Webcam kid going public: Results

Exposure is child pornographers' worst enemy. So the New York Times's milestone profile of Justin Berry, who starting selling images and video of himself online when he was 13 (see "Kids & Webcams"), has already had positive results: "Some of the most trafficked Web sites that directed potential customers to minors' online Webcams have shut down," the Times reports. The Times doesn't provide numbers but gives Michelle Collins, director of the Exploited Child Unit of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children as its source of this development. The closures, though, affected boys more than girls. "Not every portal to teenage Webcam sites has disappeared. While among the most popular, the portals that have taken down their links to adolescent sites are only those that in the past featured links to Justin's sites. As a result, each one is primarily a listing of boys' sites, or both boys' and girls' sites. However, other portals that link solely to girls' sites are still up and running. The ones that have disappeared, however, were significant parts of the Webcam infrastructure." Another result: Justin's biological father, implicated in the now-19-year-old's case against child pornographers, "has approached American officials in Mexico through his lawyer with an offer to turn himself in."