[back] Pedophilia

The Pedophocracy

by David McGowan

The Pedophocracy, Part I: From Brussels ...

The Pedophocracy, Part II: ... to Washington

The Pedophocracy, Part III: Uncle Sam Wants Your Children

The Pedophocracy, Part IV: McMolestation

The Pedophocracy, Part V: It Couldn't Happen Here

The Pedophocracy, Part VI: Finders Keepers

The Pedophocracy, Part I: From Brussels ...

"Paedophiles can boldly and courageously affirm what they choose ... I am also a theologian and as a theologian, I believe it is God's will that there be closeness and intimacy, unity of flesh, between people ... paedophiles can make the assertion that the pursuit of intimacy and love is what they choose. With boldness, they can say, 'I believe this is in fact part of God's will.'"

Ralph Underwager, 'expert' witness for the defense in scores of child abuse cases and former vocal member of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, in an interview in Paidika (a pro-pedophilia publication), conducted in June 1991

T o the vast majority of Americans, the name Marc Dutroux doesn't mean much. Drop that name in Belgium though and you're likely to elicit some very visceral reactions. Dutroux - convicted along with his wife in 1989 for the rape and violent abuse of five young girls, the youngest of whom was just eleven - now stands accused of being a key player in an international child prostitution and pornography ring whose practices included kidnapping, rape, sadistic torture, and murder.

Dutroux was sentenced in 1989 to thirteen years for his crimes, but was freed after having served just three. This was in spite of the fact that, as prison governor Yvan Stuaert would later tell a parliamentary commission: “A medical report described him as a perverse psychopath, an explosive mix. He was an evident danger to society.”

The man who turned Dutroux loose on society, Justice Minister Melchior Wathelet, soon after received a prestigious appointment to serve as a judge at the European Court of Justice at the Hague. Shortly after Dutroux’s release, young girls began to disappear in the vicinity of some of his homes. Though technically unemployed and drawing welfare from the state, he nevertheless owned at least six houses and lived quite lavishly.

His rather lucrative income appears to have been derived from trading in child sex-slaves, child prostitution, and child pornography. Many of his houses appeared to stand vacant, though at least some of them were in fact used as torture and imprisonment centers where kidnapped girls were taken and held in underground dungeons.

Some of Dutroux’s homes were used in this way for several years following his early release, with a growing body of evidence to indicate that fact to the police. True to form though, authorities failed to act on the information, or acted on it in a way that showed either complete incompetence (according to most press reports), or police complicity in the operation (according to any sort of logic).

Police seem to have routinely ignored tips that later proved to be accurate, including a report from Dutroux's own mother that her son was holding girls prisoner in one of his houses. In addition, key facts were withheld from investigators working on the disappearances and lines of communication were unaccountably broken, inexcusably hindering the investigation.

Police did search one of Dutroux's homes on no less than three separate occasions over the course of the investigation. On at least two of those occasions, two of the missing girls were being held in heinous conditions imprisoned in a custom-built dungeon in the basement. Nevertheless, the police searches came up empty, despite the fact that the investigating officers reported “hearing children’s voices on one occasion,” according to the Guardian.

It was not until August 13, 1996, four years after the disappearances began, that authorities arrested Dutroux, along with his wife (an elementary school teacher), a lodger, a policeman, and a man the Guardian described as “an associate with political connections” – elsewhere identified as Michel Lelievre.

Two days later, police again searched Dutroux's home and discovered the soundproof dungeon/torture center. As CNN reported, three years earlier “police ignored tips from an informant who said Dutroux was building secret cellars to hold girls before selling them abroad.” And in 1995, the same informant had told police that Dutroux had offered an unidentified third man “the equivalent of $3,000 to $5,000 to kidnap girls.”

Incredibly, it was later reported by the Guardian that police actually had in their possession a videotape of the dungeon being constructed: “Belgian police could have saved the lives of two children allegedly murdered by the paedophile Marc Dutroux if they had watched a video seized from his home which showed him building their hidden cell.” The tape had been seized in one of the earlier searches.

At the time of the final search, two fourteen-year-old girls were found imprisoned in the dungeon, chained and starving. They described to police being used as child prostitutes and in the production of child pornography videos. More than 300 such videos were taken into custody by the police.

On August 17, the story got grimmer as police dug up the bodies of two eight-year-old girls at another of Dutroux's homes. It would later be learned that the girls had been kept in one of Dutroux’s dungeons for nine months after their abductions, during which time they were repeatedly tortured and sexually assaulted, all captured on videotape. The girls were then left to slowly starve to death. Alongside of their decimated corpses was the body of Bernard Weinstein, a former accomplice of Dutroux who had occupied one of the houses for several years. Weinstein had been buried alive.

A few weeks later, two more girls were found buried under concrete at yet another of the Dutroux properties. By that time, ten people were reportedly in custody in connection to the case. Elsewhere in Belgium, the News Telegraph reported that: “The corpses of two women and parts of a third body have been discovered in a freezer at a Lebanese restaurant in Brussels.”

As the body count mounted, the outrage of the Belgian people grew. They demanded to know why this man, dubbed the 'Belgian Beast,' had been released after having served such an absurdly short sentence. And to know why, as evidence had continued to mount and girls had continued to disappear, the police had chosen to do nothing. How many girls, they demanded to know, had been killed as a result of this inaction?

Adding further fuel to the fire, as a Los Angeles Times report revealed, was that: “a highly regarded children’s activist, Marie-France Botte, claims that the Justice Ministry is sitting on a politically sensitive list of customers of pedophile videotapes.”

The same report noted that: “The affair has become further clouded by the discovery of a motorcycle that reportedly matches the description of one used in the 1991 assassination of prominent Belgian businessman and politician Andre Cools. Michel Bourlet, the head prosecutor on the pedophile case, meanwhile, has publicly declared that the investigation can be thoroughly pursued only without political interference. Several years ago, Bourlet was removed from the highly charged Cools case, which remains unsolved.”

A report in Time magazine alluded to murky links between the Dutroux operation and organized crime figures. Much later, Marc Verwilghen - the chief investigating magistrate on the case - would bluntly state: “For me, the Dutroux affair is a question of organised crime.” Also mentioned in the Time article was the use of secret “underground tunnels,” not unlike those described by children a decade earlier at the infamous McMartin Preschool.

Outrage continued to grow as more arrests were made and evidence of high-level government and police complicity continued to emerge. One of Dutroux's accomplices, businessman Jean-Michel Nihoul, confessed to organizing an ‘orgy’ at a Belgian chateau that had been attended by government officials, a former European Commissioner, and a number of law enforcement officers. A Belgian senator would note, quite accurately, that such parties were part of a system “which operates to this day and is used to blackmail the highly placed people who take part.”

In September, twenty-three suspects - at least nine of whom were police officers - were detained and questioned about their possible complicity in the crimes and/or their negligence in investigating the case. As the Los Angeles Times noted in a very brief, two-sentence report, the detainments “were the latest indication that police in the southern city of Charleroi may have helped cover up the alleged crimes of Marc Dutroux.”

The arrests followed raids on the police officers’ homes and on the headquarters of the Charleroi police force and were based on information supplied by police inspector Georges Zicot, who had already been charged as an accomplice. Three magistrates had also reportedly been interrogated by police investigators.

Just days before the arrests, police had also arrested five suspects in the Cools assassination, including a former regional government minister named Alain VanderBiest. Strangely enough, the News Telegraph reported that: “Police investigating the Cools murder in 1991 … have been given helpful leads by some of those arrested in the Dutroux case.” The Telegraph also noted that Cools “had promised ‘shocking revelations’ before his death.”

On October 14 came the straw that broke the camel's back: Jean-Marc Connerotte, who had been serving as the investigating judge on the case, was dismissed by the Belgian Supreme Court. Connerotte was viewed by the people as something of a rarity: a public official/law enforcement officer who actually appeared to be pursuing a prosecution, rather than a cover-up. The News Telegraph described him as: “the only figure in the judiciary who enjoys the nation’s confidence.”

As the New York Times reported, Connerotte “became a national hero in August after saving two children from a secret dungeon kept by a convicted child rapist and ordering the inquiry that led to the discovery of the bodies of four girls kidnapped by a child pornography network.” He had also, in 1994, arrested three men as suspects in the Cools assassination – just before the case was transferred to the jurisdiction of another magistrate.

His removal from the Dutroux case fanned the smoldering flames of public outrage; the Times report noted that: “Hundreds of thousands of people had petitioned the high court to retain the judge.” Adding yet more fuel to the fire, prosecutor Michel Bourlet was claiming that evidence suggested that a pedophile ring composed of the wealthy and powerful had been protected for twenty-five years.

With the families of Dutroux's victims calling for a general strike, men and women all across the country walked away from their jobs in protest as railway workers and bus drivers shut down public transportation, bringing some cities to a virtual standstill. The Telegraph reported that: “In Liege, firemen turned their hoses on the city’s court building” to symbolize the massive clean-up that was in order.

On October 20, 350,000 citizens of the tiny nation took to the streets of Brussels dressed all in white, demanding the reform of a system so corrupt that it would protect the abusers, rapists, torturers, and killers of children. The political fallout from the case would ultimately bring about the resignation of Belgium's State Police Chief, Interior Minister, and Justice Minister – likely sacrificial lambs tossed to the outraged masses to avoid what could easily have exploded into a full-scale insurrection by the people, particularly after police ‘incompetence’ allowed Dutroux to escape and remain at large for a brief time in April of 1998.

There were in fact calls from the people for the entire coalition government to step down. Months later, an opinion survey by Brussels’ Le Soir newspaper found that only one-in-five Belgians still had confidence in the federal government and the nation’s justice system. As the Los Angeles Times reported in January of 1998, “the conviction remains stubbornly widespread that members of the upper crust - government ministers, the Roman Catholic Church, the court of King Albert II - belonged to child sex rings, or protected them.”

The lingering distrust of the people was not alleviated by the fact that a parliamentary inquiry had, in April of 1997, identified thirty officials who had, as the Times tactfully put it, “failed to uncover Dutroux’s misdeeds.” Nearly a year later, none of them had yet suffered any repercussions. Additionally, at least ten missing children suspected of having fallen prey to Dutroux’s operation have never been found.

