A six-month investigation by The New York Times led to the uncovering of an Internet porn business started by a boy using his Webcam when he was just 13 years old. The boy, Justin Berry, is now 18 and he's helping the FBI and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Justice Department to try and stop other kids from following his path.

The NYT story details Berry's early beginnings in the porn world, which all started when he got a Webcam thinking it would help him make friends. But no sooner did he have his Webcam live when he was getting pinged by men asking him to take off his shirt and perform all sorts of sexual acts for money. And he did. All of this was taking place in his bedroom and mom had no idea this was going on. The story goes on to detail his downward spiral into drugs, alchohol, being molested by "clients" and how his once-estranged dad later helped him set up a new Webcam porn business when he realized how much money his son was making.

But the scariest part of the story was learning about this whole underground world of  teenage Webcam porn all over the country -- being RUN by teenagers. It's bad enough these kids are exposing themselves - but the fact that they are running their own businesses? And these perverts who are trolling the web helping this kids set it all up. Some guy actually helped Justin Berry set up a PayPal account via IM so he could get paid for his "work." And what's worse is that when he started stripping off his clothes, these freaks started strategizing online about how to get him to do more. It's downright sick.

The NYT reporter who wrote the story ended up convincing Berry to stop his business, get clean and sober and help prosecutors nail the predators going after kids online so other teenagers wouldn't have to experience his frightening life.

We've written about teenagers and issues with blogs, like cyberbullying, which already had me thinking about kids staying safe on the Internet. But this story sent me into a tailspin. It's absolutely frightening.

[photo from The New York Times]