Babies stolen 'to order'

New evidence has shown that babies are being stolen to order in the Latin American country of Guatemala.

Though many Guatemalan children are adopted legally, BBC correspondent Matthew Price has found one mother who now has proof that her baby was kidnapped.

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Madeleine McCann 'was snatched by paedophile ring to order'

By Caroline Gammell in Portimao

British police were told that Madeleine McCann was snatched by an international paedophile ring which photographed her three days before she vanished, police files have disclosed.

According to an email sent by the Metropolitan Police a child abduction ring based in Belgium placed an order for a "young girl".

Three-year-old Madeleine was spotted while on holiday in Portugal by someone connected to the gang who took a picture of her.

The photograph was sent back to Belgium where the paedophile ring agreed that she should be abducted, the email states.

Three days later on May 3rd last year Madeleine was taken from her family's holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in the Algarve while her parents ate at a nearby restaurant.

The astonishing revelation supports Kate and Gerry McCann's long-held theory that their eldest child may have been taken by a child smuggling ring.

The email, sent by an intelligence officer on the Met's vice squad on March 4 this year to counterparts in the Portuguese and Leicestershire police, marks a significant development in the case of the missing girl.

Just last month Portuguese police closed their investigation and cleared the McCanns of any involvement in their daughter's disappearance.

Related: Conspiracy of Silence

Child trafficking in U.K on the rise

Jaiyant Cavale | Jul 4 2008

Child trafficking, one of the modern evils includes recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring of children for the purpose of exploiting them. Child trafficking almost always is synonymous with child sexual exploitation. Child trafficking is also synonymous with developing and under-developed countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa. What is astonishing is the recent report that British-born children have been victims of trafficking and sexual exploitation. In the heartland of Europe, where people assume the safety of children, traffickers and pimps have been using young children for the purposes of prostitution, drug trafficking and crimes as well.

A recent government report talks about an ‘emerging issue’ of British children being trafficked within the U.K. Children in Britain, as many as 18,000 may have been victims of child sexploitation. Shockingly, most venues for these exploitations take place in ‘very, very, ordinary’ places such as lower middle class and middle class neighborhoods and most neighbors don’t suspect anything to be wrong either. Out of the 800 or more premises that were raided, about 600 of them were residential, 157 were massage parlors, saunas, nail bars and the like which are more likely to turn out to be brothels.

Another appalling fact seems to be the method of these traffickers. Men, usually older, lure girls with drugs and gifts of money in cash and kind, act as boyfriends and groom the girls to be prostitutes. The girls usually go ‘missing’ from home to be with their boyfriends who are actually pimps, and succumb to prostitution due to violence and threats. The girls will have to provide sexual favors to the boyfriend’s ‘friends’. Most are subjected to rape, violence, and forced to traffic and peddle drugs. Some girls, as young as 12 are forced to perform sexual acts up to 20 times a night. Majority of the victims are from China and South-east Asian countries with a smaller number of girls from Eastern Europe. Girls who are not citizens of U.K and are staying illegally have been granted up to 45 days of grace to stay on.

Another issue is that of the resistance by the girls to be rescued, that is, they believe they are better off in their present condition than being rescued and according to the police, they go to extra-ordinary lengths to escape rescuers. The police so far have made 232 arrests but that is not a reason to rejoice as the problems seems to be deep rooted. The authorities are in Britain are taking all the steps they possibly could, to track the traffickers and the girls. So far, it has been an annoyingly slow and disturbing job for those trying to rescue and rehabilitate the girls.

UK Adults Face Anti-Pedophile Tests

06-26-2008 London Telegraph

A quarter of the adult population faces an "anti-paedophile" test in an escalation of child protection policies, according to a report.

The launch of a new Government agency will see 11.3million people vetted for any criminal past before they are approved to have contact with children aged under 16.

But the increase in child protection measures is so great it is "poisoning" relationships between the generations, according to respected sociologist Professor Frank Furedi.