The commission’s report was, in many people’s eyes, a shameless cover-up. As the News Telegraph summarized, the report “said competition between rival forces had prevented vital information from being exchanged and obvious evidence from being followed up” – rather than acknowledge the obvious, which was that rampant police corruption and complicity were to blame.

Just a few months before the commission issued its report, the Telegraph was reporting that: “Grim rumors … have been circulating that a second paedophile network at least as appalling may have been operating in parallel to that said to involve Dutroux.” The bodies of seven children were believed to have been hidden by the ring, which was thought could be linked to Dutroux through Michel Nihoul.

Two months after that, a man named Patrick Derochette and three of his family members were arrested following the discovery of the body of a nine-year-old girl. Rumors quickly began circulating linking this crime to Dutroux as well. Like Dutroux, Derochette had previously been convicted on multiple counts of child rape. He had been committed to a psychiatric institution from which he was released after just six weeks.

Authorities quickly denied that there was any connection between the two cases. In January of 1998, however, the Telegraph reported that: “new evidence from a lawyer involved in the investigations blows a hole in previous police claims that there was no link between the cases involving the alleged child murderers Marc Dutroux and Patrick Derochette.” Once again, the connection was said to be through Nihoul.

In April of 1999, the Guardian reported that: “the highly respected chairman of a parliamentary inquiry into the case claims that his commission’s findings were muzzled by political and judicial leaders to prevent details emerging of complicity in the crimes … Mr. Verwilghen claims that senior political and legal figures refused to cooperate with the inquiry. He says magistrates and police were officially told to refuse to answer certain questions, in what he describes as ‘a characteristic smothering operation.’”

As of August of 2001, fully five years after Dutroux was taken into custody, his trial had yet to begin. Parents of victims continued to shout of a cover-up, and the Telegraph was reporting that: “It was recently learnt that scientific tests on 6,000 hairs found in the [underground dungeon] began only this year.” These tests could, of course, reveal how many victims passed through Dutroux’s chamber of horrors.

If the Marc Dutroux case were some kind of aberration, it would still be a disturbing story for the level of unspeakable corruption and depravity of the Belgian political and law enforcement establishment of which it speaks. Far more disturbing is the fact that it doesn't appear to be an isolated case at all.

As 1999 drew to a close, the nation of Latvia was rocked by a child prostitution/child pornography scandal that reached to the very top of the political power structure. The case first broke in August, when police uncovered a massive operation involving as many as 2,000 severely abused children. When media reports began linking top Latvian officials to the case, a special parliamentary commission was formed to investigate.

In February 2000, the chairman of the commission delivered a report to Parliament linking the country's Prime Minister, Justice Minister, director of the State Revenue Service, and a number of army and law enforcement officers to the case. Efforts were immediately begun to discredit the commission chairman, including allegations that he is tied to the former KGB – a classic case of red-baiting, enabling the allegations to be dismissed as ‘Communist’ propaganda.

The BBC reported in June of 1999 that two unnamed German men had “gone on trial, accused of running a child pornography ring in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic.” The pair, along with at least eleven identified but unindicted accomplices, “made video recordings of the gang sexually abusing children between the ages of three and 14 since 1993.”

A large but unspecified quantity of “videos, photography, magazines and CD-ROMs containing child pornography were confiscated.” Also noted was a possible connection to the Dutroux case: “There have been cases of Slovak children being taken to Vienna to make pornographic films. The Belgian paedophile Marc Dutroux … was a regular visitor to one Slovak town.”

The BBC also filed a brief report on a 1996 case that went almost completely unreported in the English language press: “Mexican police broke up an international child pornography ring based in the resort of Acapulco which they said had at least four thousand clients in the United States,” (emphasis added). A UN envoy investigating the case said that the “child pornography sometimes involved babies of less than one month old.”

On September 29 of 2000, The Irish Times reported that: “Eight people were arrested in Italy and three in Russia, and police said 1,700 people were being investigated in Italy,” as yet another pedophile network surfaced. The images traded by this ring were “divided into several categories … The most gruesome, police said, was coded ‘Necros Pedo,’ in which children were raped and tortured to death.”

And so it is that we first confront that most disturbing of topics – snuff films, which we all know don’t really exist. As recently as February of 1999, the New York Post assured readers that: “Snuff films are the stuff of urban legend … how did this legend get started? No one knows.” The unfortunate truth though is that they do, as it turns out, actually exist, and they likely have existed for as long as film has existed, though they weren't always known by that name.

According to the Post: “The term ‘snuff’ was actually coined during the Charles Manson case, when press reports repeated a rumor that the Manson ‘family’ had filmed home movies of the brutal slayings.” Other reports hold that the term was coined in 1976 by a writer for the New York Times who was in need of a phrase to describe reports of murders following sexual activity being captured on film.

Not long after that, as Carl Raschke wrote: “The Texas House Select Committee on Child Pornography disclosed in the late 1970s that investigators probing leads to organized crime in Houston, Dallas, and other major cities found that ‘slave’ auctions for sixteen- and seventeen-year-old boys were routinely held in Mexico. Some of the boys were featured in brutal snuff or ‘slasher’ movies.”

Raschke also quotes from a study by U.S. mental health professionals that claimed that a child from Mexico “can be packaged, delivered, and sold deep within this country in a short time,” and that many are purchased solely “for the purpose of killing.” In Enslaved, Gordon Thomas reported that: “At the start of the year [1991] Britain's Scotland Yard was continuing to investigate reports that up to twenty children in London had been murdered last year in [snuff films] and the video tapes sold on the Continent.”

An account of the Italian case carried by the Guardian affirmed the existence of snuff films: “police have discovered a massive international paedophile network selling violent child-pornography videos to clients in Italy, the US and Germany … (authorities are) trying to identify 5,000 people who are suspected of attempting to purchase the videos, some of which appear to contain images of children being tortured and murdered.”

The UK’s Independent, in a follow-up published in November of 2000, also confirmed that the seized materials did in fact include child snuff films: “Horrified investigators gathered images of more than 2,000 children who were filmed while being abused, raped, and … killed.” By that time, close to 1,500 people had been charged in the case, but not - as the Guardian noted - “those in high places who are believed to form a ‘paedophile lobby.’”

As in the Belgian and Latvian cases, there were clear indications of high-level complicity and a strong belief among the Italian people that the facts of the case were being covered up. And as with the other cases, the magistrate heading up the inquiry “provoked a furore by denouncing a ‘paedophile lobby’ supported by politicians which he said openly obstructed the investigators and worked to prevent tougher sanctions for the consumers of child pornography,” according to the Independent.

The New York Times reported in March of 1997 that there is “growing public indignation in France and elsewhere about the recurrent reports of kidnapping, rape or incest involving the very young.” The same Times report noted that: “police across France have detained more than 250 people and confiscated some 5,000 videocassettes” in conjunction with an investigation into a massive child pornography ring. Those detained by police were described as “mainly married professionals.” A dozen of them would soon turn up dead, allegedly suicide victims.

In June, the News Telegraph spoke of over 800 French homes being raided and 204 suspects being taken into custody the week before. Among those detained were: “More than 30 teachers … and a number of priests,” as well as the deputy mayor of the town of Saint Mihiel. By the end of the week, four had committed suicide, including a school headmaster.

Three years later, the BBC filed a very brief report noting that a verdict was due “in the trial of more than sixty people accused of possessing child pornography. One of the judges hearing the case said examining the video evidence made him feel physically sick.” In a familiar refrain, it was reported that: “the French courts have been accused of attacking the easy targets -- porn consumers -- rather than producers and distributors. And one children’s rights group has alleged that senior public figures were among those investigated -- but their cases were dropped before coming to court.”

In 1998, another large-scale international ring was discovered operating out of the Netherlands and Berlin, Germany. The New York Times reported that investigators called the case “nauseating,” in that “images of abuse of even babies and infants were peddled via the Internet and other media.” Police discovered “voluminous records of what appear to be clients and suppliers from countries including Israel, Ukraine, Britain, Russia and the United States.”

The ring was first uncovered when a key member was found dead in Italy. According to The Irish Times, he was murdered by another member of the ring. His apartment in the Dutch town of Zandvoort was found to contain “thousands of digital images stored on computer disks,” as well as “hundreds of addresses of suspected suppliers and clients,” according to the New York Times. The images shocked even veteran sex-crimes investigators, one of whom stated that the seized evidence “left [him] speechless … It looks like the perpetrators are not dealing with human beings but with objects.”

In September 1998, another ring was raided – what the BBC described as “a larger and more sinister paedophile network called Wonderland.” The network was so named in honor of Lewis Carroll’s revered children's book, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Carroll was widely known to have a predilection for underage girls and boys, and is now something of a patron saint of pedophiles around the globe.

A concerted effort has been made over the decades to cover up Carroll’s pedophilic tendencies, though the truth is evident even in the heavily whitewashed profiles of him that can be found in modern encyclopedias. Microsoft's Encarta notes that: “Always a friend of children, particularly little girls, Carroll wrote thousands of letters to them,” and also that he “gained an additional measure of fame as an amateur photographer. Most of his camera portraits were of children in various costumes and poses, including nude studies.”

The Encyclopaedia Britannica reports that Carroll’s photographic ‘hobby’ was abandoned in 1880, while dismissing suggestions that “this sudden decision was reached because of an impurity of motive for his nude studies.” Britannica also notes that Carroll - who was raised in an environment where there were “few friends outside the family,” and who was ordained a deacon in the Church of England on the winter solstice of 1861 (an occult holiday) - generally lost interest in his child ‘friends’ when they reached the age of twelve.

Wonderland is also the name of the quarterly publication of the Lewis Carroll Collector's Guild, which bills itself as a “voluntary association of persons who believe nudist materials are a constitutionally protected expression and whose collective interests include pre-teen nudes.” As Gordon Thomas has noted: “In Wonderland the ‘delights’ of ‘transgenerational sex’ pepper the pages.” Such is the legacy of the men whose literary works are peddled to our children … but here I digress.

The San Jose Mercury News reported that: “Police in … 22 states and 13 foreign countries conducted coordinated raids … aimed at breaking up an Internet child-pornography ring … The ring involves as many as 200 people around the world, who exchanged over the Internet thousands of sexually explicit images of children as young as 18 months.” The Independent later reported that the ring “shared pictures of children being abused -- in some cases live via web-cam broadcasts over the internet.”

