Lately, I have not had a shortage of pedophiles getting busted on the dark web to write about. The idea is disturbing – that in such a short amount of time, so many buried, sick and twisted desires are being aired. I mean . . . 80k users getting busted on one website alone?
The Brightside: the criminals involved in these busts are getting punished.
The downside: some of the punishments are unjust and should be harsher.
Just recently – in the last 24 hours, to be exact – two men were arrested for hosting a child pornography sharing chat room. The men, 51-year-old Brett McBain and 54-year-old David Buckley, founded the chat room (#TheOtherPlace) in 2014 after meeting on a similar dark web pedophilia forum.
The men described their crime as “a channel for the respectful appreciation of youthful beauty” – or in other words, a channel for sharing indecent images of children.
McBain, dubbed “King of the Castle”, shared over 200,000 links while Buckley shared over 30,000. McBain was given ten different charges relating to child pornography distribution, while Buckley managed to walk away with a single charge of conspiring to distribute.
Although, the pair did get a bite of life’s harsh reality right off the bat in the form of a cliché catfish scenario. Throughout their correspondence, McBain was under the impression that Buckley was a 24-year-old woman.
McBain, while in police custody, admitted that he was “glad” to be arrested, as he would now have the opportunity to “sort himself out”. Both criminals suffer from their own psychological issues, and prison is sure to be a good place to sort those issues out.
Regardless, we can only hope that prison is where they will ultimately end up . . . and ultimately stay.
In the meantime, let’s hope that the child pornography busts continue – and the foundation of new forums and websites doesn’t.
