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The model is shown rising out of a bubble bath, suds dripping from her body. Her tight panties and skimpy top are soaked and revealing. She gazes at the viewer, her face showing a wisp of a smile that seems to have been coaxed from off-camera.
In just over seven months, the model has become an online phenomenon. She has thousands of fans worldwide who pay as much as $30 a month to see images of her. New photos of her — many clearly intended to be erotic, all supposedly taken that week — are posted online every Friday.
The model's online name is Sparkle. She is — at most — 9 years old.
Sparkle is one of hundreds of children being photographed by adults, part of what appears to be the latest trend in online child exploitation: Web sites for pedophiles offering explicit, sexualized images of children covered by bits of clothing — all in the questionable hope of avoiding child porn charges.
Viewers request poses
In recent months, investigations of child pornography — by the Justice Department, state and local law enforcement and Congress — have contributed to shutdowns of some of the most sexually explicit Internet sites. But they have been replaced by a growing number of so-called model sites, Internet locations that offer scores of original photographs of scantily clad children such as Sparkle, often posed in ways requested by subscribers.
More than 200 of the sites have been found by The New York Times through online advertising aimed at pedophiles, and a vast majority focus mostly on one child. Almost all the children appear to be between the ages of 2 and 12.
Based on descriptions in online customer forums and in Web pages showing image samples, the children are photographed by people who have frequent access to them.
Based on the images and wording from online ads, the sites show toddlers wearing tight thongs, and slightly older children posing evocatively while wearing makeup and feather boas.
There is even a site that offers images of girls and boys who appear to be 5 or 6 years old, wearing just diapers.
'A rebellion movement'
In online conversations observed by The Times over four months, pedophiles portrayed model sites as the last of a shrinking number of Internet locations for sexual images of minors.
"I considered the authors of those sites as leaders of a rebellion movement for child porn," a man calling himself Heartfallen wrote on an online site for pedophiles, discussing the decline in the number of sites featuring images of naked minors. "They've vanished. There is much less freedom on the Internet now. We still have a rebellion made up of non-nude child modeling sites. But are they going to suffer the same fate as their predecessors?"
Child exploitation is in the spotlight because of an arrest last week in the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey, a 6-year-old beauty queen.
The suspect was a fugitive from charges of possessing child pornography and had exhibited a fascination with the sexual abuse of children. (Source New York Times)
Photo: Phillip J. Distasio, who has been charged with raping two boys, has argued on the Web in favor of legalizing sex with children. (John Kuntz/The Plain Dealer via Associated Press)
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