The raids included homes in “Australia, Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Portugal and Sweden,” according to the New York Times, which added that: “Several dozen people were arrested, but officials said they expected more than 100 to be charged.” The Independent later reported that 107 suspects were ultimately arrested. The Mercury News implied that this may be only the tip of the iceberg: “The ring actually extends into 47 countries.”

The case was described by a British official as “stomach-churning.” The Times reported that “Wonderland Club members are believed to have posed their own children for pictures … In other cases … parents may have taken money to let their children be used.” The Guardian reported that over 1,250 children were featured in the photos and videos, “many of whom suffered appalling injuries and were seen sobbing uncontrollably as they were being sexually violated.” The Independent added that the victimized children were “mostly under [the age of] 10.”

A BBC report held that the combined raids resulted in the seizure of more than “750,000 computer images of children.” A Detective Superintendent with the British National Crime Squad called these images “disgusting and the behavior that has been carried out is absolutely appalling.” Though ignored by the American press, “Wonderland originated in the United States.”

Among the scores of U.S. homes raided, one yielded a “database of more than 100,000 sexual photographs of naked boys and girls.” Interestingly enough, the Times also noted that another raid, “in Missouri, turned up a cache of weapons as well as child pornography in a heavily fortified trailer,” illustrating once again - as did the Dutroux case - the close ties between organized pedophilia and other terrorist assaults against society.

As with the earlier raids in Europe, a rash of ‘suicides’ soon followed. By October 24, the Mercury News was reporting that no fewer than four of the thirty-four American suspects had killed themselves. These included a retired Air Force pilot, a microbiologist at the University of Connecticut, and a computer consultant in Colorado.

In the UK, the Wonderland raids - dubbed Operation Cathedral - resulted in the indictments of eight suspects. One of the eight turned up dead four months later – another alleged suicide. The other seven were given ridiculously light sentences in February of 2001 for their complicity in inflicting unfathomable abuse on countless children. Sentences ranged from 12 to 30 months.

Just a few weeks before the sentences were handed down, the Guardian was reporting that: “Police today arrested 13 suspected paedophiles in the largest ever UK operation against child pornography.” Once again a massive amount of appalling evidence was seized, with most of the material featuring “scenes of children being raped and sexually abused.”

The Independent reported in February of 2001 that: “Detectives working on the [Wonderland] case discovered that many of the paedophiles were also members of other child pornography groups.” One of the groups most closely tied to Wonderland was a ring known as the Orchid Club, which had been exposed by a 1996 investigation in San Jose, California. That investigation had led to the indictment of sixteen men on charges of conspiring to produce and exchange child pornography. Members of the club were identified in at least nine states and three foreign countries.

By the time of the Wonderland raids, the Mercury News was able to report that the purported ringleader of the Orchid Club and “twelve others either have pleaded guilty or have been convicted in connection with that case.” Their crimes included recruiting “young relatives and friends of their own children to be molested and photographed.”

The club was also, like Wonderland, involved in “real-time exploitation of children” on the internet. Club members were able to send in requests and have them acted-out on live feeds. The club also held a pedophile ‘summit,’ at which members “traded stories about pre-teen girls they had molested and photographed in sexually explicit poses.” The summit was held, appropriately enough, on April 20 – the birth date of Adolf Hitler and a major satanic holiday.

In late March of 2001, yet another interlinked global network was exposed. The Independent reported that: “US authorities announced the arrest of four American citizens for involvement in an international child-porn ring called Blue Orchid.” The Los Angeles Times added further details the next day, reporting that “the United States and Russia have shut down a Moscow-based international pornography ring that used the Internet to sell videotapes of children engaged in sexual acts.”

These tapes were said to sell for “between $200 and $300.” An Associated Press release held that: “Police seized some 600 videotapes, 200 digital video disks and many boxes of photographs.” Video duplication equipment and sales and shipping records were also seized, leading to “criminal inquiries in 24 nations … Many of the tapes were bought by people in the United States; others went to Germany, Britain, France, Denmark, China, Kuwait, Mexico and scores of other countries.”

The Times reported that nine people had been arrested and fifteen search warrants issued. The AP report noted that four of those arrested were in Russia, where two suspects had, alas, “committed suicide.” The ring was also said by the Times to offer what were cryptically referred to as “custom-made videos” for the hefty price of $5,000 each. The contents of these videos were not revealed.

What was revealed though was that “the prevalence of child pornography has increased dramatically with the growth of the Internet. There are approximately 100,000 web sites worldwide associated with child pornography.” This point was reinforced the very next day when the UK press reported police raids on yet another pedophile ring.

The Guardian reported that: “More than 30 people, including a … man working for a national youth organization, were arrested yesterday in dawn raids on the homes of suspected paedophiles.” Once again being sold and traded were images “which showed children being abused.”

A report on the case in the Independent quoted a law enforcement spokesman as revealing “that those arrested included members of ‘some interesting professions,’” though demurring from revealing what those professions might be. The official also said that they had “a disturbing scenario of one or two juveniles who have been caught in this way. One of them appears to be a 13-year-old boy.”

The police did acknowledge that the arrested boy was “also a potential victim and would be treated in that light,” which seems rather obvious. Nevertheless, a follow-up to the story that the Independent ran in May reported that the boy had become “one of the youngest people to be listed on the sex offenders’ register.”

The very next month, the Guardian carried a report on Eric Franklin Rosser – accused child pornographer, one of the FBI's ten most wanted criminals and a former keyboardist for John Cougar Mellencamp’s band. According to the report: “Investigators believe Rosser’s material is among pornography circulated by a British paedophile ring … More than 1,800 members are thought to belong to a club called Teenboys. Its website features boys aged around 12 … Teenboys is considered bigger than the notorious Wonderland Club.”

Meanwhile, a pedophile ring in Australia with high-level government connections was handled in a slightly different way. As The Irish Times reported on July 17, 1998:

“Police suspect a series of gruesome gay hate killings in the Sydney region could be the work of a serial killer whose victims might be linked through a notorious paedophile ring. The latest mutilation murder was that of Australia's longest serving mayor, Frank Arkell, aged 68, who was bludgeoned to death in his flat and who had previously faced 29 child sex charges.

“In the past few months two other men, one a convicted child sex offender, were attacked in their homes in similar circumstances and also suffered horrific injuries. Arkell, the former Lord Mayor of Wollongong, 50 miles south of Sydney, was a key witness in a royal commission into police corruption which uncovered a network of paedophiles.”

Those serial killers sure come in handy sometimes.

REFERENCES:

1. Bates, Stephen “Cover-Up Claims Revive Sex Scandal,” Guardian UK , April 21, 1999

, April 21, 1999 2. Bates, Stephen “Police Admit Dutroux Video Bungle,” Guardian UK , June 17, 1999

, June 17, 1999 3. Bailey, Brandon “Net-Porn Ring Traded Stories at ‘Pedo Party’,” San Jose Mercury News , July 18, 1996

, July 18, 1996 4. Bell, Rachael "Marc Dutroux: the Child-Killer Who Slipped Through the System,” The Crime Library , www.crimelibrary.com

, www.crimelibrary.com 5. Boggan, Steve and Paul Peachey “As the Net Closed on Wonderland, An Ugly Truth Was Revealed: This is Just the Tip of the Iceberg,” The Independent (UK), February 14, 2001

(UK), February 14, 2001 6. Burke, Jason “Most Wanted Paedophile May Be in UK,” Guardian UK , June 17, 2001

, June 17, 2001 7. Carroll, Rory “Paedophile Scandal Boosts Cover-Up Conspiracy,” Guardian UK , November 1, 2000

, November 1, 2000 8. Cranford, Helen “Police ‘Warned Over Dutroux,’” News Telegraph , December 6, 1996

, December 6, 1996 9. Dahlburg, John-Thor “Grisly Crimes Undermine Belgian Unity,” Los Angeles Times , January 3, 1998

, January 3, 1998 10. Davies, Nick and Jeevan Vasager “Global Porn Ring Broken,” Guardian UK , January 11, 2001

, January 11, 2001 11. Dixon, Robyn "3 Top Latvians Are Named in Investigation of Pedophilia,” Los Angeles Times , February 19, 2000

, February 19, 2000 12. Dolgov, Anna “Russians Want Laws on Child Porn,” Associated Press , March 27, 2001

, March 27, 2001 13. Fritz, Mark and Solomon Moore “Suicides Follow Bust of Net Child-Porn Ring,” San Jose Mercury News , October 24, 1998

, October 24, 1998 14. Graff, Peter “Child Porn Videos Sold From Russia in ‘National Geographic’ Boxes,” The Independent (UK), March 26, 2001

(UK), March 26, 2001 15. Hartley, Emma and Paul Peachey “Outrage Over ‘Lenient’ Jail Terms for Britons in Child Porn Ring,” The Independent (UK), February 14, 2001

(UK), February 14, 2001 16. Helm, Toby “Paedophile Hunt Police Find Human Skull,” News Telegraph , September 4, 1996

, September 4, 1996 17. Helm, Toby “Dutroux Urged to Name His Protectors,” News Telegraph , September 5, 1996

, September 5, 1996 18. Helm, Toby “Belgian King Acts Over Child Sex Scandal,” News Telegraph , September 11, 1996

, September 11, 1996 19. Helm, Toby “Belgium Fights to Shed Its Corruption-Riddled Mafia Image,” News Telegraph , September 14, 1996

, September 14, 1996 20. Helm, Toby and Pamela Readhead “Magistrate to be Taken Off Child Sex Case,” News Telegraph , October 13, 1996

, October 13, 1996 21. Helm, Toby “Belgians Up in Arms Over Sex Case,” News Telegraph , October 16, 1996

, October 16, 1996 22. Helm, Toby “Plea by King as Belgians Protest Over Corruption,” News Telegraph , October 19, 1996

, October 19, 1996 23. Helm, Toby “Belgians Shocked by New Disclosure About Child Sex,” News Telegraph , November 22, 1996

, November 22, 1996 24. Helm, Toby “Fears Grow of New Paedophile Horror,” News Telegraph , January 23, 1997

, January 23, 1997 25. Helm, Toby “Paedophile Arrested After Girl’s Body Found,” News Telegraph , March 7, 1997

