Online porn site recruiting locally

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This article was published 21/12/2016 (3429 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Recruiters for porn sites are in Winnipeg, targeting the city’s vulnerable youth for sexual exploitation, activists and experts said.

They are handing out business cards and offering thousands of dollars in prizes for posting amateur videos to the web.

“Crap like this, it drives me insane,” said a Point Douglas activist who wouldn’t give his full name and goes by “Duck.”

He and other elders who gather at the Barber House centre, which is a seniors centre that has an attached day care, worry young people in the area are being targeted with offers of big money.

They see young people barely in their teens exploited on the street and now more are being targeted online to create amateur pornographic videos with the promise of “prizes” of up to $22,500. That might be enough to lure someone into doing something they may later regret, he said.

“This can do a lot of damage. Once it’s out there, you can’t take it back,” said Duck. The business card shows images of very young women. Its website advertises that it’s free to join and “performers with the most points accumulated during the month will win cash prizes. Cash prizes will be awarded in six categories (female, male, female/female, male/male, male/female, transgender). In case of a tie, the total number viewers during the month will be used as a tie-breaker.”

Although the website says it is for adults only, there is no age-verification system, said Cybertip.ca’s Stephen Sauer at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection in Winnipeg.

“The biggest danger here is if youth are doing this sort of activity,” said Sauer, a systems specialist. “It’s easily recorded without their knowing, and they could be blackmailed at a later time.”

He said Cybertip has received two reports about the website from people concerned participants might be under age.

Winnipeg police said they haven’t had any issues raised about the website, but sex-trade activity and exploitation has increased because of such websites and online ads on backpage.com.

“The Internet has definitely opened it up and made it easier for a person to get into the sex trade and made it easier for predators to identify who these girls are,” Sgt. Darryl Ramkissoon said.

Sauer said innocuous websites and apps such as live.me are a bigger concern. The popular social platform is used to broadcast and watch live-streaming videos. “It’s supposed to be an app for broadcasting yourself,” said Sauer.

The problem is that young people are groomed online then lured into doing something such as getting undressed. “Youth don’t see the danger when their image is being captured by who knows who.”

Children — and adults — need to be aware of the risks, he said. “I would suggest having conversations with youth about online activities — talking about the different apps they’re using and the danger of apps and anything to do with livestreaming or chatting. You don’t know if the person at the other end is recording or capturing images while they’re chatting.”

Like sex, drugs and alcohol, social media is not going away, and the best way to help people deal with it is through education.

“We need to shift our thinking,” said Sauer. “We know youth are going to be doing this. We need to talk about the issues of doing it — to be there and reassure them that we’re here to help them no matter how far it’s gone down the wrong path,” Sauer said.

Prevention, through arming young people with knowledge, is the best way to avoid trouble, Ramkissoon said.

“We’re starting to educate individuals a lot more starting in schools,” he said. Winnipeg police conduct Internet safety workshops and point out the potential dangers and pitfalls.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca