I've been asked many times since the Mothers Online Movement launched on October 6th why I became involved in this issue. There are a million reasons, and I'll do my best to share with you many of them, but let me begin by telling you a story about a man who sent an e-mail message to Bill Gates. It's a true story, a story that made me believe that anything is possible if you have conviction and courage. The man's name is Paul Gillespie, aka former Detective Sergeant Paul Gillespie, who for 5 1/2 years was head of the Child Exploitation Unit with the Toronto Police Service.

On one particularly bad day, his team had seized several computers in Toronto that had on the hard drives over 100,000 images and videos of the worst sexual abuse of children, or as Paul put it to me, "one of the most soul destroying days of my life". In what he thought at the time was a pure act of madness, he typed out an e-mail message to Bill Gates of Microsoft, asking for help. The rest of the story is somewhat folkloric (in Canada anyway) ... that message resulted in the development of the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS) built by a bunch of dedicated cops from Toronto and other parts of Canada and an unlikely group of really smart geeks from Microsoft Canada. CETS is now in 8 countries around the world and has aided in the rescue of 138 children and the apprehension of 42 predators. Today, Paul Gillespie is President of the Kids' Internet Safety Alliance (KINSA) and a champion of the Mothers Online Movement.

So you see, one person's conviction and courage to do something, even if it seems mad at the time can have incredible impact. This is one of the million reasons that I decided to start the Mothers Online Movement and in two short weeks, almost 1,000 others have shown their support for this act of madness (the good kind of madness) ... I thank you for your courage and conviction!

In a previous blog entry, I mentioned some of the facts and figures associated with online child exploitation:

• Child pornography is one of the fastest growing businesses online, and the content is becoming much worse. In 2004, Internet Watch Foundation found 3,433 child abuse domains; in their 2006 annual report, they knew of 10,656 child abuse domains (Internet Watch Foundation. Annual Report, 2006).


• Of all known child abuse domains, 54 percent are housed in the United States (Internet Watch Foundation. Annual Report, 2006).

But here are some more:

• The KINSA MOM Cause page on Facebook has almost 150 members and is growing every moment through referrals and generous donations from people just like you!


• The KINSA MOM video on YouTube has been viewed almost 1,000 times already.


• Traffic continues to grow at www.mothersonlinemovement.ca.

Help us keep up the momentum!

Paula Knight
KINSA Advisory Board