, March 7, 1997 26. Helm, Toby “Raped Children ‘Could Have Been Found Alive,’” News Telegraph , April 16, 1997

, April 16, 1997 27. Helm, Toby “Belgian Police Under Attack Over ‘Link’ Between Paedophiles,” News Telegraph , January 28, 1998

, January 28, 1998 28. Helm, Toby “Government Crisis in Belgium Over Dutroux’s Escape,” News Telegraph , April 25, 1998

, April 25, 1998 29. Helm, Toby “Belgium Accused of Cover-Up in Dutroux Inquiry,” News Telegraph , August 17, 2001

, August 17, 2001 30. Herbert, Ian “Boy, 13, Arrested in Crackdown on ‘Net Paedophiles’,” The Independent (UK), March 28, 2001

(UK), March 28, 2001 31. Howe, Kathleen “Russia, U.S. Shut Down Child-Porn Ring on Web,” Los Angeles Times , March 27, 2001

, March 27, 2001 32. Kennedy, Frances “Italian Politicians Obstructing Inquiry Into Child Porn on Net,” The Independent (UK), November 1, 2000

(UK), November 1, 2000 33. Laurance, Jeremy “British Police Discover More Child Abuse Horror on Internet,” The Independent (UK), February 21, 2001

(UK), February 21, 2001 34. Murphy, Dean E. “Kidnap Deaths Plunge Belgium Into Guilt,” Los Angeles Times , September 2, 1996

, September 2, 1996 35. Nundy, Julian “French Hunt 200 More Suspected Paedophiles,” News Telegraph , June 22, 1997

, June 22, 1997 36. Peachey, Paul “Boy of 13 Put on Sex Offenders’ Register for Child Porn,” The Independent (UK), May 15, 2001

(UK), May 15, 2001 37. Pinon, Bertrand “Inspector Questioned in Child Sex Inquiry,” News Telegraph , August 26, 1996

, August 26, 1996 38. Pullella, Philip “Italy Shocked by Child Pornography Scandal,” The Irish Times , September 29, 2000

, September 29, 2000 39. Puzzanghera, Jim “International Child-Porn Ring Uncovered,” San Jose Mercury News , September 3, 1998

, September 3, 1998 40. Raschke, Carl Painted Black , Harper and Row, 1990

, Harper and Row, 1990 41. Simons, Marlise “French Police Arrest 250 Men Linked to Child Pornography Ring,” New York Times , March 14, 1997

, March 14, 1997 42. Simons, Marlise “Dutch Say a Sex Ring Used Infants On Internet,” New York Times , July 19, 1998

, July 19, 1998 43. Steele, John “Hunt for Girls After Bodies Found in Child-Sex Probe,” News Telegraph , August 19, 1996

, August 19, 1996 44. Sterling, Robert “Daddy’s Little Princess,” The Konformist , www.konformist.com

, www.konformist.com 45. Stout, David “Internet Child Pornography Operation Is Raided in U.S. and Abroad,” New York Times , September 3, 1998

, September 3, 1998 46. Sverdlick, Alan “The Snuff Movie Myth,” New York Post , February 25, 1999

, February 25, 1999 47. Thomas, Gordon Enslaved , Pharos Books, 1991

, Pharos Books, 1991 48. Ward, David “Police Smash Child Porn Network,” Guardian UK , March 28, 2001

, March 28, 2001 49. Warren, Marcus “Belgians Shocked by Tales of Secret Policemen’s Orgy,” News Telegraph , March 16, 1997

, March 16, 1997 50. Willan, Philip “Paedophile Videos Stun Italians,” Guardian UK , September 29, 2000

, September 29, 2000 51. Wilson, Jamie “Dismay at Paedophile Sentences,” Guardian UK , February 14, 2001

, February 14, 2001 52. “Missing Kids: Belgian Parents Take Action,” CNN.com , August 21, 1996

, August 21, 1996 53. “9 Police Detained in Child-Murder Case,” Los Angeles Times , September 11, 1996

, September 11, 1996 54. “Belgian Hero Dismissed,” New York Times , October 15, 1996

, October 15, 1996 55. “Mexico Under Fire Over Child Abuse,” BBC News , November 14, 1997

, November 14, 1997 56. “Dutch Investigate Child Pornography Ring Claim,” The Irish Times , July 17, 1998

, July 17, 1998 57. “Child Pornographer Found Dead in His Home,” New York Times , September 9, 1998

, September 9, 1998 58. “Child Porn ‘Ringleaders’ Go On Trial,” BBC News , June 23, 1999

, June 23, 1999 59. “Verdicts Due in French Pornography Trial,” BBC News , May 10, 2000

, May 10, 2000 60. “Porn Ring ‘Was Real Child Abuse,’” BBC News , January 10, 2001

, January 10, 2001 61. “13 Arrested in Child Porn Raids,” Guardian UK , January 17, 2001

, January 17, 2001 62. “International Child Porn Ring Smashed,” BBC News , March 26, 2001

