Twenty-two years have passed since the discovery of the battered, bruised and mutilated child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey. While many considered this an abduction at the time, given the lengthy ransom note discovered that early morning, her father discovered her body at about 1:00 p.m. that same afternoon. Her cause of death seemed inconclusive, so investigators and officers blamed it on asphyxiation—due to the cord that still hung around her neck. None of the details added up in the end, and none of the DNA matched any particular sample.

After additional tests, detectives identified that not only had JonBenét been strangled and hit in the head, but she had also been sexually assaulted and had marks in her side from what looked like a stun gun.

Ten years later, a man named John Mark Karr confessed to killing the six-year-old. It was not long before authorities dubbed his self-accusation as false due to finding no evidence that matched him. On top of that, he had just been released from jail in California on five separate charges of child pornography—the sentence was only one year per charge.

Another twelve years passed and on December 28, 2018, another confession arose from the archives. Only this time, it was more sufficient. A man named Michael Vail came forward with a plethora of information that related to a man named Gary Oliva. Not only had Oliva lived on the same street as the Ramsey family, but on December 26, 1996, the day after the murder, Oliva called Vail frantically saying that he had “hurt a little girl”.

Police found Oliva wandering around Boulder, Colorado in 2000 and proceeded to arrest him on drug charges. On his person, they found a picture of JonBenét, a stun gun, and a poem titled: “Ode to JonBenét”. This is what led officers to raise suspicions.  Soon after, he was detained on multiple charges unrelated to JonBenét including the assaulting of a 7-year-old girl and strangling his own mother. When convicted of these charges, he was also registered as a sex offender in Colorado and put behind bars in 2016 for 10 years due to the publication of child pornography.

According to a legal source, federal sentences for child pornography has gone up 500% in the last 15 years. It is a known fact that the Internet is behind it, and with the growth of this toxic source, in comes with consequences. The default sentence length for the first offense is up to 15 to 30 years but because of constant overcrowding, they are usually, if not always, released back into the public.

A District Court in Ohio reports that just because these criminals come in charged with these offenses, they do not have direct pedophilia with a child, but that is only because they do not feel the need to further investigate into the matter. Some say child porn offenders are on the same level as drug cartels: swept under the rug, passed through the system and easily forgotten.

Over the years, it has become much more accessible for people to access and upload pictures and videos onto the internet and because it has grown so much they get lost in the web. Criminals are constantly overlooked and children are exposed against their will. These charges are serious and should not go unnoticed. It would be different circumstances if a parent found out that their own child was unprotected. Going down the road, awareness should be brought to this misconduct and even the slightest offense should not be omitted.