Debate on the link of child pornography to molesting

19 July 2007

Summary

According to a new and controversial study conducted by psychologists at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, up to 85 percent of men convicted of downloading explicit sexual images of children from the Internet say they have also sexually abused minors. This is more than double earlier estimates that indicates abuse by these men was somewhere between 30 and 40 percent.

Other key findings include the discovery that when inmates were asked (anonymously), as part of their therapy, to tally their victims, the list totaled 1,777. This is in stark contrast to the 75 they reported at their conviction.

This report is controversial because psychologists, prison officials, and law enforcement officers can't agree on how the research data should be interpreted. This has led to the suppression of the full report, though the findings have circulated among experts privately.
The implications of this report are serious because there has been an explosion on the Internet of images of child abuse (or child pornography) with the number seized from computers apparently doubling each year. Over the last 5 years, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has collected more than 8 million images of abused children.

More research is needed to get a clearer picture of the correlation between viewing illegal images of child exploitation and becoming a child molester. These findings could impact sentencing guidelines for those convicted of owning and viewing child abuse images. To date they have usually received lighter sentences and shorter paroles than those convicted of sexual abuse. "The penalties we seek, the vigor with which we prosecute — the very importance we give to child pornography cases — all of these things are affected by what we know about the offenders," said Leura G. Canary, the United States attorney for Middle Alabama. Read the story.

Things to think about when reading this article

While further research is clearly called for, the embargo of this research by the prison bureau is unconscionable. These are powerful findings that deserve open discussion.

One area of possible impact is a challenge to the Supreme Court's ruling in 2002 that determined virtual child pornography is protected by the First Amendment. (Virtual pornography refers to digitally created images of child exploitation.) The Court's ruling overturned a 1996 law (The Child Pornography Prevention Act) which asserted that virtual images of child exploitation encourage pedophilia and the sexual abuse of children and should therefore be illegal. In striking down the 1996 ruling, the Supreme Court argued that "the Government has shown no more than a remote connection between speech that might encourage thoughts or impulses and any resulting child abuse. ...Therefore, the government may not prohibit the speech expressed in "virtual child" pornography based on this unsupported argument."

If, as this research suggests, up to 85 percent of men convicted of viewing child pornography are also child sexual abusers, then the findings show considerably more than a "remote connection" between free speech (which in court terminology also covers images) and child sexual abuse. This would serve to strengthen the government's original argument.
The research also highlighted the sobering reality that, at the time of conviction, the courts only knew of 4 percent of their actual number of victims.

A separate study, conducted by Emory University psychiatrist, Dr. Gene able, that also guaranteed anonymity and immunity from prosecution to inmates who would participate, found that:

• Male offenders who abused girls had an average of 52 victims each.
• Men who molested boys had an astonishing average of 150 victims each.
• Only 3 percent of these crimes had ever been detected.

While there is a risk of unfairly punishing people convicted of child pornography and sexual offenses who have not perpetrated abuse on the scale indicated in these two reports, it is time to consider changes to legal attitudes and in penalties meted out both to those caught possessing images of child sexual abuse and sexual abusers of minors.

This research is also a vivid reminder of the war being waged against the children of this country as well as children around the world.

• According to Top Ten Reviews, child pornography has become a multi-billion dollar commercial enterprise and is among the fastest growing businesses on the Internet.
• More than 20 million Internet searches in 2006 included the phrases teen sex or teen porn according to Top Ten Reviews. It also reports that Gnutella (the third-most-popular file sharing network on the Internet) gets 116,000 requests for child pornography every day, and that there are more than 100,000 sites offering illegal child pornography on the Web.
• According to the NCMEC Child Pornography Fact Sheet, "Investigators who handled the cases of arrestees, found most had images of children who had not yet reached puberty. Specifically 83 percent of those arrested for child pornography had images of children between ages 6 and 12; 39 percent had images of 3- to 5-year-old children; and 19 percent had images of toddlers or infants younger than age three."
• Depending on the study cited, somewhere between 25 and 33 percent of girls and 10 to 16 percent of boys are sexually exploited before they turn 18. This means that more than one out of every five children in this country will be abused. According to U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics, victims were under the age of 12 in over a third of sexual assaults, and under the age of six in 14 percent of the assaults.
• According to the FBI, more than 100,000 youth between the ages of seven and 17 are in the forced sexual slave trade in this country alone. The average age of a sexual slavery victim is 11 years old.

Its also worth remembering that the impact to an abused child of knowing that images of his or her abuse are being distributed and traded like baseball cards by pedophiles is in itself severely damaging. According to the NCMEC Child Pornography Fact Sheet, "the lives of children featured in these illegal images are forever altered, not only by the molestation, but because the images constitute a permanent record. ... When these images reach cyberspace, they are irretrievable and can continue to circulate forever. Thus the child is again victimized as the images are viewed repeatedly."

What you can do

It is estimated that there are 60 million survivors of childhood sexual abuse in America today.

• If we honored each victim with one minute of silence we would need to stand silent for over 114 years.
• If we stood for one minute of silence for each million victims, we would need to stand silent for an hour
• If everyone affected by child sexual exploitation was to join in a march, every individual in this country would be on the streets.

End the silence. What other disease strikes 20% of our population without there being a march for a cure? Make no mistake; child abuse is a horrific disease that cripples the minds, bodies, and souls of its victims.

• Speak to your children about sexual predation. Many parents do not want to approach this topic, especially with pre-pubescent children, but the prevalence of abuse makes it clear that even very young children must be taught. When teaching children, it's a disservice to teach "stranger danger" because most often the child will know his or her molester. Instead, teach them that:
  • No one has the right to touch their bodies in some places or if they don"t want to be touched.
  • If someone abuses them, it is never their fault.
  • No matter what the molester says, they should always come and tell you what happened.
• Demand a change to existing laws. There should be no statute of limitations for crimes relating to the sexual abuse of a child. Many victims will not be emotionally able to speak out about their abuse until they're in their thirties and forties. There should also be a review of the sentencing and parole parameters.
• Demand public access to the Federal Bureau of Prisons research report by e-mailing AskDOJ@usdoj.gov or by calling the Office of the Attorney General at 202-353-1555.
• Let your elected officials know you want better funding for law enforcement to track the online exploitation of minors. More funds are needed to hire investigators, fund the specialized training needed to fight cybercrime, and purchase better hardware.
• Demand that online service providers strengthen the protection of minors using their services. Let them know you expect stronger safety measures in all consumer facing products – especially those that target youth.
• Arm schools. We have fire, earthquake, hurricane, and cyclone drills in case of natural disaster, but what "drill" do we have against the very real likelihood of a human-incurred sexual abuse disaster that affects 20 percent of the children in school? This is a huge undertaking for already stretched-to-the-limit school systems, but what other system do we have that sees virtually every child?

If we really want to significantly reduce the exploitation of children in this country, start making noise today.

Note: This story appeared in the New York Times and was co-authored by Julian Sher, author of One Child At A Time – The Global Fight To Rescue Children From Online Predators. An excellent yet sobering read, it details how the Internet is facilitating the sexual exploitation of children and gives a deep understanding what's at stake. I highly recommend it.

To learn more about how to protect your children from abuse on the Internet, read Chapter 1 ("The Landscape of Risk") in Look Both Ways: Help protect your family on the Internet.