The Spanking Club

Any time children are brutally beaten, it's the most outrageous type of conduct that we have to deal with. It wrenches your heart. All the children's issues do, but when you see children being beaten on videos and their genitalia are being filmed, it's very, very disturbing.

– Michael Heimbach, chief of the FBI's Crimes Against Children Unit

"The Spanking Club" was an illegal pornography ring in the United States and Canada whose members created and traded videos of "sadistic and brutal beatings" of children, often their own. The films did not involve ordinary spanking, but rather beatings, and they included a clearly sexual element such as close-ups of genitalia. This fulfilled the facts of child abuse and the creation, possession and distribution of child pornography.

Some members of the ring beat children and made videos while others simply trafficked in them. One member created spanking videos, but they involved mannequins rather than real children. The members communicated with each other on the Internet but traded their videos through regular mail because it is difficult to transmit a 90-minute video online.

The ring was discovered and broken up by the police in 2002. Nine members of the ring were found out and 12 children ranging in age from 4 to 14 were taken from their parents or guardians. The head or center of the ring was a computer programmer from Dalton, Georgia, named David Patterson. A video tape showed Patterson "administering repeated spankings to four naked children, who cried out in pain during the prolonged beatings," said a prosecutor. Two of the children were Patterson's children, another was the child of a former wife, and the fourth was a family acquaintance, investigators said. Patterson pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. His ex-wife, Shirley Blaney, received 2 years.

See also [ List of spanking clubs ]

External links

• Two news reports and a commentary by Tom Johnson on Project NoSpank

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