, March 26, 2001 63. Encyclopaedia Britannica , www.britannica.com

, www.britannica.com 64. Microsoft’s Encarta Encyclopedia

The Pedophocracy, Part II: ... to Washington

"Paul and Shirley Eberle wrote The Politics of Child Abuse, a book that accuses mothers, mental health professionals, and prosecutors of feeding children stories about sexual abuse. Since the book was published by Lyle Stuart in l986, the Eberles have been cited as experts in sexual abuse trials … What is startling about the Eberles' reputation as ground-breaking experts in the field is that their dubious credentials have not been widely challenged … Their publication, Finger, depicted scenes of bondage, S & M, and sexual activities involving urination and defecation. A young girl portrayed with a wide smile on her face sits on top of a man whose penis is inside of her; a woman has oral sex with a young boy in a drawing entitled ‘Memories of My Boyhood.'" Ms. Magazine, December 1988 W hile the size and scope of these operations have grown rapidly in recent years, America has - as it turns out - always been a nation whose laws were friendly to purveyors of child pornography. It was just over twenty years ago - in 1978 - that the very first federal statute on child pornography was passed into law. While forbidding production and sale, the statute placed no restrictions at all on the possession or trade of such materials. New laws enacted in 1984 forbid the trade of child pornography regardless of whether any money changed hands, though possession still remained legal. In fact, as recently as 1990, private possession of child pornography was legal in 44 of the 50 states, despite the inescapable fact that all such materials were, by necessity, illegally produced and/or illegally acquired. Technology has for some time now played a key role in greatly expanding the availability of child pornography. The Polaroid camera, for example, eliminated the need for child pornographers to have access to complicit photo labs. Home video cameras did likewise for moving images. Personal computers, digital cameras, web cams, scanners, and - especially - the Internet, have vastly expanded the reach of child pornography networks. In the age of the Internet, child pornography is a booming business. The Los Angeles Times noted in December of 1999 that: “the number of investigations for Internet-related child pornography is soaring. The FBI launched 1,125 such inquiries this year, more than twice as many as last year.” In the wake of this rising tide, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling on December 17, 1999 which struck a serious blow to the prosecution of child pornography cases. As the Times reported, the decision stipulated that “the government cannot prohibit computer-generated sexual images that only appear to be pictures of children.” A later report noted that appeals court judge Donald Molloy stated that the First Amendment bars the government from criminalizing the generation of “images of fictitious children engaged in imaginary but explicit sexual conduct.” On January 22, 2001, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of the case. Should the presidential appointers on the high court choose to affirm the decision of the lower court, prosecution of child pornography cases will become all but impossible in all fifty states. Until that time, prosecutors are “barred from bringing virtual-child pornography cases in California and the eight other Western states within the jurisdiction of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.” As critics have noted, graphics technology now available to the general public is so sophisticated that it is virtually impossible to determine if an image has been digitally altered, and if therefore any actual children were involved in the generation of the image. Justice Department lawyers argued that very point, noting that the “government may find it impossible in many cases to prove that a pornographic image is of a real child.” Any good defense attorney could, in other words, raise reasonable doubt as to the authenticity of an image. It could in fact be argued that all such computer images “only appear to be pictures of children.” Computer images are not in fact photos, but are digital computer files that display as a facsimile of the original photo. A sound legal argument could be made that all digitally transferred and displayed child pornography is therefore legal, as it doesn't represent 'real children.' That should come as great news to the international child pornography networks, given that the United States is their number-one market. According to investigative author Gordon Thomas, the majority of child pornography produced worldwide is targeted at the U.S., where by the early 1990s it was already a $3 billion a year business, and growing. Thomas claims that - according to law enforcement figures - over 22 million copies of child pornography videos were sold or rented in the U.S. in 1991. He also writes that much of that pornographic material is produced here, where it is “part of the largest segment of movie making in the United States.” Jan Hollingsworth concurs with that figure, describing child pornography as: “A three-billion-dollar - per year - U.S. industry that grossed twice that worldwide. It [is] bigger than Disney. Much bigger.” Speaking of Disney, Thomas notes that child porn videos are frequently trafficked internationally by deceptively packaging them as Disney videos. Strangely enough, the first man to benefit from the circuit court decision was Patrick J. Naughton. You may remember him as the executive with the Walt Disney Co. who ran one of the company's kid-friendly web sites. Naughton was arrested and later tried on child pornography charges. He was convicted on December 16, just one day before the decision was handed down in the case before the circuit court. Within hours of the appeals court ruling, Naughton was released by federal prosecutors on $100,000 bail. Despite the fact that he was, as the Times acknowledged, convicted of “possessing pictures of actual children,” the decision was made to release him “until the impact of the court's ruling can be sorted out,” illustrating the significant undermining of existing law that the court ruling portends. Closely associated with child pornography is, of course, child abuse. It should go without saying that all kids used in child pornography are abused children, their abuse recorded on film and tape for the depraved enjoyment of other child abusers. Also closely associated with child pornography is the always controversial issue of 'missing children.' There is considerable debate as to whether there is a problem in this country with missing children. Some claim that 200,000 or more children disappear without a trace every year. Others steadfastly maintain that numbers such as those are grossly inflated, and that abduction of children by strangers with bad intent is actually quite rare. The problem is that nobody really knows for sure, since the FBI - America's compiler of crime statistics - doesn't bother to keep track. As Ted Gunderson, former FBI station chief for Los Angeles, has stated: “The FBI has an accurate count on the number of automobiles stolen every year. It knows the number of homicides, rapes and robberies, but the FBI has no idea of the number of children that disappear every year. They simply do not ask for the statistics.” Many believe that the numbers aren't compiled because the FBI doesn't want to know – or more accurately, the FBI doesn't want the American people to know. What is known though is that reports of child abuse have skyrocketed. Between 1963 and 1988, reported cases of child abuse rose from 150,000 to 2,000,000 per year, a 1300% increase in just a quarter-century. Child abuse may in fact be the most prevalent - and possibly the most significant - crime in American society, given that it provides the breeding ground for so much of the more visible crime plaguing Western culture. As Thomas reports: “over 90 percent of the teenage prison population are now victims of child abuse,” and that population is growing rapidly. In the wake of this rising tide, the Los Angeles Times reported in March 2001 that: “President [a clearly inappropriate use of the word] Bush's budget will trim a program aimed at preventing child abuse and cut some child care spending … A child abuse prevention program will see an 18% cut.” That money will apparently be much better spent on handing out tax breaks for the wealthy and building missile defense shields … but here I digress. Author and e-zine editor Robert Sterling has written of what he refers to as “a pattern of trivialization of child molestation evidence” that seems to characterize high-profile media stories. He points out, for instance, that in the highly publicized Woody Allen and Mia Farrow child custody case, all the attention was focused on Allen’s illicit romance with Soon-yi Previn. Almost entirely ignored in the media coverage was the fact that Allen was also charged with molesting his own seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan. While the press dismissed those allegations as unfounded and unworthy of reporting, Sterling notes that “Connecticut state authorities, based on the testimony of Dylan and others, have stated that they do believe Woody did molest her, but decided not to prosecute anyway,” allegedly to spare the child any further trauma. Sterling also takes note of the “case of the Menendez brothers, who, after admitting to murdering their parents, painfully revealed that they were ruthlessly abused and molested by them over the years.” Their claims were never fully investigated and the boys were “viciously demonized for trying to escape the murder charges and accused of making up their abuse,” though there was in fact clear evidence of that abuse, according to a private investigator who worked on the case. Also noted is the kid-gloves treatment afforded Michael Jackson when he was charged with molestation: “even though the accusations against him are widely believed to be true, [they] are merely passed off with a laugh among other smirking monologue jokes on Jay Leno.” And of course, though unmentioned by Sterling, sister LaToya was ridiculed by the media when she came forward with stories about the sexual abuse suffered by the Jackson kids at the hands of their father. Sterling references other cases as well, including the over-hyped au-pair trial in which evidence of prior abuse of the child by his parents was consistently ignored, and the Susan Smith case, in which the media refused to consider whether her own severe childhood abuse could have been a factor in the murder of her children, despite the fact that her father admitted to the chronic abuse. Coupled with the fact that the press have consistently downplayed the occurrence of child molestation is the equally disturbing fact that that very same media have actively promoted the sexualization of children – a trend that has been greatly accelerated in recent years, and which serves to legitimize pedophilia. Taking note of the proliferation of young teen - and even pre-teen - sex symbols, Tom Junod wrote in Esquire that: “the entire culture is besotted with the erotic promise of teenage girls … The lure of jailbait now supplies the erotic energy to a popular culture desperate for what’s new, what’s young, what’s alive.” The Junod article is, by the way, a profile of Greg Dark, one half of the former ‘Dark Brothers’ – notorious purveyors of dark-themed, occult-tinged porno films. Dark is rather noteworthy for openly peddling child pornography, in that many of his films featured a very young Traci Lords, who began working with the Dark Brothers at the age of thirteen. But Dark has put those days long behind him. He is now working comfortably in the mainstream. And he is no longer marketing teen sexuality. No, now he is creating music videos … for Britney Spears, Mandy Moore and the pre-pubescent Leslie Carter (sister of Aaron Carter and Back Street Boy Nick Carter). That is, according to Dark, a completely different line of work. Some interesting facts about Dark emerge in the Esquire profile. It is revealed, for instance, that he was raised by a satanist father. Dark’s father “used to read to Gregory from the works of Aleister Crowley, the noted satanist, when Gregory was very young.” His father’s collection of ‘black magick’ books is one of Dark’s most cherished possessions. Also revealed is that Dark is a master manipulator, as he candidly admits to his interviewer: “And the thing is, I like manipulating people. I’m comfortable manipulating people. I’m good at it.” Junod adds that, during Dark’s porno days, he “asked people to do things … curious things … and they did them.” Such is the nature of the man crafting the images of America’s teen sex symbols and marketing them to millions of pre-teen fans ... but here again I digress. Also closely associated with child pornography is the issue of child prostitution, which - make no mistake about it - is a booming business. A&E’s “Investigative Reports” has noted that law enforcement figures indicate that there are currently some 600,000 child prostitutes working in the United States and Canada and that $5 billion a year is generated worldwide by pimp organizations specializing in the exploitation of children. A&E also reported that, throughout North America, there is a “growing use of children in the sex trade,” and that young boys make up 51% of that trade. The FBI has, of course, turned a blind eye; for the last quarter-century, “federal prosecutions of major pimp operations have been virtually nonexistent.” As Dr. Lois Lee has noted: “It’s not a high priority with the FBI to go after kids that are being transported across state lines. It’s really a disgrace.” Dr. Lee is the founder of “Children of the Night,” an organization devoted to helping repair the shattered lives of child sex trade victims. Her facility, said to be the only one of its kind in the world, has seen 10,000 kids pass through its doors. Fully ninety percent of them have suffered a lifetime of abuse – first at home, and later on the streets and alleys of America’s big cities. Most of them suffered their first abuse before the age of three. Many of these victims are runaways recruited from small towns across the country, then brought to prime child prostitution markets such as Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Once there, they have an average life span of just seven years; many of them never reach adulthood. For as long as they survive though, they reap enormous financial rewards for their pimps. The younger the child, the more popular they are with the ‘Johns,’ and therefore the more profitable for their exploiters. All of this would tend to indicate that America is in something of a state of denial about the proliferation of child molestation, child prostitution, and child pornography rings, which constitute a vast underground in this country. But does this pedophilic underground extend into the halls of power? Is America's political, corporate and military elite hiding a particularly dirty little secret from the American people? A secret that, if exposed, could shatter America's cherished political and economic institutions and bring the house of cards crashing down? Consider the case of Craig Spence, a behind-the-scenes Republican powerbroker in Washington. In June of 1989, the Washington Times published a story that sent shock waves across Capitol Hill. It seems that Spence had been operating a call-boy ring that supplied young boys, some of them very young boys, to the Washington elite of both political parties. It was rumored that a list of influential clients ran to some 200 names, and some of them were publicly identified. On the list were such names as former CIA director William Casey, former prosecutor and current cable ‘news’ talking-head Joseph diGenova, nominally liberal Congressman Barney Frank, political activist/propagandist Phyllis Schlafly, and former Attorney General John Mitchell – who once co-hosted a party with Spence. Also connected to the case were prominent figures in the media; on the guest lists for Spence's ‘parties’ were names such as Ted Koppel and Eric Severeid – who had both been close friends of Spence’s for more than two decades. Koppel had first met Spence when he was serving as the ABC bureau chief in Hong Kong and Spence was purportedly working as a correspondent in Vietnam. Spence's mansion was found to be overflowing with surveillance equipment, including hidden cameras and microphones and an abundance of two-way mirrors. It was alleged that the ring was part of a CIA sexual blackmail operation, gathering compromising evidence on Washington politicos and foreign dignitaries. In August, following his arrest on weapon and drug charges, Spence gave an interview to the Times in which he openly claimed to work for the CIA and with high-ranking members of the Reagan and Bush administrations. His claims were scoffed at and he was largely portrayed as a self-important blowhard. There are indications though that Spence was involved in covert operations as far back as Vietnam, working under journalistic cover. An associate of his from that time told the Washington Post: “Spence pulled disappearing acts in Vietnam -- sometimes for weeks at a time … Then he’d turn up, refusing to say where he’d been.” In Washington, Spence was known to take his show on the road, giving some of his boys regular late-night tours of the White House. These tours were reportedly arranged by Donald Gregg, the national security adviser to then-Vice President George Bush. Though Gregg adamantly denied the accusation, there were undeniable connections between the two men, including the fact that Spence had once sponsored a dinner for Gregg. The story quickly dropped off the media radar screen, and Washington and the press proceeded to pretend as though it had never been aired at all. According to a Washington Times reporter, the paper trail was quickly covered-up – some 20,000 documents pertaining to the case were sealed by court order. By the time Spence turned up dead in a Boston hotel room less than five months after the story first broke, he was all but forgotten. The UK’s Independent reported that: “Boston police said he was found lying on his bed at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, dressed in evening clothes, with no obvious signs of injury. The police refused to comment on the cause of death.” The Post had earlier reported that Spence had told a friend: “I may be disappearing soon. It will be sudden. It may appear to be a suicide, but it won’t be.” Elsewhere in the country, a political operative named Larry King - hailed as “the fastest rising black star in the Republican Party” - was embroiled in another high-level pedophile ring. King, whose operation was based in Omaha, Nebraska, had connections to Craig Spence as well as to Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Oliver North, and various other major players in Washington. The story first began to emerge with the collapse of the Franklin Community Credit Union run by King, one of many such entities that went belly-up in the 1980s savings and loan scandals. A special senate 'Franklin Committee' was formed to look into allegations of financial improprieties, but soon found itself instead investigating claims of child prostitution, child pornography and ritual homicide. Committee members soon found themselves receiving anonymous threats. The investigation led to the doorsteps of some of the most powerful men in the state of Nebraska – including newspaper publisher Harold Andersen (a lunch partner of George Bush), local columnist Peter Citron, a judge, the mayor of Omaha, the city's Games and Parks Commissioner, a prominent attorney, the former police chief of Omaha, businessman Alan Baer, and multi-billionaire Warren Buffet (for whose son King sponsored a political fund-raiser). Also identified as a perpetrator by some of the victim/witnesses was George Bush himself. The scandal was completely ignored by the national U.S. media, and appears to have been covered by the local press for the sole purpose of discrediting the witnesses and denouncing the investigation as yet another ‘witch hunt.’ The case did attract some attention from the European press though. Pronto, the largest circulation weekly in Spain, reported that the scandal “appears to directly implicate politicos of the state of Nebraska and Washington, D.C. who are very close to the White House and George Bush.” The report also noted that “there is reason to believe that the CIA is directly implicated,” and that the “FBI refuses to help in the investigation and has sabotaged any efforts” by others to do so. A documentary film crew from the UK’s Yorkshire Television, working in conjunction with the Discovery Channel, worked for months investigating the case. The result of their efforts was a film entitled “Conspiracy of Silence” which concluded that the child victims/witnesses were telling the truth. The documentary was scheduled to air on the Discovery Channel on May 3, 1994. Just days before its scheduled airing, the film was pulled without explanation and all copies were ordered destroyed. At least one production copy of the video survived the purge, however, and has been known to circulate among those derisively labeled as ‘conspiracy theorists.’ For everyone else, the conspiracy of silence continues. The Omaha operation, described in the film as a “large ring of rich and powerful pedophiles,” appears to have been in business for several years – with the knowledge of, and for the perverse pleasure of, a variety of city, state and federal authorities. Jerry Lowe, the first investigator assigned to the case by the Franklin Committee, reported back that: “The allegations regarding the exploitation of children are indeed disturbing. What appears to be documented cases of child abuse and sexual abuse dating back several years with no enforcement action being taken by the appropriate agencies is on its face, mind-boggling.” The investigation revealed that many of the child victims had been recruited from one of America’s most revered charitable organizations – Boy’s Town, to whom King had maintained close ties since 1979. Senator Loran Schmit has said: “Boy’s Town came up frequently during the investigation, but we found it difficult to get information about Boy’s Town,” as did the film crew from Yorkshire Television. Republican state senator and Franklin Committee member John DeCamp, in his book The Franklin Cover-Up, presents a compelling body of evidence to document the charges made by the child victims and various others associated with the operation. Equally disturbing is the evidence of the massive cover-up that was perpetrated by the FBI, local police, the grand jury assigned to the case, and of course the ever-compliant media. The cover-up involved, according to DeCamp, the untimely deaths of at least fifteen key players in the scandal – including Franklin Committee investigator Gary Caradori, whose private plane was blown out of the sky on July 11, 1990 with Caradori and his eight-year-old son on board. Caradori had been threatened frequently, as had the witnesses from whom he was gathering information. His vehicle had also been repeatedly tampered with. His brother claimed that Gary had told him that he had recently come into the possession of a key piece of evidence - specifically a book of addresses and phone numbers - which “if they knew he had it, they’d kill him.” The wreckage of his plane was, as a reporter on the scene noted, “strewn over a ¾ to 1 mile stretch.” A National Transportation Safety Board investigator acknowledged that: “the fact that the wreckage is scattered over a large area certainly demonstrates that it did break up in flight.” Family members claimed that there were items missing from the plane’s wreckage, most significantly Caradori’s briefcase. Within twenty-four hours of the crash, all of his records had been impounded by the FBI. Nevertheless, the NTSB ruled that the crash had been accidental, with no evidence of sabotage. The Franklin Committee - led by Senator Schmit, who suspected sabotage - ordered a private investigation into the cause of the crash. Strangely enough, the man selected to conduct that inquiry was William Colby, a fifty year veteran of intelligence operations whose career began in the OSS during World War II. Colby’s hiring was urged by his protégé, Senator DeCamp. In the 1950s, Colby had served as the CIA station chief in Italy during the notorious Operation Gladio days. In the 1960s, he ran the equally notorious Phoenix assassination, torture and terror program in Vietnam that claimed from 20,000 to 40,000 lives. The program was steeped in mind control operations, including the conducting of terminal experiments on VC prisoners-of-war. Colby next served as the director of the CIA under President Richard Nixon, before being replaced in that post by President Gerald Ford with George Bush. Considering his past history, Colby was certainly an odd choice to lead an inquiry aimed at ascertaining the truth. Colby’s finding, according to the Omaha World Herald, was that: “although the crash had some strange aspects, there was no specific evidence of sabotage.” As appalling as the trail of dead witnesses was the fact that the child victims, rather than the perpetrators, were thrown in prison. One of them, a young female victim named Alisha Owen, achieved the rather dubious honor of spending more time in solitary confinement than any woman in the history of the Nebraska penal system. She was sentenced to 9-25 years in prison for allegedly committing perjury, ten years longer than the sentence received by King for looting his financial institution of $40 million. As DeCamp explained to the “Conspiracy of Silence” film crew: “For some reason, they had to send a signal to every kid who is a potential witness.” Senator Schmit, who told the filmmakers that his career had been destroyed and that he had faced financial problems, believed that a clear signal was being sent to Nebraska politicians as well – a signal to not pursue the investigation any further. A clearly disillusioned Schmit had this to say: “I used to be a firm believer that the system would work and that people who did things wrong would be punished. And we discovered victims who claimed to have been abused, and who the grand jury acknowledged had been abused, but they did not try to find out who had abused these individuals. Instead, they convicted Alisha Owen of perjury – indefensible from my point of view.” It would be a full decade before any of the victims received even a semblance of justice, and that would ultimately come not from a criminal court, but from a civil court. In early 1999, a judgment was entered against defendant Larry King in favor of plaintiff Paul Bonacci – one of the most seriously abused of the child victims, whose abuse at the hands of King began when he was just six years old and which included his forced collaboration in the production of child snuff films. The memorandum of the district court's decision, issued on February 22, 1999, reads as follows: “Between December 1980 and 1988, the complaint alleges, the defendant King continually subjected the plaintiff to repeated sexual assaults, false imprisonments, infliction of extreme emotional distress, organized and directed satanic rituals, forced the plaintiff to 'scavenge' for children to be a part of the defendant King's sexual abuse and pornography ring, forced the plaintiff to engage in numerous sexual contacts with the defendant King and others and participate in deviate sexual games and masochistic orgies with other minor children. The defendant King's default has made those allegations true as to him ... “The now uncontradicted evidence is that the plaintiff has suffered much. He has suffered burns, broken fingers, beatings of the head and face and other indignities by the wrongful actions of the defendant King. In addition to the misery of going through the experiences just related over a period of eight years, the plaintiff has suffered the lingering results to the present time. He is a victim of multiple personality disorder, involving as many as fourteen distinct personalities aside from his primary personality. He has given up a desired military career and received threats on his life. He suffers from sleeplessness, has bad dreams, has difficulty in holding a job, is fearful that others are following him, fears getting killed, has depressing flashbacks, and is verbally violent on occasion, all in connection with the multiple personality disorder and caused by the wrongful activities of the defendant King.” For his years of unspeakable abuse, physical and emotional suffering, and the complete shattering of his life, Bonacci was awarded one million dollars. While a bittersweet victory at best, it was considerably more than most other victims of such abuse have gotten. The trial was significant for another reason as well; it revealed a glimpse of the connections between the King case and various other multi-victim abuse cases around the country. REFERENCES: 1. Asseo, Laurie “Justices Will Review Ban on Virtual Kiddie Porn,” Associated Press , January 22, 2001

