Child Rape Crisis in America
Elijah Wood, unexpectedly, grabbed global headlines when he told The Sunday Times pedophiles are powerful and “organized” in Hollywood. The victims, said Wood, “can’t speak as loudly as people in power.” And that, he said, is “the tragedy of attempting to reveal what is happening to innocent people.”
The day after the story broke, Wood told The Hollywood Reporter that he did not have “personal knowledge” of the issue but “this subject of child abuse is an important one that should be discussed and properly investigated.”
With these words, Wood underscores the boldness of speaking truth to power. Sadly, there has been far too little courage discussing and investigating the ongoing crisis of child rape by powerful men not only in Hollywood but across the country, as Conchita Sarnoff details in her new book TraffKing.
Last summer FBI Assistant Director Joseph Campbell announced, in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), there is an epidemic of child sex trafficking and pedophilia sweeping America.
You didn’t hear about it? No. Most people didn’t. Major media outlets, almost totally, ignored the story. A top FBI official and a film star both made statements about America’s child rape crisis to the British press. That is significant. Are American journalists reluctant to discuss children being raped by influential pedophiles?
Earlier this month the son of another film star discussed the sex abuse of his sister by his father, Woody Allen. Ronan Farrow said, “when The New York Times ultimately ran my sister’s story in 2014, it gave her 936 words online, embedded in an article with careful caveats. Soon afterward, the Times gave her alleged attacker twice the space — and prime position in the print edition, with no caveats or surrounding context. It was a stark reminder of how differently our press treats vulnerable accusers and powerful men who stand accused.”
Around the time Farrow published his essay, the Director of the Pentagon’s Defense Security Service, Daniel Payne, told reporters the “amount of child porn” he witnesses on government computers is just “unbelievable.”
As a leading child pornography researcher, I asked for clarification and was told, via email, “Director Payne was speaking from his 34 years of experience in the field of counterintelligence and security, and involvement in the Inspector General community. His remarks were not Agency specific; rather, he was speaking in terms of the government as a whole.” Payne was “speaking in terms of the government as a whole” and this did not circulate widely in mainstream media outlets?
Last year the State Department’s Director of Counter-terrorism, Daniel Rosen, was arrested for computer solicit of a child under 15 years old for sex/sodomy. Journalists reported this was the“3rd U.S. Official Hit With Child Sex and Porn Charges” when, in fact, far more than three government employees have been arrested on child sex abuse related charges.
Frustrated with the poor journalism, I posted on Medium “State Dept Dan Rosen’s Arrest: Cheat Sheet for Journos,” where I list hundreds of government staff arrested for participating in child sex abuse. My post quickly received over 12,000 shares. In response, The Daily Beast published, “The Sickening Child Porn Crisis Infecting U.S. Government Agencies,” citing only 22 government workers out of the hundreds I documented.
It seems difficult for American journalists to connect the dots and report on the full scale of child rape and torture occurring to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of children in America.
When two high-ranking Pentagon and FBI officials make public statements as bold as these and are largely ignored, when a film star goes to the British press to break the news of pedophile rings in Hollywood, it suggests American journalists are failing in their most fundamental responsibility; to be our fourth estate watchdog and speak truth to power.
The Boston Globe won recognition with the award-winning film Spotlight, depicting how Globe reporters investigated the systematic child rape and its cover-up by Catholic Church. Yet, while journalists heaped praise on the Globe, the media simultaneously ignored bomb-shell statements from the FBI and Pentagon about “epidemic” and “unbelievable” child rape and torture, aka child pornography.
Elijah Wood is correct. The subject of child sex abuse is important and must be “discussed and properly investigated.” The discussion should begin in newsrooms. Journalists should question why they are failing to cover what the FBI has called an American epidemic. America’s child rape crisis, which is child pornography, is damaging an entire generation of children.
It has all but been ignored by the media.
Dr. Lori Handrahan is a leading expert on child pornography in America. She can be reached on her website: www.LoriHandrahan.com
