Everything about Child Pornography totally explained
Child pornography refers to
pornographic material depicting
children being
sexually abused. Children are sexually abused in the production of child pornography when sexual acts are photographed, and the effects of the abuse are compounded by the wide distribution of the photographs of the abuse. New technology including inexpensive digital cameras and Internet distribution has made it easier than ever before to produce and distribute child pornography, and for its producers to avoid prosecution by distributing across national borders, though this issue is increasingly being addressed with regular arrests of suspects from a number of arrests occurring over the last few years. or adults made to look like children. For simulated child pornography that's produced without the direct involvement of children, there's controversy regarding whether or not such simulated child pornography is abusive to children. The legal status of simulated or "virtual" child pornography varies around the world; for example, it's legal in the United States, it's illegal in the European Union, and in Australia its legal status is unclear and so far untested in the courts.
Child sexual abuse in production and distribution
Children of all ages, including infants, are abused in the production of pornography internationally. Estimates of the number of children worldwide involved in child pornography range from thousands to hundreds of thousands. "While impossible to obtain accurate data, a perusal of the child pornography readily available on the international market indicates that a significant number of children are being sexually exploited through this medium." There is an increasing trend towards younger victims and greater brutality; according to Flint Waters, an investigator with the federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. "These guys are raping infants and toddlers. You can hear the child crying, pleading for help in the video. It is horrendous."
The
United Kingdom Children's charity
NCH have stated that demand for child pornography on the
Internet has led to an increase in sex abuse cases, due to an increase in the number of children abused in the production process.
In a study analyzing men arrested for child pornography possession in the United States over a one year period from 2000 to 2001, most had pornographic images of prepubescent children (83%) and images graphically depicting sexual penetration (80%). Approximately 1 in 5 (21%) had images depicting violence such as bondage, rape, or torture and most of those involved images of children who were gagged, bound, blindfolded, or otherwise enduring sadistic sex. More than 1 in 3 (39%) had child-pornography videos with motion and sound. 79% also had what might be termed
softcore images of nude or semi-nude children, but only 1% possessed such images alone. Law enforcement found about half (48%) had more than 100 graphic still images, and 14% had 1,000 or more graphic images. Forty percent (40%) were "dual offenders," who sexually victimized children and possessed child pornography.
A recent study in Ireland, undertaken by the
Garda Síochána, revealed the most serious content in a sample of over 100 cases involving indecent images of children. In 44% of cases, the most serious images depicted nudity or erotic posing, in 7% they depicted sexual activity between children, in 7% they depicted non-penetrative sexual activity between adults and children, in 37% they depicted penetrative sexual activity between adults and children, and in 5% they depcited sadism or bestiality.
Masha Allen, who was adopted at age 8 from the former Soviet Union by an American man who sexually abused her for five years and posted the pictures on the Internet testified before the United States Congress about the anguish she's suffered at the continuing circulation of the pictures of her abuse, to "put a face" on a "sad, abstract, and faceless statistic," and to help pass a law named for her. "Masha's Law," included in the
Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act passed in 2006, includes a provision which allows young people 18 and over to sue those who download pornographic images taken of them when they were children in civil court.
Effect on child sexual abuse prevalence in society
A
longitudinal study of 341 convicted child molesters found that pornography use added significantly to their rate of sexually re-offending. Frequency of pornography use was primarily a further risk factor for higher-risk offenders, when compared with lower-risk offenders, and use of highly deviant pornography increased the
recidivism risk for all groups.
According to the
Mayo Clinic, studies and case reports indicate that 30% to 80% of individuals who viewed child pornography and 76% of individuals who were arrested for Internet child pornography had molested a child. A study conducted by psychologists at the
Federal Bureau of Prisons has concluded that "many Internet child pornography offenders may be undetected child molesters", finding a slightly higher percentage of molesters among child pornography offenders than the Mayo Clinic study, though they also "cautioned that offenders who volunteer for treatment may differ in their behavior from those who don't seek treatment." The study was withdrawn by Bureau officials from a peer-reviewed journal which had accepted it for publication, with the New York Times speculating this was due to concerns that the results could be misinterpreted. Child protection advocates and psychologists like Fred Berlin, who heads the National Institute for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma, expressed disapproval over the failure to publish the report.
