That's actually discussed in the VG article - that in pedophilia circles the "currency" is images and videos with much less money changing hands, which makes "follow the money" quite a bit harder.

I am not keen on learning the ropes, but I understand that it is driven by a barter culture and that there are financial exchanges made but that a lot is simply traded.

The illicit nature is probably one of the attractions. My understanding is that people become 'addicted' to it and strive to amass large collections. Few offenders have just a couple of images and videos but, instead, have vast collections. This is more so than is seen with legal pornographic material and possibly has something to do with the rarity and difficulty of access as well as inconsistency of access.

Disclosure: I used to date a lady who studied and worked with sex offenders. However, we seldom discussed her research and never her individual patients. So, I'm largely speculating with just a hint of regurgitating expert information.

So, with that said, it is largely still a fairly taboo subject of study. I guess there are many misconceptions and misunderstandings, even at the academic level. An example might be that sex offenders have a low rate of recidivism, even lower if narrowed to new sex offenses. On the other hand, they often have many victims prior to their first interaction with the justice system. Most victimization isn't done by strangers and involves grooming by a person close to the victim. That sort of stuff.

I don't have a solution, by the way. There has been some serious discussion of allowing current examples of confiscated CP to be used by those who are predisposed to such, but that goes over about as well as a lead balloon. It also doesn't solve the issue where they seem to want more and new material. Maybe CGI will be the answer? I'm just not sure that society will find that acceptable.

It isn't easy to have a conversation about it. She would very seldom disclose her work with the people she knew and had received death threats and had some instances of vandalism. Her work with offenders negatively impacted her social life.

So, we on HN might discuss it and try to remove our biases and be objective, but we are a rarity and previous threads might indicate that not everyone is willing to do so.

Sorry for the novella and meandering nature of my post. I'm not the greatest wordsmith.