In a report for think tank Civitas, he said the use of criminal records bureau checks to ensure the safety of children and vulnerable adults has created an atmosphere of suspicion.

As a result ordinary parents - many of whom are volunteers at sports and social clubs - now find themselves regarded "potential child abusers".

The checks were introduced to tighten procedures to protect children after school caretaker Ian Huntley murdered 10 year olds Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells in Soham in 2002.

However, there are growing fears that the measures have now gone too far.

Professor Furedi said most adults now think twice before telling off children who were misbehaving, or helping children in distress for fear of the consequences.

He said that the need for the checks had transformed parents "in the regulatory and public imagination into potential child abusers, barred from any contact with children until the database gives them the green light".

From next year the new Independent Safeguarding Authority will require any adult who come into contact with children or vulnerable adults either through their work or in voluntary groups to be vetted.

But Prof Furedi's report, Licensed to Hug, highlighted examples of when adult-child relationships were distorted by the need for CRB checks already being required by schools and other organisations.

In one example, a woman could not kiss her daughter goodbye on a school trip because she had not been vetted.

In another, a mother was surprised to be told by another parent that she and her husband were "CRB checked" when their children played together.

In a third example, a father was given "filthy looks" by a group of mothers when he took his child swimming on his own in "a scene from a Western when the room goes silent and tumbleweed blows across the foreground".

Prof Furedi details how one woman was made to feel like a "second class mother" because she was barred from a school disco because she did not have a CRB check.

Prof Furedi, a sociology professor from Kent University, said that "adults are no longer trusted or expected to engage with children on their own initiative".

He said: "When parents feel in need of official reassurance that other parents have passed the paedophile test before they even start on the pleasantries, something has gone badly wrong in our communities.

"We should question whether there is anything healthy in a response where communities look at children's own fathers with suspicion, but would balk at helping a lost child find their way home."

Prof Furedi, the author of a book called "Paranoid Parenting", said there was a trend to treat parenthood as a "professional endeavour that demanded increasing regulation and monitoring".

Prof Furedi said that CRB checks did not "provide anything like a cast-iron guarantee that children will be safe with a particular adult".

"All it tells us is that the person has not been convicted of an offence in the past," he said.

He called for a national review to demonstrate the need to "improve and clarify adult authority".

Prof Furedi said: "The adult qualities of spontaneous compassion and commitment are far more effective safeguarding methods than pieces of paper that promote the messages 'Keep Out' and 'Watch Your Back'."

Figures show that volunteering is on the decline with 13 per cent of men saying they would not volunteer because they were worried people would think they were child abusers, according to a survey last year.

The report comes after Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley Green, said 50,000 girls were waiting to join the Guides because of a shortage of adult volunteers, partly caused by the red tape of the CRB process.

Martin Narey, chief executive of children's charity Barnardo's, said his behaviour had been affected by the suspicions around adult-child relationships.

Writing in The New Statesman, he says: "I am likely to usher my wife forward if a child falls over in the street, lest my picking up the child could be misinterpreted. We need to address that. Adults - particularly men - should not routinely be seen as potential child abusers.

"And we need urgently to expose the nonsense of 'stranger danger' and convince parents that, although the risk of a child of theirs being abused at all is small, that risk comes not from lurking strangers, but from people known by their children - often relatives - who are able to exploit a child's trust."

However, he stressed that not to run any checks on past behaviour that could point to potential abuse would be "scandalously reckless" and he supported plans for the new Independent Safeguarding Authority whose work he said "will restore parental confidence" in adults who volunteer to help groups like the Scouts.

The CRB said yesterday that it will process 3.6million checks this year - up from 3.4million last year - of which 20 per cent were for volunteers.

Vince Gaskell, the bureau's chief executive, said he did not believe that CRB checks were poisoning the relationship between adults and children.

