Research: Child Pornography

For legal implications, see Child Pornography (Law)

"Child pornography" has no agreed definition. Legally, it refers to media featuring minors in sexual situations.

The Effects of Child Pornography

The criminalization of child pornography is, in part, justified by the assumption that it will cause paedophiles to abuse children. No conclusive evidence substantiates this assumption. On the contrary, child pornography appears to have a cathartic effect:

• O'Carroll, Tom (2000). "Sexual Privacy for Paedophiles and Children: A Complementary Background Paper."

  "Such an effect has been proposed in relation to Denmark during the few years when child pornography was openly and legally available: in that period sex offences against children were significantly lower than either before or after. (5) A similar phenomenon occurred during a period of liberalisation in West Germany, where from 1972 to 1980 the total number of sex crimes known to the police in the Federal Republic of Germany decreased by 11%. (6) Sharpe himself, whose possession of pornography was in contention, made the astute point in an interview that if child pornography led to sexual assaults, then there would have been a huge increase in assaults as a result of the allegedly much greater availability of child porn on the Internet. (7)"

• Dr. Stuart Kirby (2005). "Unidentified Study: No link between child porn and sexual abuse."

  "When you look at all the research that has been done nationally, the consensus is that there has not proven to be a link between the viewing of pornography and the committing of hands-on offences."

• Dennis Howitt (1995). "Paedophiles and Sexual Offences against Children."

  "One cannot simply take evidence that offenders use and buy pornography as sufficient to implicate pornography causally in their offending. The most reasonable assessment based on the available research literature is that the relationship between pornography, fantasy and offending is unclear."

• Diamond, Milton, and Ayako Uchiyama (1999). "Pornography, rape, and sex crimes in Japan", International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 22: 1-22.

  "However, there are no specific child pornography laws in Japan and SEM depicting minors are readily available and widely consumed. [...] The most dramatic decrease in sex crimes was seen when attention was focused on the number and age of rapists and victims among younger groups (Table 2). We hypothesized that the increase in pornography [in general], without age restriction and in comics, if it had any detrimental effect, would most negatively influence younger individuals. Just the opposite occurred. The number of juvenile offenders dramatically dropped every period reviewed from 1,803 perpetrators in 1972 to a low of 264 in 1995; a drop of some 85% (Table 1). The number of victims also decreased particularly among the females younger than 13 (Table 2). In 1972, 8.3% of the victims were younger than 13. In 1995 the percentage of victims younger than 13 years of age dropped to 4.0%."

• Kendall, Todd (2006). "Rape, and the Internet."

  This study found that "an increase in home internet access of 10 percentage points is associated with an 7.3% decline in [forcible] rape" of females of all ages as a group. Slate Magazine reported on this.

The Nature of Child Pornography

• Jan Schuijer and Benjamin Rossen (1992) "The Trade in Child Pornography."

  "We have called the claims about child pornography "myths." The existence of child pornography is certainly not. The myths are the exaggerated estimates of the number of children, the volume and value of the trade, the profits that are alleged to have been made, and the horrifying damage said to have been done to the children."

• O'Carroll, Tom (2000). "Sexual Privacy for Paedophiles and Children: A Complementary Background Paper."

"A survey of images in commercial child porn magazines that were available in the 1970s and early 80s by Schuijer and Rossen shows that only 14% depicted children engaged in sexual conduct with adults. Most of the material, 61%, showed children either nude at play or posing erotically. (8)"

• www.almapintada.com: Child Pornography Statistics 1984-2000

  "Less than an average of ten new series per year have been circulated on the internet since 1984. Only 14 of these series include children engaged in sexual intercourse, 32 in non-penetrative genital contact and 39 in fellatio. Most of these series include genital display only."

• Kenneth Lanning (1992). "Investigator's Guide to Allegations of "Ritual" Child Abuse, Chapter 2.1: "Stranger Danger." Quantico, VA: Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.

  "Child victims who, for example, simply behave like human beings and respond to the attention and affection of offenders by voluntarily and repeatedly returning to the offender's home are troubling. It confuses us to see the victims in child pornography giggling or laughing."

• Ian O'Donnel & Claire Milner (2007) "Child Pornography; Crime, computers and society". p123. (Paraphrased by Brian Ribbon)

"A recent study in Ireland, undertaken by Garda, 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 depicted sadism or bestiality."

• Brian Ribbon (2008). How can anyone believe these claims?. Boychat.org

"I could only find a small number of websites (less than 20) which contained material which would be illegal if viewed in my home jurisdiction, despite the fact that my home jurisdiction prohibits simple nudity. It is clear that there are not 150,000 child pornography websites. The websites which did depict material which would be illegal if viewed in my home jurisdiction were much tamer than government-funded organisations claim. Over 99% of the images which would be illegal in the USA/UK/Australia showed no sexual contact."

A Billion-Dollar Industry?

• Brian Rothery: "Every image of a child being abused"

  "By now, many journalists and activists concerned with how the police deal with the child pornography laws are aware that the American police and some related agencies are the main, and likely the sole, dealers in and publishers of images of child pornography, using them for entrapment purposes."

• Rosen, Jeffrey (2005). "The Internet Has Made Government Action Against Child Pornography Untenable," in Opposing Viewpoints: Mass Media. Ed. William Dudley. San Diego: Greenhaven Press.

  Child pornography is often alleged to be a 20 billion dollar industry. If this is true, that would put it at twice the size of the adult porn industry: "But today, as Frank Rich reported in The New York Times Magazine last May [2002] the porn industry—much of it hard-core—generates at least $10 billion per year in revenues for more than 70,000 websites, porn networks, pay-per-view and rental movies [700 million porn rentals per year], cable and satellite television, and magazine publishers."

