Houston television station KPRC aired their investigation of Yahoo!’s chat services, showing an unsettling relationship between corporate advertising and various child sex chat rooms.
The TV station reported gut-wrenching chat room titles like “Girls 13 And Up For Much Older Man,” “9-17-Year-Olds Wantin’ Sex,” and “5 To 13-Year-Old Kiddies Who Love Sex.” Worse, the station reported, these chat rooms were ad supported.
Chatters who wanted to enter “5 To 13 For Older Men” were greeted with a Star Wars Diet Pepsi ad prior to entering.
The perverse chatters were using the rooms as a forum for meeting children for sex, kidnapping, and photo swapping.
Pepsi maintained that they were completely unaware of the situation and pulled their advertising immediately.
“We were completely unaware that our advertisements were associated with these chat rooms in any way,” Pepsi released in a statement.
Georgia-Pacific responded likewise, after Yahoo! acknowledged that Brawny paper towels were advertised in a room entitled “6 To 11 Year Old Girls Into Older Men.”
Other companies who pulled advertising include State Farm Insurance and Countrywide Mortgage.
Currently, there is no legislation in place that provides for prosecution of the chat room organizers. Only civil liability can be assessed under current law.
“Short of changes in the law in Congress, we may be limited about what we can do in this area,” U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said, further alluding to an inability, from a legal standpoint to shutdown sex sites presented under Yahoo!’s services.
