Tag Archives: pedophilia

The Dark Web (series)

There’s a dark side to the internet, and you probably don’t even know it exists. Look behind the positive veneer of social media, communication apps and platforms that have made our lives easier and more connected, and you’ll find criminals using the same apps and platforms to run illicit and dangerous activities.

Sextortion syndicates target victims globally through social media. Illegal wildlife trades thrive on social consumer marketplaces. Digital black markets operate anonymously using software designed for press privacy and freedom to sell drugs. Secret child pornography rings run rampant in secret, closed groups and private chats.

This explosive new series lifts the lid on how criminal organisations are thriving in this new digital frontier.


Episode One – The Queen of Sextortion

Sextortion was invented by one woman in the Philippines, Maria Caparas. She turned the idea of making friends online and recording explicit video chats into a profitable blackmail and extortion scam that could not exist without social media. She now runs a mini empire seemingly beyond the reach of authorities, that has led to many suicides.

Episode Two – Wildlife Clickbait

They may look like ordinary posts of exotic pets for sale on social media. But they are feeding a growing trade in illegal and endangered animals in Malaysia and beyond. This criminal industry is worth billions and is jeopardising attempts to protect endangered species.

Episode Three – Black Market Boom

Drugs, guns, counterfeit documents and much more are sold on dark web marketplaces that run on anonymous browsers and using cryptocurrency. AlphaBay was the biggest marketplace, transacting over US$800,000 in a day enabling its founder to live a luxury lifestyle in anonymity, until international law enforcement caught up with him.

Episode Four – The Candyman

It was one of 640 million closed groups on Facebook. Hiding behind the anonymity, the creator of child pornography group Loli Candy and its 7,000 members hid their activities on Facebook and Whatsapp – the dissemination of horrifying images of abuse. While they were eventually bought to justice many more thrive.

A Stone in Our Heart

A Mother and Daughter – Lillian and Jette –  are climbing up a mountain in Switzerland. A mountain that brings back a lot of memories.

They hike from cabin to cabin while they dig into a past which Lillian has spent many years trying to suppress: Jette was sexually abused by her stepfather throughout her childhood and youth. A part of the abuse took place in the same cabins that Jette and Lillian are now revisiting.

Jette has invited her mother to go on this trip because she needs to talk about what happened, and especially about Lillian’s role in it all. Jette loves her mother, but at the same time she can’t stand being close to her. Over the years Jette has begun to question whether her mother knew about the abuse or not. Naturally Jette feels a deep frustration. But she has a strong hope that if Lillian admits she knew about the abuse, Jette can find an opportunity to forgive her mother and reestablish a healthy relationship.

The mountain trip puts the two women’s relationship to the test. When Jette gets the conversation started, she doesn’t get the answer that she expected: Lillian denies that she saw or knew anything.

This is the starting point of a physically and emotionally life-changing journey, which forces the two women to face their own inner demons and to embrace the pain and the guilt, but also to have faith. The conversations intensify as the two women move up the mountain.

At one point it seems like this trip might be the last thing they will ever do together.

Taboo: Season 1 – Stolen Childhoods

Taboo: Stolen Childhoods is a series that shines a light on the dark underbelly of our society. Each compelling episode takes Jon Sistiaga to a unique dark place linked by the theme of shattered childhoods – from the web cams of the Philippines to a prison in Colombia, we meet with the abusers and the abused. Filmed with bold honesty and sensitivity Taboo: Stolen Childhoods is a series like nothing you have seen before.

Episode 1: Atonement

Villa Milagro – an isolated village in Florida – has a very particular census: all of its inhabitants have been prosecuted for sexual offenses, as its one of few places that meet sentencing requirements of being completely child-free.

Jon Sistiaga enters their houses and discovers how the toughest laws in the world are applied to child abusers, and what kind of lives can they return to after concluding their sentences. A portrait emerges of a community united in shame and misery. Against the odds though, some have managed to rebuild a life of sorts there, find forgiveness and even find love..

Episode 2: Perversion

Sweetie is a girl that lives in the Philippines. Her daily routine is to sit down in front of her computer and talk with men. Luckily, Sweetie is not real, it is a software created by a dutch foundation to hunt pedophiles.

In this episode, filmed in Spain, Holland and the Philippines, Jon Sistiaga investigates the horrifying world of child pornography.