Pedophile fears as student profiles, pictures go on net

By James O'Loan and Melanie Christiansen

June 16, 2008

PARENTS are outraged at a State Government plan to post the profile of every state school student on its intranet, sparking fears pedophiles could find it.

The intranet database, dubbed OneSchool, will profile each of the state's 480,000 public school students enrolled from Prep to Year 12.

Photographs, personal details, career aspirations, off-campus activities and student performance records are being collected from all 1251 state schools.

The site already has been labelled a likely target for computer hackers.

"The social fabric of hackers is such that this database (OneSchool) is going to be a fair target," Queensland University of Technology deputy dean of Information Technology professor Mark Looi said.

"People are going to try and get in. There is no doubt in my mind."

But Education Minister Rod Welford has warned the state-wide rollout of the OneSchool database is "non-negotiable" and students could be refused an education if they don't divulge required information.

Parents outraged

couriermail.com.au reader Sari, of Brisbane, suggested personal information of our politicians, their wives and children should be posted first.

“Then we'll see how safe it is before adding school children.”

Sandra of Brisbane said Mr Welford could not stop her children from attending school if she refused to allow them to be part of the database “because by law the government has to provide my children with an education”.

“Stick that where you must. And you can get screwed if you think I am going to consent to my children's photo and private details being available to anyone and everyone in the system,” she wrote.

I Reckon of Brisbane wrote: “Ya gotta be joking? What a world of paranoid people we have became!”

Andrew of Queensland said: “My own children’s teachers need this information, not every person (including adminstration staff) and the entire education system.”

“Well, I guess my children will be getting a home education as there is no way on this earth any of my child's details will be available to anyone in this way,” Ad of Brisbane wrote.

However, Adam of Brisbane said: “Why would a pedophile bother to hack into a database like this when there seems to be enough vile content elsewhere on the internet?”

Education Queensland said details of 180,000 students from 637 schools already were online and the database would be completed by December.

About 80,000 students are expected to be added to the internal education department database each year.

Welford's ultimatum

Education Minister Rod Welford said parents could be denied access to public education if they refused to consent to their child being profiled, and he dismissed concerns from parents about pedophiles hacking into the database.

"It's not Facebook we're creating here," Mr Welford said, referring to the popular internet networking site.

"The Courier-Mail is playing to the ridiculous, extreme and hypothetical, and I will not be drawn into playing your game."

He said - to his knowledge - no one had gained unauthorised access to Education Queensland's other online databases.

Students must accept it

Mr Welford has warned OneSchool is "non-negotiable" and students could be denied an education if they don't divulge required information.

He also said he understood some people might have concerns about the security of online databases but OneSchool was designed to be more secure than the current system.

"If they don't want to have any of their information recorded ... how else does one record a student's results," he said.

However Civil Liberties Council vice-president Terry O'Gorman yesterday said parents should be concerned, warning the OneSchool system could put students' privacy at risk.

Mr O'Gorman called for the system to be restricted so principals and teachers could access data only on their own students, with non-teaching staff excluded and no access for home computers or laptops.

"Why should anyone other than the teacher of a particular student and the principal of that school have a right to know what a child's academic performance is, behavioural status is or what their life aims are?" he said.

"It just puzzles me as to how it can have any possible benefit to centralise that information, whereas it has a clear privacy downside."

At least four Queensland teachers have been arrested in the past fortnight in connection with an international child porn network. One is accused of super-imposing photos of himself and his students on online images of children being sexually abused.

OneSchool users will have passwords to one of 12 different levels of access to the encrypted data, according to their role.

Until now schools have used paper records and offline computer or internet-based databases to store student information.

Queensland Council of Parents and Citizens Association vice-president Charles Alder rejected concerns about security breaches.

"The security standards on this are as high as on any other system," he said.

Queensland Association of State School Principals president Norm Hart also supported OneSchool.

The first phase of the database rollout, to be completed by December, focuses on developing accurate student-management records including school reports, contact details, attendance, extra-curricular activities, behaviour, career aspirations and parental contact.

