Last Friday, actress Blake Lively attended Variety‘s Power of Women Luncheon in New York City where she was honored for her work with the Child Rescue Coalition. She delivered a heartfelt speech in which she aimed to bring awareness to the, unfortunately, fast-growing child pornography business and sought to inform her audience on the outstanding work of the Child Rescue Coalition.
The Child Rescue Coalition is a non-profit organization based in Florida. It aims to rid the Internet of sexual predators who may be targeting minors. According to Lively, “They can identify these pedophiles…they see the IP address of who’s trading these files and they give that to law enforcement. And the trading of these files is a felony so law enforcement can knock on that person’s door and see if that person has access to a child.” Despite only having been founded in 2013, this process has already helped law enforcement officials in up to 64 countries to find and arrest over 9,000 predators and to remove about 2,000 children from harm’s way.
As Lively spoke, what she described as a live world map constantly flashed with red specks. She explained that each red dot signified an Internet user engaging in child pornography at that very instant. As she said, “The sexual exploitation of children is something that isn’t happening rarely. It’s not happening worlds away. It’s happening right here and right now.”
She continued to express exactly what child pornography is, and just how enormous of a problem it has become, considering not many people are able to fully grasp the concept of it. As a matter of fact, Lively admits that she wasn’t clear on it at first either. “I was afraid to ask,” she states. “As a mother, you know? Because it would be very painful to hear. I felt like I had to ask though, and I feel like I have to share it with you guys now. It is disturbing and I’m gonna warn you, but I feel it’s my responsibility to tell you guys because it is the truth and I believe if we all knew this, we would dedicate much more of ourselves to stopping it.”
Lively begins by addressing the overall idea of what child pornography is, explaining that although it is the sharing of nude images of boys and girls under the age of 18, it has also crossed over into the video category. She states that the children featured in these images and videos tend to be visibly pre-pubescent. “Because of the internet- and there’s so much content – these pedophiles are desensitized,” she states. “Because of that, the kids are getting younger and the content is getting that much more devastating.”
She, at first, wondered exactly how much younger these children are getting, so she asked a law enforcement officer. Tears immediately threatened to come out of her eyes upon telling the officer’s reply. “Infants,” he said. Shocked, she questioned what the officer meant by infants. “With the umbilical cord still attached.”
Although acknowledging that the facts are overwhelming, she then once again referred to its importance, saying, “I know, it’s so devastating to hear this and I’m really sorry to share this, but I’m grateful that you guys are listening because this is actually happening and it’s important that we know this and that it resonates with us so that we think about this in our days and in our personal life.”
She then went into the deeper, darker details about the epidemic, saying, “I feel that if these kids are experiencing this, the least that they deserve is for us to hear what is actually happening to them”. She clarifies that, contrary to popular belief, it is not just touching. “There’s penetration; there is extreme torture and bondage; there is bestiality, which is having an animal penetrate the child or infant; there’s incest,” and the list goes on.
Lively then continued on to enforce her argument through hard and undeniable statistical information. She made it known that, sadly, as far as law enforcement is aware, there are 30 to 50 million files being traded a day. She also clarified that it is happening to children of all different walks of life; that it could, quite sincerely, happen to any child. As a matter of fact, 90% of children personally know their abusers. She stresses that fact in order to make it clear to her audience that even their children might be at risk, even if they might think that they aren’t.
Frighteningly, many abusers actually work in settings with children. Lively states, “I thought that people that were working with children were people that wanted to protect them, but these people who have this propensity for wanting to lure children in, they find a profession that gives them access to children…and lots of them”. She explains that usually, abusers prefer small children simply for the fact that they aren’t exactly capable of speaking up. As a matter of fact, only 10% of children actually do speak up about their abuse.
She used those statistics as a means of introducing the Child Rescue Coalition and the incredible work that they do in order to beat those odds. She says, “That is the thing about the Child Rescue Coalition, it’s that they are proactive. They don’t wait for these children to speak up.”
Lively then switches from the coalition back to the statistics, informing her audience that “the average abuser abuses between 50 to 100 children in their lifetime”. Not only that but that “the average person that views child pornography – between 55% and 90% – are actually hands-on abusers or will become abusers.”
Going back to her previous statements about abusers in the workplace, she refers to stories that she has heard about such instances. She starts off by mentioning a pediatric oncologist who was raping hundreds of his child cancer patients. Then, she continues with another story about a nurse who worked with children suffering from mental and physical disabilities. Upon being asked how many children he had abused, the nurse looked out through the window and asked, “How many snowflakes are there outside?” These stories are undeniably disturbing, but they demand to be told in order to demonstrate the harsh realities of the world that we live in.
Lively wraps up her speech by referring once again to the Child Rescue Coalition. She called her audience to action, saying, “You guys are all very important and well-connected people so this is my time to tell you, they need introductions. They need introductions to big companies.” In other words, she asks them to share their message with others.
She stresses how useful it would be for big companies, such as Care.com and Uber, to be provided with the IP addresses of these abusers. If they were provided with the IP addresses, then they would have the opportunity to be aware of which job applicants would be presenting a risk. She also states how beneficial it would be for Internet companies, such as Comcast, to have the IP addresses as well. “They could block that content from being shared because they know what those files are.”
Lively finally finished off her 9-minute long speech by directly engaging her audience, asking, “So why the hell are we not doing this?…It makes no sense. We have to make these introductions. We have to help these kids. It doesn’t infringe on anything legally.”She officially ends her speech by expressing her gratitude to the Child Rescue Coalition for all their hard work and services, stating “Thank you to everybody protecting our children. They are the real heroes.”
