Anti-Child Sex Ads Aim to Disturb
By Christine Jackman
Originally published in The Daily Telegraph, December 17, 2001
A businessman calls home to bid his wife and children good night, before reaching for a tiny Asian girl huddled at the end of his hotel room bed. This shocking image is part of a major TV campaign against child sex exploitation due to be launched by World Vision today. The ads, to be aired on commercial TV networks as public service announcements, show five scenarios in which adults target children for sex. The most disturbing features a man with a towel around his waist telling his family he misses them. As his wife tells him not to work too hard, the man assures her he will be "off to bed" soon, then hangs up and grasps the cowering girl by her shoulder.
World Vision spokeswoman Sarah Champness said the ads, produced by UN child rights agency UNICEF, were being released by humanitarian groups around the world to focus attention on the problem. Their launch has been timed to coincide with the Second World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, which begins in Yokahama, Japan, today.
Ms. Champness said forcing people to confront the ugly reality of pedophilia and the child sex trade was the only way to get them to act.
The campaign comes in the wake of the controversial closure in July of the Australian Federal Police's child-sex unit, code-named Operation Morocco. The unit, established in 1995, tracked about 250 Australian pedophiles involved in trade in 22 countries including Fiji, Solomon Islands, India and Nepal.
Attorney-General Daryl Williams has denied the country's commitment to tracking pedophiles had been downgraded, saying Operation Morocco files were referred to other police units. World Vision chief executive Lynn Arnold said Australian pedophiles had become more active because they knew Australia no longer had a dedicated police unit targeting them. Mr Arnold said workers from the international aid organisation in Asia had complained of more Australian pedophiles at large since the abolition last year of Operation Morocco.