According to the New York Times, "At least some men convicted of sexual abuse say that child pornography from the Internet fueled their urges. In a recent interview, one convicted pedophile serving a 14-year sentence in a Canadian federal prison said that looking at images online certainly gave him no release from his desires - exactly the opposite: 'Because there's no way I can look at a picture of a child on a video screen and not get turned on by that and want to do something about it.' he said." The
NCH has noted that "Many pedophiles acknowledge that exposure to child abuse images fuels their sexual fantasies and plays an important part in leading them to commit hands-on sexual offenses against children."
A 2008 review of the use of Internet communication to lure children outlines the possible links to actual behaviour regarding the effects of Internet child pornography. One perspective is that exposure to child pornography stimulates and provokes criminal sexual intent that otherwise wouldn't exist. Exposure to child pornography might heighten desire and motivation to act on urges by decreasing internal restraints. Anonymity (or belief that anonymity exists) may further loosen the internal restraints, such that the individual "practices" molestation in the imagination, facilitated by still or moving images, which makes actual criminal sexual behaviour with children more probable if the person was already sexually motivated toward children, or, by creating new sexual interests in children . The review article states that these are plausible hypotheses, and Canadian
Justice Jeff Shaw, believe that child pornography use may decrease cases of child sexual abuse by allowing pedophiles to sublimate their desires.
Internet proliferation
Philip Jenkins notes that there's "overwhelming evidence that [childpornography] is all but impossible to obtain through nonelectronic means." The Internet has radically changed how child pornography is reproduced and disseminated, and, according to the U.S.
Department of Justice, resulted in a massive increase in the "availability, accessibility, and volume of child pornography." The production of child pornography has become very profitable and is no longer limited to pedophiles.
The
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has reported that child pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry and among the fastest growing business segments on the Internet.
In 2007, the British-based
Internet Watch Foundation reported that child pornography on the Internet is becoming more brutal and graphic, and the number of images depicting violent abuse has risen fourfold since 2003. The CEO stated "The worrying issue is the severity and the gravity of the images is increasing. We're talking about prepubescent children being raped." About 80 percent of the children in the abusive images are female, and 91 percent appear to be children under the age of 12. Prosecution is difficult because multiple international servers are used, sometimes to transmit the images in fragments to evade the law.
Regarding internet proliferation, the US DOJ states that "At any one time there are estimated to be more than one million pornographic images of children on the Internet, with 200 new images posted daily." They also note that a single offender arrested in the U.K. possessed 450,000 child pornography images, and that a single child pornography site received a million hits in a month. Further, that much of the trade in child pornography takes place at hidden levels of the Internet, and that it has been estimated that there are between 50,000 and 100,000 pedophiles involved in organized pornography rings around the world, and that one third of these operate from the United States.
Collection
According to FBI agent Ken Lanning, pedophiles are particularly obsessive about collecting, organizing, categorizing, and labeling their child pornography collection according to age, gender, sex act and fantasy. "Collecting" pornography doesn't mean that they merely view pornography, but that they save it, and "it comes to define, fuel, and validate their most cherished sexual fantasies." An extensive collection indicates a strong sexual preference for children, and a pedophile's pornography collection is the single best indicator of what he wants to do. The
National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children describes researchers Taylor and Quayle's analysis of pedophile pornography collecting:
"The obsessive nature of the collecting and the narrative or thematic links for collections, led to the building of social communities on the internet dedicated to extending these collections. Through these 'virtual communities' collectors are able to downgrade the content and abusive nature of the collections, see the children involved as objects rather than people, and their own behaviour as normal: It is an expression of 'love' for children rather than abuse."
