neighbourhood. Along with the police campaign, experts voiced who educated parents on the issues of child pornography, paedophilia and Internet predators. Doctor Gordana Buljan Flander explained the difference between a paedophile and an Internet predator.

The first are sexually aroused by pre-puberty children, which means up to 12 or 13 years of age. In most cases, people of low or mediocre education are in question, with low salaries, who sometimes not even realise their sexual fantasies towards children in real life.

It should be pointed out that most still buckle under their urge, but unfortunately, only 10 percent are revealed, which makes the idea of a sexual offenders` register seem almost absurd, seeing how 90 percent of paedophiles would not be enlisted. The second group, the so-called Internet predators, is often equalised with the first, but according to doctor Buljan-Flander, there is a difference, although their behaviour should be condemned as well.

Internet prowlers can act at any given moment

- The term “Internet predatorr” is not known in Croatia, but there is a difference between them and paedophiles. Prowlers are not aroused by small children, but puberty minors, to be precise – they collect images in which they are naked, photographed in provocative poses and share them. They are not aroused by bodies of these children, but the fact that they are doing something illegal – Gordana Buljan-Flander said, adding that the act referred to abusing children and deserves a legal penalty. Namely, one can never tell with this kind of people when they will stop having sexual fantasies and act on them.

Taking into account the seriousness of the arrested men in the Sledgehammer campaign, every one of them could spend between one and ten years in prison.

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