, January 22, 2001 2. Bowart, Walter Operation Mind Control , Dell Publishing, 1978

, Dell Publishing, 1978 3. * DeCamp, John W. The Franklin Cover-Up , AWT, Inc., 1992

DeCamp, John W. , AWT, Inc., 1992 4. Hollingsworth, Jan Unspeakable Acts , Congdon & Weed, 1986

, Congdon & Weed, 1986 5. Junod, Tom “The Devil in Greg Dark,” Esquire , February 2001

, February 2001 6. Laurina, Maria “Paul and Shirley Eberle: A Strange Pair of Experts,” Ms. Magazine , December 1988

, December 1988 7. Li, David K. “Naughton Free in Time for Christmas,” New York Post , December 23, 1999

, December 23, 1999 8. Li, David K. “Turn Him Loose! Judge Voids Naughton’s Porno Conviction,” New York Post , January 22, 2000

, January 22, 2000 9. Lichfield, John “White House ‘Great Gatsby’ Lands in a New York Jail Cell,” The Independent (UK), August 10, 1989

(UK), August 10, 1989 10. Lichfield, John “White House Midnight Rambler Found Dead,” The Independent (UK), November 13, 1989

(UK), November 13, 1989 11. Mintz, John, Martha Sherill and Elsa Walsh “The Shadow World of Craig Spence,” Washington Post , July 18, 1989

, July 18, 1989 12. Savage, David “Justices to Tackle ‘Virtual’ Child Porn,” Los Angeles Times , January 23, 2001

, January 23, 2001 13. Sterling, Robert “Daddy’s Little Princess,” The Konformist , www.konformist.com

, www.konformist.com 14. ** Tarpley, Webster G. and Anton Chaitkin George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography , www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm

Tarpley, Webster G. and Anton Chaitkin , www.tarpley.net/bushb.htm 15. Thomas, Gordon Journey Into Madness , Bantam, 1989

, Bantam, 1989 16. Thomas, Gordon Enslaved , Pharos Books, 1991

, Pharos Books, 1991 17. Valentine, Douglas The Phoenix Program , William Morrow, 1990

, William Morrow, 1990 18. Weinstein, Henry and Greg Miller “'Virtual' Child Porn Is Legal, Court Says,” Los Angeles Times , December 18, 1999

, December 18, 1999 19. “Obituary of Craig Spence,” Daily Telegraph , November 14, 1989

, November 14, 1989 20. “Colby Played Role in Probe of Franklin,” Omaha World Herald , April 30, 1996

, April 30, 1996 21. “Bush Budget Seeks Child Program Cuts,” Los Angeles Times , March 24, 2001

, March 24, 2001 22. “The Child Sex Trade,” A&E Investigative Reports

23. “Conspiracy of Silence,” Yorkshire Television and the Discovery Channel

24. Paul A. Bonacci v. Lawrence E. King (4:CV91-3037), United States District Court for the District of Nebraska, Memorandum of Decision, February 22, 1999 * Some readers have criticized the use of this book as a source due to the affiliations of the author with various right-wing groups and causes. This is indeed cause for concern. Also of concern is that DeCamp served in Vietnam under his mentor - future CIA director William Colby - as DeCamp himself proudly proclaims in his book. What this means is that he was likely a part of the Phoenix Program. Nevertheless, DeCamp's book is the only published work to fully explore the so-called Franklin case, and it presents a considerable amount of factual information not available elsewhere.

