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Child's Picture Copied, Exploited On MySpace

Posted: 7:45 pm MDT June 28, 2006

When Kelli Smith discovered her 7-year-old daughter's picture on the Internet, she was appalled.

Now, she wants to warn parents what can happen and tell them what they can do to help.

"It's like someone punching you in the stomach, sick rage, everything hits you," said Smith.

That's what she felt when she says she saw a vulgar picture of her daughter on the popular Internet site, MySpace.com.

"I didn't find it until Sunday, so, in the meantime my daughter has been a poster child for child pornography and it's disgusting," Smith said.

Smith said the picture was taken from her MySpace profile, then a sexually explicit caption was added and posted on another profile. She said it was posted on Saturday at 1 a.m. and it wasn't until Wednesday evening when realized it.

Smith reported it to several organizations including MySpace. However, she said MySpace did not remove the picture. Instead, Photobucket, a service which uploads pictures, removed it. So far, El Paso police said there's nothing illegal about what they did to her daughter's photo.

"But it's just her little girl fully clothed, and not posing in a sexual manner, I don't believe there's something criminal that this individual can be charged with," said Sgt. Andrea Baca with Crimes Against Children.

Baca said, unfortunately, anything you place on the Internet, anyone can see and misuse it. Now, Smith is using the Internet to do something about it. She's started a website on MySpace to stop child pornography on the social network. She's encouraging people to report sexually graphic profiles and press MySpace to remove those sites.

"The monitoring on MySpace needs to come under control. My daughter's picture was up there advertising sexual favors and acts," said Smith.

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