Peacekeepers 'abusing children'

Children as young as six are being sexually abused by peacekeepers and aid workers, says a leading UK charity.

Children in post-conflict areas are being abused by the very people drafted into such zones to help look after them, says Save the Children.

After research in Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, the charity said an international watchdog should be created to deal with the issue.

The UN has said it welcomes the report, which it will study closely.

Save the Children says the most shocking aspect of child sex abuse is that most of it goes unreported and unpunished, with children too scared to speak out.

No support

A 13-year-old girl described to the BBC how 10 UN peacekeepers gang-raped her in a field near her Ivory Coast home, and left her bleeding, trembling and vomiting on the ground.

The victims are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence Heather Kerr Save the Children

No action has been taken against the soldiers.

The report also found that aid workers have been sexually abusing boys and girls.

After research involving hundreds of children from Ivory Coast, southern Sudan and Haiti, the charity said better reporting mechanisms needed to be introduced to deal with what it called "endemic failures" in responding to reported cases of abuse.

It also said efforts should be made to strengthen worldwide child protection systems.

Heather Kerr, Save the Children's Ivory Coast country director, says little is being done to support the victims.

"It's a minority of people but they are using their power to sexually exploit children and children that don't have the voice to report about this.

"They are suffering sexual exploitation and abuse in silence."

Save the Children says the international community has promised a policy of zero-tolerance to child sexual abuse, but that this is not being followed up by action on the ground.

A UN spokesman, Nick Birnback, said that it was impossible to ensure "zero incidents" within an organisation that has up to 200,000 personnel serving around the world.

"What we can do is get across a message of zero tolerance, which for us means zero complacency when credible allegations are raised and zero impunity when we find that there has been malfeasance that's occurred," he told the BBC.

Victory for Greek hunger strikers

By Malcolm Brabant BBC News, Leros

Eleven-year-old Salman Marufel sat cross-legged on a bed in an overcrowded dormitory and, using his fingers, hungrily devoured a plate of greasy chicken and rice.

It was, literally, the taste of victory.

Salman was the youngest of more than 100 other war children from Afghanistan who went on a series of hunger strikes to protest against what they claimed were the cramped, unsanitary conditions of their reception centre on the Aegean island of Leros, not far from the Turkish coast.

Their action embarrassed the Greek government, which is under increasing pressure from its European Union partners to improve its treatment of asylum seekers.

Late last week, the boys were visited by Giorgos Costandopoulos, the deputy health minister, who promised they would be moved to better accommodation on the mainland.

"We understand these people. We know very well what their needs are," said Mr Costandopoulos. "And we will do our best for these people in Athens."

Perilous journey

Some refugees will be taken to a summer holiday camp on the Attica coast, not far from the home of Greece's Prime Minister, Costas Karamanlis, while others will be housed in a village built for journalists covering the 2004 Athens' Olympic Games.

Salman said that on two occasions he had gone without food for four or five days.

We were compelled to stop eating to solve our problems Javed, 14, hunger striker

"We wanted the government to listen to our problems," he said. "I want to go to Athens and be free."

Salman may only be 11 years old, but he displays a toughness forged from a lifetime of hardship.

His parents bankrupted themselves to raise the $10,000 (£5,000) demanded by traffickers for helping Salman to escape the conflict in Afghanistan, travel along the old Silk Road through Iran and Turkey, and into a rubber dinghy for the short, perilous crossing to Leros.

"I am really worried about my parents," he said. "But they will be happy that I am in Greece."

One of Salman's fellow hunger strikers was 14-year-old Javed Ahmadzi. He smiled proudly as he described their protest.

"We had been here for about 45 days and, every day, we asked the police, the government and the political people what will happen to us. But they didn't answer. So we were compelled to stop eating to solve our problems."

People trafficking

The move to Athens may not resolve Javed's personal dilemma. He is still of school age. But he wants to work to help pay off the $10,000 paid to a smuggling agent in Kabul by his widowed mother and brother.

