Saturday, December 31, 2005

Boy's Web cam opens portal to a grim world / International Herald Tribune, 19 dec 2005

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/19/news/porn.php
urt Eichenwald
"The 13-year-old boy sat in his California home, eyes fixed on a computer screen. He had never run with the popular crowd, and long ago had turned to the Internet for the friends he craved. But on this day, Justin Berry's fascination with cyberspace would change his life.

Weeks before, Justin hooked up a Web camera to his computer, hoping to use it to meet other teenagers online. Instead, he heard only from men who chatted with him by instant message as they watched his image on the Internet. To Justin, they seemed just like friends, ready with compliments and always offering gifts.

Now, on an afternoon in 2000, one member of his audience sent a proposal: He would pay Justin $50 to sit bare-chested in front of his Web cam for three minutes. The man explained that Justin could receive the money instantly. 'I figured, I took off my shirt at the pool for nothing,' he said recently. 'So, I was kind of like, what's the difference?'

Justin removed his T-shirt. The men watching him oozed compliments.

So began the secret life of a teenager who was lured into selling images of his body on the Internet over the course of five years. From the seduction that began that day, this soccer-playing honor-roll student was drawn into performing in front of the Web cam - undressing, showering, masturbating and even having sex - for an audience of more than 1,500 people who paid him, over the years, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Justin's dark coming-of-age story is a collateral effect of recent technological advances: Minors, often under the online tutelage of adults, are opening for-pay pornography sites featuring their own images sent onto the Internet by inexpensive Web cams. And they perform from the pr"