Guatemalans Detect Child Porn Net
A scandal is shaking Guatemala on Monday, after detection in the country´s eastern region of a child pornography network that involves school children between 11 and 16 years of age in the making of video tapes with pedophile content.

Human Rights Attorney Sergio Morales ordered a thorough investigation after receiving this weekend a report by parents of victims that live in Jutiapa, a bordering department with El Salvador.

The Attorney General´s Office received seven tapes, showing minors, apparently under drug effects, performing sexual acts with adults.

The victims are students of an institute of Jutiapa´s administrative center, where the network was uncovered, due to sales of those tapes in the same school.

Estuardo Sarceño, a Juitapa police officer, explained that they are trying to find where the film was made and asserted that foreigners could be the encouragers of those practices, because they pay great sums of money for pornography.

An international group devoted to production, distribution, and exchange of child pornography films, which operated in 40 countries including Guatemala, was recently uncovered in Spain.

Humanitarian organizations denounced the legal loopholes in this country that hinder severe punishment of crimes like sexual exploitation of minors, and production and sale of material with pornographic content.

The legal loopholes have also caused an increase in child prostitution, mainly in the capital and the bordering areas. Guatemala ratified the Convention on Children´s Rights, but failed to create a childhood code that protected minors from exploitation and all kinds of sexual abuse.