"My brother cannot pay the money. I know it won't be easy to earn the money. But I will work in the future, and, in one or two or three years, I will earn enough money to send to Kabul. If I don't pay the money, it will be very bad for my mother and my brother."

On the day the deputy health minister visited Leros, coastguards deposited two boatloads of asylum seekers - 60 in all - who had been discovered hiding on neighbouring islets.

Most were from Afghanistan. But they also included refugees from Iraq and a couple from Ghana in West Africa.

The going rate from Afghanistan appears to range from $7-10,000, while a man who called himself "Bashir from Baghdad", said he paid $3,000 for the comparatively short journey from Iraq, through the Kurdish mountains to Turkey.

"All I have got left is 10 euros," he said. "But I am happy to be here, because here I am safe."

As Bashir and a dozen men without shoes walked to the coastguard headquarters, a burly officer led away two small, thin men, alleged to be the traffickers.

"Falestine, Falestine," said the smaller of the two, protesting that he was a Palestinian refugee. But the Greeks were adamant that he was in fact Turkish.

According to charity workers helping the asylum seekers, the smuggling gangs have adopted a new ruthless tactic. They are now using naive Turkish boys aged less than 18 to row the rubber dinghies into Greek waters.

They pay them about $200 for the trip. Human rights lawyers claim that a loophole in new legislation allows under-age smugglers to be deported back to Turkey without prosecution.

Impossible to police

Leros, an island of 8,500 inhabitants in the middle of the Dodacanese archipelago, simply cannot handle the daily human tide.

The responsibility for what happened lies with Britain and America - they are the ones who bombarded Iraq and Afghanistan Mayor of Leros, Timotheos Kottakis

During 2007, the total number of illegal arrivals amounted to 980. That figure has already been surpassed and it is only May. The favourable, long, summer months are when the smuggling really starts.

The Mayor of Leros, Timotheos Kottakis, is incandescent that Europe is upbraiding Greece for its treatment of asylum seekers

"The responsibility for what happened lies with Britain and America," he said. "They are the ones who bombarded Iraq and Afghanistan."

With its hundreds of islands, jagged topography and remote beaches, Greece has a coastline that is as long as the perimeter of the African continent. Its waters are impossible to police completely.

The influx of refugees has increased since Europe acted to discourage asylum seekers from targeting the Canary Islands and southern Italy.

"There is not the infrastructure in Greece to host this large number of immigrants," says Sophia Ioannou, of Medecins du Monde, which is the lead charity in Leros.

"Greece is a big door for immigrants at the moment. I strongly believe that the European Union has to support Greece in terms of funds, in order to cope with these increasing numbers of immigrants," she said.

Stopover to the West

I asked a British official to list the assistance the United Kingdom was offering its partner on the easternmost frontier of the European Union.

It amounted to little more than meetings and lectures to Greece on how to improve its human rights.

The most kindly face awaiting the asylum seekers on Leros is that of Phillipos Olympitis, a 72-year-old retired pharmacist, who proudly wears the blue and white symbol of Medecins du Monde.

As Phillipos drove to help document the latest batch of asylum seekers, he was stopped by a Leros inhabitant who taunted him: "Just off to boost the island's tourism are you?"

"Malaka!" exploded Phillipos, using the most common Greek insult. "These people are under guard and staying put. They are not coming anywhere near you are they?"

Phillipos is convinced that the only way to stop the influx is to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We used to be overwhelmed by Kurdish refugees," he said. "But I was in northern Iraq recently and it was pretty peaceful. And the Kurds have stopped coming to Greece."

The current occupants of the Leros reception centres may be moving to Athens, but others are sure to take their place.

The frightened and the dispossessed of Afghanistan and Iraq are walking. Greece is just a stop over on their way west.

"My sister lives in Birmingham," said one Afghan as I left his temporary Leros home. "I love Birmingham. See you soon in Birmingham."