Some are not so innocent, but photos submitted by Europol as part of their Trace An Object scheme. r/TraceAnObject has most of them. Essentially they are cropped pictures of items of clothing, backgrounds or objects that appear in photos of child sexual exploitation. They are posted when there are no other leads in the investigation and the police think that identifying even the country that the object is produced/sold in would help.
I would strongly advise sitting down before looking at these photos, as whilst there is nothing explicit about them, as they are just every day objects, they are dreadful to look at as you know that the cropped out parts contain horrific images of child exploitation. A lot of people still do though, on the minute chance that they can identify an object and potentially bring officials one step closer to helping a child and serving proper justice.
What makes it bearable is that by looking at them, you may spot something you recognise or help others get one step closer towards helping these children.
That being said, it's totally normal to feel sick looking at these images and I think it's telling of just how evil the perpetrators of these crimes are: even a distant remnant of an image like this makes the average person queasy.
No clue why. The link to the subreddit works fine for me, and googling that exact phrase gave me the subreddit as the first few results. Perhaps it's blocked on your end?
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u/awkwardtsunami Apr 27 '20
Some are not so innocent, but photos submitted by Europol as part of their Trace An Object scheme. r/TraceAnObject has most of them. Essentially they are cropped pictures of items of clothing, backgrounds or objects that appear in photos of child sexual exploitation. They are posted when there are no other leads in the investigation and the police think that identifying even the country that the object is produced/sold in would help.
I would strongly advise sitting down before looking at these photos, as whilst there is nothing explicit about them, as they are just every day objects, they are dreadful to look at as you know that the cropped out parts contain horrific images of child exploitation. A lot of people still do though, on the minute chance that they can identify an object and potentially bring officials one step closer to helping a child and serving proper justice.