NNDKP Joins the EU Initiative to Fight Internet Child Abuse Material

Bucharest, March 30th, 2009 - Nestor Nestor Diculescu Kingston Petersen (NNDKP) announced today its participation into the campaign for the combat of internet sexual exploitation of children. In response to the invitation addressed by MasterCard Europe, the firm has joined the Pan-European movement initiated by the Missing Children Europe Foundation to contain the commercial sale on the internet of materials depicting the sexual abuse of children.

At the beginning of this month, the European Commission announced the setting up of the European Financial Coalition, which re-unites public and private bodies, companies with worldwide operations and recognition and government representatives from 15 European states (MasterCard, VISA, PAY PAL, European Banking Federation, The European Association of Internet Providers, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon etc. The financial coalition also includes NGO-s such Missing Children Europe and Save the Children).

The coalition aims at promoting and facilitating a closer and more efficient co-operation among police forces, financial institutions, credit card schemes, online payments operators, internet services providers, as well as non-governmental organizations fighting the sexual exploitation of children over the internet.

One of the Coalition's objectives is to prevent the online purchase of sexually abused children material and to offer assistance for the identification, protection and recovery of underaged exploited through child sexual abuse web sites. By supporting this initiative, the European Commission intends to block the access to such web sites, by a series of measures, such as the implementation of a more restrictive legislation and the qualification as crime the access to such web sites.

At present, NNDKP is conducting an ample multi-disciplinary research primarily meant to clarify the legislative and regulatory measures that are required and feasible in order to ensure that the actions of the European Financial Coalition may be carried out and achieve their ultimate goals in Romania.

For the purposes of this project, NNDKP has dedicated six lawyers with complementing competences, each of whom has the highest level of experience in the relevant area of practice.

This is a project in which, even much more than in other cases, the accuracy of conclusions and the rigor in grounding the recommendations are crucial, in which any error may be speculated by those who, incredibly, against nature and morals, support the trade with inalienable values.

"The invitation to take active part in this project could not have been denied. No effort is too much in pursuing the limitation as soon as possible of this type of commerce and, thus, of the number of cases of child exploitation. It is not acceptable to contemplatively witness the trade with the psychical and physical integrity of children, to repudiate it and, then, to return to our daily activities without having done anything to prevent it", declared Mrs. Adriana Gaspar, Senior Partner with NNDKP and project coordinator.

As indicated by surveys, currently there are over 100,000 pedophiliac and pornographic web sites worldwide, containing over one million images featuring 10,000 - 20,000 sexually abused children. Three out of ten children are subject to molestation; 60% are approached by child molesters via the internet and 40% of these children respond to such approaches.

Online trading of child abuse materials has become a business of considerable size, a well - structured industry which has registered rapid growth. The number of web sites containing images of sexually abused children multiplied four times during 2003 - 2007.

Over 100 countries are involved in the distribution of child abuse images, a phenomenon which has registered a significant growth both in Europe and at international level. Several Internet child abuse networks have been identified recently in many European countries and the police has arrested a significant number of persons involved in this crime.

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