UNICEF + Vatican got together for a child sex conference. First thing on the agenda: Imaginary Children

[Jim Burton]

The idea UNICEF and the Vatican, let alone a tag team of the two, have any moral authority on this topic needs to be investigated for obscenity.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2025/09/28/ ... se/2191447

Read this in The Manila Times digital edition.

AT a United Nations high-level meeting in New York, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher of the Vatican said “technology is being used to exacerbate certain forms of abuse and violence,” adding that the gravity of the violence and abuse against women and children extended beyond sexual exploitation and trafficking.

That technology he spoke of is the artificial intelligence (AI)-driven internet, where sexual violence is widespread. A UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) study, titled “Disrupting Harm,” said the Philippines had the highest number of victims of online sexual abuse and exploitation of children among the 13 countries included in the research.

Parents have much to worry about these days, since almost every school-age child has access to a mobile phone and the internet, and that is a great danger to them. Children are very secretive about their personal lives, and most parents cannot monitor what their children are doing on the internet.

[Not Forever]

Victims as young as 5 years old do not know what is happening to them or that it is a serious crime against them.

As always, they use an exaggeratedly low age to maximize the sense of alarm, because a fourteen-year-old taking selfies and posting them online only causes so much of a stir. And in many European countries, the minor would actually be considered the producer of child pornography and thus, technically, the criminal.

Oh well, I guess for these people it's better for someone to starve than to sell their image online. I still find the misuse of the term AI pretty amusing. It feels like it was thrown into the article just for clickbait.

Young people themselves must rise and demand a safe and abuse-free internet, and the government and telcos must provide it.

What if they don't want it? What if they don't want a government telling them what they can see, what they can post, and who they can talk to? What if they want a free internet — not free from abuse, but actually free? What if they don’t want a “safe” internet? When I was a teenager, I wanted internet access to porn, not an internet where third parties are minding my business.