These offenders are likely to employ elaborate security measures to avoid detection. The US DOJ notes that "There is a core of veteran offenders, some of whom have been active in pedophile newsgroups for more than 20 years, who possess high levels of technological expertise. Pedophile bulletin boards often contain technical advice from old hands to newcomers."
International perspectives
The
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child ("UNCRC"), which has been ratified by an overwhelming majority of the nations of the world, identifies child pornography as a violation against children and requires that nations who are parties to the convention take measures to prevent the exploitative use of children in pornographic materials. Where child pornography involves depictions of children engaging in sexual conduct, the production of this material is prohibited legally in UN member countries.
Relation to sex tourism
One source of child pornography distributed worldwide is that created by sex tourists. Most of the victims of
child sex tourism reside in the developing nations of the world. In 1996, a court in Thailand convicted a German national of child molestation and production of pornography for commercial purposes; he was involved in a child pornography ring which exploited Thai children. A sizable portion of the pornography seized in Sweden and in the Netherlands in the 1990s was produced by sex tourists visiting Asia.
Organized crime
Organized crime is involved in much of the production and distribution of child pornography, which is found as a common element of organized crime profiles. When criminals organize to produce and distribute child pornography, they're often called "sex rings." In 2003, an international police investigation uncovered an immense Germany-based child pornography ring involving 26,500 suspects who swapped illegal images on the Internet in 166 different countries. In a 2006 case, US and international authorities charged 27 people in nine states and three countries in connection with a child pornography ring that US federal authorities described as "one of the worst" they've discovered. The assistant secretary for
Immigration and Customs Enforcement added that the case reflected three larger trends that are becoming more common in child pornography rings. One is the increasing prevalence of "home-grown" pornographic images that are produced by predators themselves, and include live
streaming video images of children being abused, not just the circulation of repeated images. Another trend is the growing use of sophisticated security measures and of
peer-to-peer networking, in which participants can share files with one another on their computers rather than downloading them off a web site. The group used
encryption and data destruction software to protect the files and screening measures to ensure only authorized participants could enter the chat room. A third trend is the increasingly violent and graphic nature of the images involving the abuse of younger children.
According to
Jim Gamble, CEO of the
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, around 50 per cent of sites showing children being abused are operated on a pay-per-view basis. "The people involved in these sites often aren't doing it because they're deviant by nature. They're doing it because they're business people. It's risk versus profits. We need to reduce the profit motivation." The CEOPP was established in 2006, and targets the finances of organised criminal gangs selling images of child abuse.
International coordination of law enforcement
One of the primary mandates of the international policing organization
Interpol is the prevention of crimes against children involving the crossing of international borders, including child pornography and all other forms of exploitation and trafficking of children.
The USA
Department of Justice coordinates programs to track and prosecute child pornography offenders across all jurisdictions, from local police departments to federal investigations, and international cooperation with other governments. Efforts by the Department to combat child pornography includes the
National Child Victim Identification Program, the world's largest database of child pornography, maintained by the
Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the
United States Department of Justice and the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) for the purpose of identifying victims of child abuse. Police agencies have deployed trained staff to track child pornography files and the computers used to share them as they're distributed on the Internet, and they freely share identifying information for the computers and users internationally.
When child pornography is distributed across international borders, customs agencies also participate in investigations and enforcement, such as in the 2001-2002 cooperative effort between the United States
Customs Service and local operational law enforcement agencies in Russia. A search warrant issued in the USA by the Customs Service resulted in seizing of computers and email records by the Russian authorities, and arrests of the pornographers.
In spite of international cooperation, less than 1 percent of children who appear in child pornography are located and rescued by law enforcement each year, according to Interpol statistics.
Legal status
Canada
Canadian law forbids the production, distribution, and possession of child pornography. Prohibition covers the visual representations of
sexual activity by persons under the age of 18 years (although prosecutions in cases where all involved are over 14 are rare) and the depiction of their
sexual organ/anal region for a sexual purpose, unless an
artistic, educational, scientific, or medical justification can be provided. It also includes the written depictions of children engaging in sexual activity. Courts in Canada can also issue orders for the deletion of material from the internet from any computer system within the court's jurisdiction
One early application of this law was the
Eli Langer case. In 1993, this Toronto artist had an exhibition at the Mercer Gallery. His drawings included images of children in sexual positions. Police raided the gallery and confiscated the works. Langer was eventually acquitted after a trial because his work was considered "artistic" enough to be protected speech.