• Ian O'Donnel & Claire Milner (2007). Child Pornography; Crime, computers and society, p. 54.

  "Because there is no way of estimating the amount of child pornography that was in circulation prior to the advent of the internet, it is possible that the quantity has not increased but has simply become more available and more copied."

• Jenkins, Philip (2001). Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet, p. 102.

  "Money is rarely involved in the child porn underworld, which is the preserve of truly motivated collectors."

• O'Carroll, Tom (2000). "Sexual Privacy for Paedophiles and Children."

  "The production of such pictures is vanishingly rare, however, and there is no shortage of criminal law to deal with any perpetrators who are caught. Even in such cases, though, we would be hard put to blame the private viewer of such material for creating a market in it. There is no means, no even on the Internet, to buy and sell such material. Illegal images may be posted, but this will invariably be done anonymously or with a phoney "from" address – for obvious reasons. This means that it is impossible to make money on these activities. From time to time someone may naively hope do so, lured by claims in the media that it is a profitable business. These commercial attempts have always been stopped very quickly: If the potential customers can find the producer then so can the police. The notion that there is a vast child porn industry, organised by some ruthless mafia, is simply a myth."

Impact on Child Models

Very little research has been done into the direct effect of modeling on children.

• Jan Schuijer and Benjamin Rossen (1992). "Interviews with Three Boys."

  "Despite the attempt to obtain a balanced description of the events, a remarkably black and white picture emerged. The boys described their friendship and feelings for Ferdinand in glowing terms. On the other hand the attitude towards the police is unequivocally negative."

• Ian O'Donnell and Claire Milner (2007). "Child Pornography: Crime, computers and society". Willan Publishing, p229.

  "While we might feel uneasy about an individual who took sexual pleasure from photographs of children playing on beaches, it is clearly the case that such photographs are not based on an underlying act of abuse".

• The Australian (2008). "Naked child in photo defends image

  Although the photos concerned are most probably not pornographic they have been criticised as such (for containing nudity and posing). "“I'm really, really offended by what Kevin Rudd had to say about this picture,” Olympia said outside her Melbourne home, accompanied by her father, The Age art critic Robert Nelson. “I love the photo so much. It is one of my favourites, if not my favourite photo, my mum has ever taken of me and she has taken so many photos of me. “I think that the picture my mum took of me had nothing to do with being abused and I think nudity can be a part of art.”" An adult critic responded: "And that the child concerned defends the photographs in my view merely compounds what has happened."

Impact on "non-appreciative" Adults

It is often claimed anecdotally that officers investigating high volumes of child porn suffer from "burn out" or may have to enter counseling.

• Inquisition 21 (2008). "From inside the police force."

  "We have a report from a police insider about how many of his colleagues actually reacted to both adult and child pornography [...] He received his first, much of it shocking to him, initiation into the world of pornography from his older police colleagues who ‘sickened him with their canteen culture’. They pushed the first ever hard core magazines he had seen right in front of his face, as he put it, “Gloating over them.” [...] Only as the number of women in the force increased, especially in senior ranks, did the macho culture of open pornographic display decrease and become more covert. [...] These men were now being paid to study child pornography and soon he could hear them tell the media about fatigue and burn-out concerning images they had formerly gloated over."

Child Producers

The criminalisation of youth is also covered in Adverse effects of hysteria.

As more facts slowly float to the surface in this stringently censored medium, the more we learn about under-age producers sharing their self-made images with other young people for recreational use, thus making prohibitions unworkable and pronouncements concerning who is "exploiting" who extremely hard to define. Whilst activists have been pointing towards this trend for some time, it has taken much longer for "Child-Protection" officers to admit that minors are capable of producing child pornography.

• The Heraldsun (2008). "Making child pornography is now kids' stuff."

  "Teenagers are becoming major makers of child pornography in Victoria[Australia]. Statistics reveal adolescents last year outnumbered middle-aged men two to one as the main offenders in child porn production. Youths 10 to 14 were among the alleged offenders."

• The Independent.ie (2008). "Children producing their own web porn."

  "CHILDREN as young as 10 years of age are taking sexually explicit pictures of themselves before uploading them onto the internet -- according to Ireland's leading Criminal Intelligence Officer at Interpol [...] Irish Detective Sergeant Michael Moran, who is one of the world's leading experts in the fight against child exploitation, has warned parents to be extra vigilant about their children uploading self-made pornography. "Everything from posing naked to actual sex acts on web cams. We are seeing a lot more self-produced child pornography to the extent that self-taking child abusive material is one of our biggest problems at the moment."

• Inquisition 21 (2008). "The new pizza scam."

  "The child sex abuse and child porn legislation have boosted the business of so-called ‘under-age’ minors scamming and blackmailing adult men. The latest to arise from the chat rooms is the pizza scam. [...] One of our other researchers went onto that chat room and asked if anyone had been approached by individuals offering to cam for pizza and one man from London replied. He said he had spoken to a male student who lived in his local area, aged 19. The student gave some sob story and said he would give a cam show for pizza. The man agreed. The boy named a local pizza place but gave another telephone number. The man phoned the number, who took his order and credit card details. Subsequently a PayPal account was set up using that credit card and money stolen from him. He reported this to PayPal who refused to do anything without a crime number. He then reported it to the police who simply took details. PayPal responded once he had a crime number, but the police apparently performed no investigation. A source close to the police has informed us that the police have a good laugh at this kind of thing. They regard the scammed as the perverts, or the guilty ones, and the scammers as having a right to sting them."