** This book is also problematic, due to the authors' decidedly LaRouchian perspective. While the book is, for the most part, factually accurate, much of the analysis and interpretation of those facts misses the mark due to the authors' ideological bias. As with the DeCamp book, its inclusion as a source should not be interpreted to mean that this author endorses other causes, affiliations, or past actions of these authors.

The Pedophocracy, Part III: Uncle Sam Wants Your Children

August 2001 "It should come as no surprise, then, that long-time CIA and ‘intelligence complex’ operatives turn up on the FMSF Advisory Board. Perhaps the most public member has been Dr. Louis Jolyon ‘Jolly’ West, a legendary figure in CIA mind control circles operating out of UCLA. Another is Dr. Martin Orne, an authority on torture who currently works at the University of Pennsylvania’s Experimental Psychiatry Lab … Still another false memory luminary is Margaret Singer, professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley." Toward Freedom, May 1998 O ne of the names raised at the Bonacci trial was that of Michael Aquino. Aquino is the ‘High Priest’ and chief executive of the Temple of Set, an overtly satanic cult that split off from the Church of Satan in 1975. Besides tending to those duties, Aquino also has occupied his time serving as (according to an official biography once circulated by the Temple) a “Lieutenant Colonel, Military Intelligence, U.S. Army.” Aquino was accused in court by the mother of a victim as being a key player in a nationwide pedophile ring. Paul Bonacci himself has also positively identified Aquino as an associate of King, known to the children only as 'the Colonel.' King's personal photographer has identified Aquino as the man to whom he saw King hand over a suitcase full of cash and bonds. The photographer, Rusty Nelson, also has said that King told him that Aquino was part of the Contra guns and cocaine trafficking operation run by George Bush and another notorious Lt. Col., Oliver North. Aquino has also been linked to Offutt Air Force Base, a Strategic Air Command post near Omaha that was implicated in the investigation by the Franklin Committee. He was also claimed to have ordered the abduction of a Des Moines, Iowa paperboy. This was certainly not the first time that Aquino had been implicated as a key figure in large scale pedophile/child pornography rings. In July of 1988, not long before the King and Spence cases broke, the San Jose Mercury News ran a lengthy exposé on the Presidio Child Development Center run by the U.S. Army in San Francisco. Allegations of abuse being perpetrated at the center first emerged in November of 1986. Alarmed by accusations made by her child, a parent had sought a medical examination which confirmed that the three-year-old boy had in fact been anally raped. The boy identified his rapist as 'Mr. Gary,' a teacher at the center named Gary Hambright. Even with the conclusive medical evidence, “it took the Army almost a month to notify the parents of other children who had been in 'Mr. Gary's' class that the incident had taken place.” Within a year, at least sixty victims had been identified, all between the ages of three and seven, and further “allegations would be made by parents that several more children were molested even after the investigation had begun.” Amazingly enough, the center remained open for more than a year after the first case of abuse was reported, though the Mercury News noted that “day care centers under state jurisdiction are routinely closed when an abuse incident is confirmed.” And this was considerably more than a simple abuse incident that was confirmed. The stories told by the children implicated many other perpetrators besides Hambright. They also told of being taken away from the center to be abused in private homes; at least three such houses were positively identified. They also told of being forced to play “poopoo baseball” and the “googoo” game – 'games' that involved the children being urinated and defecated upon, and being forced to ingest urine and feces. Many of them also spoke of having guns pointed at them and of having been told that they and/or their parents and siblings would be killed if they told anyone what had been done to them. Despite the mounting number of victim/witnesses, and the numerous crimes alleged by these children, it was only Gary Hambright who was arrested - on January 5, 1987 - and he was charged with abusing just a single child. And even then the charges were dismissed just three months later, in March of 1987. There is little doubt that literally dozens of children were in fact severely abused at the center. There was irrefutable medical evidence to document that fact. Five of the children had contracted chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease; many others showed clear signs of anal and genital trauma consistent with violent penetration, which authorities chose to ignore. One mother complained to the San Francisco Chronicle that the FBI never interviewed her or her son, even after doctors had confirmed the boy’s abuse. There were unmistakable psychological signs as well. As The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry noted in April of 1992: “The severity of the trauma for children at the Presidio was immediately manifest in clear cut symptoms. Before the abuse was exposed, parents had already noticed the following changes in their children: vaginal discharge, genital soreness, rashes, fear of the dark, sleep disturbances, nightmares, sexually provocative language, and sexually inappropriate behavior. In addition, the children were exhibiting other radical changes in behavior, including temper outbursts, sudden mood shifts, and poor impulse control. All these behavioral symptoms are to be expected in preschool children who have been molested.” The journal article, written by Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D., also noted that: “The Presidio case has confronted both the public at large and the mental health community with an extraordinary and abhorrent situation of grave psychological proportions: the willful molestation of young boys and girls by representatives of the most patriarchal and supposedly protective arm of the American government – the U.S. Army.” The article further noted the nearly homicidal rage provoked in the fathers of the children abused in this way, as they saw the investigations of the crimes perpetrated against their children stonewalled and covered up. One father is quoted as saying: “When something about the Presidio comes on TV, I want to blow someone away.” Another father echoed this sentiment: “I was ready to blow the army base away.” One of those who the fathers would have liked to blow away was Michael Aquino, along with his wife Lilith. One child positively identified the pair, known to the kids as 'Mikey' and 'Shamby,' and was also able to positively identify the Aquino's home and to describe with uncanny accuracy the distinctively satanic interior of the house. The young witness also claimed to have been photographed at the Aquinos' home. On August 14 of 1987, a search warrant was served on the house. Confiscated in the raid were numerous videotapes, photographs, photo albums, photographic negatives, cassette tapes, and name and address books. Also observed was what appeared to be a soundproof room. Neither Aquino nor his wife were charged with any crimes, nor have they been to this day – a fact that Aquino claims proves his innocence. The next month, a fire - which the Army deemed to be accidental - destroyed the Army Community Services Building adjacent to the Presidio's day care center. Strangely enough, “the fire occurred on the autumnal equinox, a major event on the satanic calendar,” as the Mercury News noted. The fire also destroyed some of the center's records. “Three weeks later, fire struck again, this time at the day care center itself.” A building that housed four classrooms, including that of Gary Hambright, was completely destroyed. Investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms determined that “both fires, contrary to the Army's finding, had been arson.” In between the first and second fires (with evidence indicating that a third arson attempt had been made as well), Hambright was again indicted, this time charged with molesting ten children. In February of 1988, all but one of the charges were dropped. Shortly thereafter, the remaining count was dropped as well, and Hambright was a free man once again. No further charges were brought against him. In January of 1988, Aquino filed suit against the Army to have it cleared from his record that he had been investigated as a suspected pedophile. According to court records, he also had the gall to charge “Captain Adams-Thompson [the father of a victim] with conduct unbecoming an officer because the Captain reported the allegations of child abuse to the San Francisco police.” In denying Aquino's motion, the court concluded that “there was probable cause to title Aquino with offenses of indecent acts with a child, sodomy, conspiracy, kidnapping, and false swearing,” despite the fact that “the San Francisco police department (SFPD) closed its investigation and filed no charges against the plaintiff or anyone else.” Aquino and various of his defenders have consistently claimed that no one was ever prosecuted in the case due to a lack of evidence – proof that the entire affair was no more than a ‘witch hunt.’ Of course, the failure to prosecute the federal charges could also be due to the fact that, at the time, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco handling the case was Joseph Russoniello. Russoniello would later be identified by reporter Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News as a player in the Contra cocaine smuggling operation led by Lt. Col. Oliver North and company, just as witnesses would later identify Lt. Col. Michael Aquino as an operative in the very same sordid affair. It always helps when your legal ‘adversaries’ are actually on your side. In May of 1989, Aquino was again questioned in connection with child abuse investigations; this time at least five children in three cities were making the accusations. The children had seen Aquino in newspaper and television coverage of the Presidio case and immediately recognized him as one of their abusers. Three of the children lived in Ukiah - former home of the People’s Temple - where Police Chief Fred Keplinger was overseeing the investigation of the allegations. The Mercury News quoted the chief as saying that “the children are believable. I have no doubt in my mind that something has occurred.” Aquino was also identified by children in Santa Rosa and Fort Bragg. In the Fort Bragg case, “allegations of ritual abuse erupted ... in 1985 when several children at the Jubilation Day Care Center said they were sexually abused by a number of people at the day care center and at several locations away from the center, including at least two churches.” Aquino was identified as having been at one of those churches. The Mercury News also reported that there was clear evidence of satanic cult activity on the grounds of the Presidio base, including an abundance of satanic graffiti, a satanic altar, and numerous artifacts of satanic rituals. A former MP at the base is quoted as saying: “We were sitting there, we've got a cult on the Presidio of San Francisco and nobody cares about it ... We were told by the provost marshal to just forget about it.” On April 19, 1988 - the eve of Adolf Hitler’s birthday, and seven years to the day before the Oklahoma City Federal Building would explode, allegedly due to an act of ‘domestic terrorism’- an open-house was held on the grounds of the Presidio heralding the opening of the new day care facility built to replace the fire-damaged Child Development Center. As a final note on the Presidio case, a report in the Marin Independent Journal revealed that Aquino owned a building in Marin County - inherited from his mother, Betty Ford-Aquino - that had been jointly leased to the Marin County Child Abuse Council and Project Care for Children. The stated purpose of Project Care was, interestingly enough, to assist parents in locating day care for their children. As disturbing as the Presidio case was, it was just one of many ritual abuse cases directly tied to one or more branches of the United States armed forces. As the Mercury News reported: “By November, 1987 the Army had received allegations of child abuse at 15 of its day care centers and several elementary schools. There were also at least two cases in Air Force day care centers,” and another in a center run by the U.S. Navy. In addition, “a special team of experts was sent to Panama [in June of 1988] to help determine if as many as 10 children at a Department of Defense elementary school had been molested and possibly infected with AIDS.” Yet another case emerged in a U.S.-run facility in West Germany. These cases erupted at some of the most esteemed military bases in the country, including Fort Dix, Fort Leavenworth, Fort Jackson, and West Point. Many of those making the accusations were career military officers who had devoted their lives to unquestioned allegiance to the U.S. armed forces. Many would resign their posts in outraged protest. It would be redundant to review all these cases, as most of them followed a remarkably similar pattern. Given though that West Point is America's premier military academy, and given also that the case - like many others - was linked by witnesses to the Presidio, a brief review is warranted here. As The Times Herald Record reported in June of 1991: “The incidents [at the West Point Child Development Center] unfolded against a backdrop of satanic acts, animal sacrifices and cult-like behavior among the abusers, whose activities extended beyond the U.S. Military Academy borders to Orange County and a military base in San Francisco, parents charged.” The case first broke in July of 1984, when a three-year-old girl found herself in the emergency room of the West Point Hospital with a lacerated vagina. She told the examining physician that a teacher at the day care center had hurt her. The next month, the parents of another child leveled accusations of abuse at the center. As the Mercury News reported: “By the end of the year, 50 children had been interviewed by investigators. Children at West Point told stories that would become horrifyingly familiar. They said they had been ritually abused. They said they had had excrement smeared on their bodies and been forced to eat feces and drink urine. They said they were taken away from the day care center and photographed.” Despite abundant medical and psychological evidence, and literally dozens of child witnesses, and despite “950 interviews by 60 FBI agents assigned to the investigation, an investigation led by former U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliani produced no federal grand jury indictments,” according to the Herald Record. The Herald also noted that: “In 1987, Giuliani said his detailed investigation showed only one or two children were abused.” This was, it should be noted, a bare-faced lie from the fascistic future-mayor and would-be Senator, as the Herald report divulged: “a still-secret, independent report - produced by one of the nation's top experts on child sexual abuse - confirms the children's accusations of abuse.” This was not the first time that the prestigious academy had shown an appalling willingness to overlook extreme levels of abuse directed at children by army personnel. A year before the abuse case broke, a 22-month-old child was murdered by an Army staff sergeant. The Mercury News reported that: “After a court martial hearing, the sergeant was given an 18 month suspended sentence and dishonorable discharge.” In other words, he served no time and was essentially given a free ride for murdering a child. With help from Giuliani, the FBI, the U.S. Army, and the grand jury, the abusers of countless children at the day care center (which was, appropriately enough, building number 666 on the academy grounds) were likewise given a free ride. As with the Franklin case, the children and their parents were to find justice only through the civil courts. The Herald Record reported that: “lawyers for both the government and the 11 child plaintiffs agreed that some children were sexually abused at the center two years ago” (again contradicting Giuliani's bogus conclusions). The government, however, claimed that it could not be held responsible, due to the “assault exemption in the Federal Tort Claim Act.” As the New York Times explained: “under federal law the government cannot be held liable for assaults committed by its employees and thus cannot be sued for assault.” In other words, the Army did not dispute the allegations, it just rather cavalierly maintained that it was exempt from being sued. The court saw otherwise and awarded $2.7 million to nine of the child victims – paltry compensation for their suffering, but a victory of sorts nonetheless. The Times opined that the settlement amount “was large for a child-abuse case in which no criminal charges were filed.” The article claimed that the failure to prosecute the case was due to the fact that “the Federal Bureau of Investigation found ‘insufficient evidence to prosecute,’” when in fact the Bureau appears to have deliberately ignored and/or covered-up that evidence. And so ended the West Point case, except that - as one mother noted - it was hardly over: “These people stole our children. She's nothing like she used to be. She's a very angry little girl. She doesn't trust anyone. She's nothing like she was before this happened. It's never going to be over for them, or for us.” The mother of a Presidio victim had this to say: “People keep telling us we've got to let it go -- just forget about it and go on ... Three weeks ago, our youngest daughter was having nightmares and our other daughter was closing out the whole world, going to her room and siting there, with no radio, no TV, no nothing. Tell me it's over.” “I cannot accept promotion in a system that at first refused to acknowledge and now refuses to deal with the victims of extensive child abuse that occurred at the West Point Child Development Center.” Army Captain Walter R. Grote, refusing a promotion to Major in June 1985. Grote referred to his protest as a “fight for the human rights of all children.” REFERENCES: 1. Al-Kurdi, Husayn “Messing With Our Minds,” Toward Freedom , May 1998