Law that addresses
dynamic aspects of the Internet by regulating the nature of live-time chatting and email communications that may relate to enticing children for pornographic (for example, web cam) or other sexual purposes has passed in 2002. It also criminalizes the intentional access of child pornography.
The Philippines
On
September 15,
2007, the Children and Youth Secretariat of the Anti-Child Pornography Alliance (ACPA-Pilipinas) in the
Philippines launched Batingaw Network "to protect and save children from all forms of abuses and exploitations." It is the largest anti-child pornography movement in the Philippines to date. It declared
September 28 as the "
National Day of Awareness and Unity against Child Pornography.
United States
In the
United States, child pornography is illegal under
federal law and in all states. Although child pornography may be obscenity, a legal term that refers to offensive or violent forms of pornography that have been declared by decisions by the US Supreme Court to be outside the protection of the First Amendment regarding free speech, it's defined differently from obscenity. Federal sentencing guidelines regarding child pornography differentiate between production, distribution and purchasing/receiving, and also include variations in severity based on the age of the child involved in the materials, with significant increases in penalties when the offense involves a prepubescent child or a child under the age of 12. In May, 2008 the
Supreme Court of the United States upheld the 2003 federal law Section 2252A(a)(3)(B) of Title 18,
United States Code that
criminalizes the
pandering and
solicitation of child pornography, in a 7-to-2 ruling penned by Justice
Antonin Scalia. The court ruling dismissed the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit's finding the law unconstitutionally vague.
Artificially generated or simulated imagery
A small fraction of child pornography is produced without the direct involvement of children in the production process itself. Forms of artificially generated child pornography include: modified photographs of real children, non-minor teenagers made to look younger, and fully computer-generated imagery. Drawings or animations that depict sexual acts involving children but are not intended to look like photographs may also be considered by some to be child pornography. An example of this is the cartoon genre known as
Lolicon that has been the subject of much controversy regarding whether or not its presence in the society contributes to
child sexual abuse
In the United States, "virtual" child pornography, "that appears to -- but doesn't -- depict real children", was illegal under the federal 1996 Child Pornography Prevention Act until the Supreme Court invalidated that portion of the law in 2002. Claiming that the pornography was simulated is an
affirmative defense which can be raised by defendants, and the
National Child Victim Identification Program must use
image analysis to prove actual children were used. According to the head of the U.S. Department of Justice's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, the availability of the defense that pornography could hypothetically have been computer generated has resulted in defense attorneys using the defense without "any shred of evidence there are wholly computer-generated images being generally circulated and passed off as real children out there."
Virtual child pornography is illegal in the European Union; in Germany it's punishable by up to five years in prison. In the Australian state of Victoria, it's illegal to publish imagery that "describes or depicts a person who is, or appears to be, a minor engaging in sexual activity or depicted in an indecent sexual manner or context", however the application of this law to virtual child pornography hasn't yet been tested in the courts.
Google announced in 2008 that it's working with NCMEC to help automate and streamline how child protection workers sift through millions of pornographic images to identify victims of abuse. Google has developed video fingerprinting technology and software to automate the review of some 13 million pornographic images and videos that analysts at the center previously had to review manually.
The purported link between use of child pornography and child abuse has been used to justify the prohibition of sexual depictions of children, whether their production involves child abuse or not. This link is itself disputed: "Considerable controversy exists within the social and behavioral science community about the negative effects, if any, of child pornography upon the behavior of potential or actual offenders. ... Many researchers have come to the conclusion that there's no sound scientific basis for concluding that exposure to child pornography increases the likelihood of sexual abuse of children. Others have suggested that there's a consistent correlation between the use of pornography and sexual aggression."
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