We meet underaged webcam girls in the Philippines who, with their families support, fall victim to the Western demands for child pornography. Law enforcement officers tasked with tracking illegal images, grading them according to their severity and hunting down the ever-more tech-savy pedophiles who create and exchange them.

Episode 3: Grief

Children who one day disappeared and never came back. Families who await news from their lost children. These are the stories that embody every parents worse nightmares.

Jon Sistiaga travels to the heart of Minnesota to follow the trail of some children disappearances, contacting relatives and investigators. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, in the US there are over 3,500 unsolved cases.

We meet with some of the few victims who had lucky escapes, and others who having suffered unimaginable crimes lived to tell the tale.

Episode 4: Monster

Luis Alfredo Garavito – known as ‘The Monster’ –  is by every measure the most feared and reviled murderer living today and perhaps ever to have ever lived . He has confessed to have killed, raped and tortured 140 children between the ages of 6 to 16 years old, though experts put the number at 172. He is currently imprisoned in a Colombian prison where Sistiaga, in scenes reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs, has gone to conduct an extended interview with him. With chilling detachment Garavito confesses to unimaginable crimes, tells of his motivations and how he was able to evade capture for so long. In doing so we are afforded a horrifying glimpse into the heart of darkness. We also revisit crime scenes and the families of his victims.

A quirk in Colombia’s legal system means that Garavito will be set free in seven years having served the equivalent of three months for each of his murders.

Who Took Johnny

If you’ve ever gotten separated from your child for just a few moments and remember the depth of panic that sets in, then you can begin to understand what Noreen Gosch has felt over the last 30 years since her son Johnny disappeared delivering newspapers on the morning of September 5, 1982.

More than any other missing child case, Johnny’s story has spawned countless theories and has instilled intrigue in the millions who remember the kid on the side of a milk carton. Along the way there have been mysterious sightings, strange clues, bizarre revelations and ambiguous photographs. A confrontation with a person who claims to have helped abduct Johnny paves the way to a crime scene and the possible involvement of a child abduction and prostitution ring. And then a knock on the door in the middle of the night raises as many questions as perhaps it answers..

Who Took Johnny is an examination into the infamous thirty-year-old cold case behind the disappearance of Iowa paperboy Johnny Gosch, the first missing child to appear on a milk carton. The film focuses on the heartbreaking story of Johnny’s mother, Noreen Gosch, her relentless quest to find the truth about what happened that tragic September morning when Johnny never returned from his paper route and her life since in helping others to mobilise the authorities when their children go missing.

Who Took Johnny captures the endless intrigue and conspiracy theories surrounding the eye-witness accounts, compelling evidence and emotional discoveries which span three decades of the most spellbinding missing person’s case in U.S. history.

“Timely, shocking and relentlessly compelling, documentary Who Took Johnny recounts the strange story surrounding the disappearance of paperboy Johnny Gosch, one of the original milk carton kids..Viewers with a taste for true-crime drama and plausible conspiracy theories are likely to come away wanting more, making the film a good candidate for a spin-off series. Others may cherish the ambiguity here, the way Capturing the Friedmans it allows room for debate.. despite the potentially lurid nature of the material, the film is never exploitative and a sense of compassion and respect, one untarnished by sentimentality, for victims and their families shines through throughout.”
Leslie Felperin, The Hollywood Reporter

“An amazing, lunatic documentary that will leave you creeped-out, excited and surprised”
John Waters, director of Hairspray and Crybaby

 

Are All Men Pedophiles?

We live in a society that condemns pedophiles, though biological instinct and world cultures throughout history suggest that an attraction to adolescents is as natural as it is unavoidable. The fashion industry on the one hand sexualises ever younger girls while those who act on these instincts are reviled. The apparent hypocrisy at the heart of society forces the question: What do we mean then when we talk about Pedophilia?

This films broad canvas takes in how our evolution and biological make-up have through-out history created cultures where what would today be called Pedophilia has passed without note, and with the complicity of all religions.  It also looks at how media definitions differ to scientific ones, whether Pedophilia could be considered a sexuality, how the definition differs between modern societies as well as presenting the testimony of both victims and perpetrators.

In conclusion, we are faced with both the contradiction of a society which fetishizes youth and the question: Are All Men Pedophiles?