, May 1998 2. Arce, Rose Marie “Liability in Point Abuse Case Debated,” The Times Herald Record (Middletown, New York), December 23, 1986

(Middletown, New York), December 23, 1986 3. Blood, Linda The New Satanists , Warner Books, 1994

, Warner Books, 1994 4. Cunningham, Douglas and Alan Snel “A Legacy of Pain: Settlement Doesn't Ease Abused Children's Fears,” The Times Herald Record (Middletown, New York), June 11, 1991

(Middletown, New York), June 11, 1991 5. DeCamp, John W. The Franklin Cover-Up , AWT, Inc., 1992

, AWT, Inc., 1992 6. Ehrensaft, Diane “Preschool Child Sex Abuse: The Aftermath of the Presidio Case,” The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry , April 1992

, April 1992 7. Goldston, Linda “Army of the Night,” San Jose Mercury News , July 24, 1988

, July 24, 1988 8. Goldston, Linda “Satanic Priest Questioned in New Sex Case,” San Jose Mercury News , May 13, 1989

, May 13, 1989 9. Hays, Constance L. “$2.7 Million Settles Army Child-Abuse Case,” New York Times , May 23, 1991

, May 23, 1991 10. Sawyer, Kathy “Army Doctor Turns Down Promotion; Lax Response to Case of Child Abuse Cited,” Washington Post , June 25, 1985

, June 25, 1985 11. Steinberg, Jeffrey “Satanic Subversion of the U.S. Military,” EIR , July 2, 1999

, July 2, 1999 12. “Army Doctor Refuses Promotion in Protest,” San Diego Union Tribune , June 25, 1985

, June 25, 1985 13. “The Keys to Hell and Death – Part II,” SFLR News (the newsletter of San Francisco Liberation Radio), May 21, 2001

(the newsletter of San Francisco Liberation Radio), May 21, 2001 14. Michael Aquino v. The Honorable Michael Stone, Secretary of the Army (Civ. A. No. 90-1547-A), United States District Court, Alexandria Division, July 1, 1991

The Pedophocracy, Part IV: McMolestation

August 2001 "Rarely has such a strange and little-understood organization had such a profound effect on media coverage of such a controversial matter. The [False Memory Syndrome] foundation is an aggressive, well-financed PR machine adept at manipulating the press, harassing its critics, and mobilizing a diverse army of psychiatrists, outspoken academics, expert defense witnesses, litigious lawyers, Freud bashers, critics of psychotherapy, and devastated parents.” Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1997 I f there's anyone who can relate to the sentiments expressed by the Presidio and West Point parents, it is the mothers and fathers of the children from the McMartin Preschool – and there are literally hundreds of them. The McMartin case was, of course, the largest and most well-publicized of the multi-victim, multi-perpetrator ritual abuse cases that sprang forth in the 1980s. It was also a case that was grotesquely misrepresented by the media, both mainstream and 'alternative' – perhaps nowhere more so than in the appalling writings of Alexander Cockburn, the allegedly ‘progressive’ Warren Committee apologist. Cockburn went so far as to write an op-ed piece entitled “The McMartin Case: Indict the Children, Jail the Parents,” which ran in The Wall Street Journal on February 8, 1990. Virtually everyone agrees that the children of McMartin were victimized, the only debate being whether that victimization was by abusive caretakers or by overzealous therapists and prosecutors. Either way, Cockburn’s stance on the case was unconscionable, and should have sent a clear signal to the progressive community that there was considerably more to the McMartin allegations than met the eye. The harsh reality is that the McMartin Preschool, in conjunction with at least two other Manhattan Beach preschools and one babysitting service, was the center of a massive child prostitution and child pornography ring whose operations were protected and covered up by any number of local, state and federal officials – or so it would appear. A glimpse of the true nature and scale of the McMartin case is given by an official correspondence from Sergeant Beth Dickerson of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to Agent Ken Lanning at the FBI Academy Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico, Virginia, dated February 10, 1985, and reproduced in Larry Kahaner's Cults That Kill: “In August 1983, the Manhattan Beach Police Department began an investigation regarding allegations of sexual abuse occurring at the McMartin Preschool ... Altogether, approximately 400 children were evaluated by therapists at Children's Institute International. All interviews were videotaped and 350 children disclosed sexual behavior ... “In all, the victims named seven teachers (six women and one male) at the preschool as having molested them. These individuals are currently charged with 209 counts of child molestation. Also named are about 30 other individuals still uncharged, as well as numerous unidentified 'strangers.' “McMartin victims allege sexual abuse occurred on school grounds as well as at a local market, churches, a mortuary, various homes, a farm, a doctor's office, other preschools and other unknown locations ... “Most children state they were photographed in the nude ... They mention drinking a red or pink liquid that made them sleepy ... Children disclose animal sacrificing (bunnies, ponies, turtles, etc.) and some of this occurred in churches. Victims describe sticks put in their vaginas and rectums and also being 'pooped' and 'peed' on. Children say that the adults sometimes dressed in black robes, formed a circle around them and chanted. “In May 1984, another preschool investigation began in the same policing jurisdiction stemming from a McMartin victim who identified the Manhattan Ranch Preschool as a place where he was taken and molested ... additional children have begun disclosing sexual abuse (approximately 60) and they have named six or more additional suspects ... These children talk of strangers coming to the school and molesting them, being taken off campus and molested, being photographed nude and some talk of animals being abused. The children talk of being hit with sticks and of being 'peed' and 'pooped' on ... “[T]he resources of the police department and the District Attorney's office were not sufficient in order to follow up on the multitude of uncharged suspects in both preschools ... The Task Force became operational on November 5, 1984. It should be noted that the Task Force has two other preschools under investigation for alleged sexual abuse in addition to McMartin and Manhattan Ranch. One, the Learning Game Preschool, is clearly linked to McMartin.” An astounding total of 460 children reported being sexually abused at the three closely-linked Manhattan Beach schools. Even more astounding, investigative author Michael Newton (among others) has noted that Children’s Institute International determined that: “a full eighty percent displayed physical symptoms, including vaginal or rectal scarring, anal bleeding, painful bowel movements, and the 'anal wick reflex' associated with violent penetration.” The stories told by the victim/