Child pornography
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Child pornography refers to material depicting children being in a state of undress, engaged in erotic poses or sexual activity.[1][2][3] Child sexual abuse occurs in the production of child pornography when sexual acts are photographed,[2][1][4][5][6][7][8] and the effects of the abuse on the child (and continuing into maturity) are compounded by the wide distribution and lasting availability of the photographs of the abuse.[9][4][7] In both common usagecitation needed and for research purposes, the word "child" in the phrase "child pornography" refers to prepubescent children, and does not refer to post-puberty teenagers. For practical reasons, legal definitions of child pornography generally refer to a wider age range, including any pornography involving a minor, according to jurisdiction.[9] Most possessors of child pornography who are arrested are found to possess images of prepubescent children; possessors of pornographic images of post-puberty minors are less likely to be prosecuted, even though those images also fall within the statutes.[9]

Child pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry and among the fastest growing criminal segments on the Internet, according to the USA The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) and other international sources.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16] According to the NCMEC, approximately one fifth of all Internet pornography is child pornography. [10] New technology such as inexpensive digital cameras and Internet distribution has made it easier than ever before to produce and distribute child pornography. The producers of child pornography try to avoid prosecution by distributing their material across national borders, though this issue is increasingly being addressed with regular arrests of suspects from a number of countries occurring over the last few years.[10][9]

Child pornography is viewed and collected by pedophiles for a variety of purposes, ranging from private sexual uses, trading with other pedophiles, preparing children for sexual abuse as part of the process known as "child grooming", or enticement leading to entrapment for sexual exploitation such as production of new child pornography or child prostitution.[17][18][19]

Contents

International police enforcement

Interpol and policing institutions of various governments, including among others the United States Department of Justice enforce internationally. [9] Since 1999, the Interpol Standing Working Group on Offenses Against Minors has used the following definition:

Child pornography is the consequence of the exploitation or sexual abuse perpetrated against a child. It can be defined as any means of depicting or promoting sexual abuse of a child, including print and/or audio, centred on sex acts or the genital organs of children.[8]

Recent investigations include Operation Cathedral that resulted in multi-national arrests and 7 convictions as well as uncovering 750,000 images with 1,200 unique identifiable faces being distributed over the web; Operation Amethyst which occurred in the Republic of Ireland; Operation Auxin; Operation Avalanche; Operation Ore based in the United Kingdom; Operation Pin; Operation Predator; the 2004 Ukrainian child pornography raids and the 2008 US child pornography raid.

Even so, the UK based NSPCC said that worldwide an estimated 2% of websites still had not been removed a year after being identified.[20]

Child sexual abuse in production and distribution

Children of all ages, including infants,[21] are abused in the production of pornography internationally.[9][5] 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."[22] The United States Department of Justice estimates that pornographers have recorded the abuse of more than one million children in the United States alone.[13] 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." [23]

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.[24] 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. [25]

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 depicted sadism or bestiality. [26]

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 has 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. [27] "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. [28] U.S Attorney Bob Balfe stated that 85 percent of those we prosecuted for child pornography are also child molesters.

Effect on child sexual abuse prevalence in society

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.[29] One perspective is that exposure to child pornography stimulates and provokes criminal sexual intent that otherwise would not 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,[29] but that there is a lack of clarity as to the general applicability of these mechanisms. The authors also note that, "among some groups of predisposed individuals, easy access to a wide variety of engrossing and high-quality child pornography could serve as a substitute for involvement with actual victims".[29]

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. [30] The majority of men who have been charged with or convicted of child pornography offenses show pedophilic profiles on phallometric testing.[31] A study with a sample of 201 adult male child pornography offenders using police databases examined charges or convictions after the index child pornography offense(s). 56% of the sample had a prior criminal record, 24% had prior contact sexual offenses, and 15% had prior child pornography offenses. One-third were concurrently charged with other crimes at the time they were charged for child pornography offenses. 17% of the sample offended again in some way during this time, and 4% committed a new contact sexual offense. Child pornography offenders with prior criminal records were significantly more likely to offend again in any way during the follow-up period. Child pornography offenders who had committed a prior or concurrent contact sexual offense were the most likely to offend again, either generally or sexually.[32]

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, however they note that it is difficult to know how many people progress from computerized child pornography to physical acts against children and how many would have progressed to physical acts without the computer being involved.[33] 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 do not seek treatment." The study was withdrawn by Bureau officials from a peer-reviewed journal which had accepted it for publication, due to concerns that the results were not applicable to the general population of offenders. Some researchers argued that the findings "do not necessarily apply to the large and diverse group of adults who have at some point downloaded child pornography, and whose behavior is far too variable to be captured by a single survey"..[34] 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.[34] A 1987 report by the USA National Institute of Justice described "a disturbing correlation" between traders of child pornography and acts of child molestation. [35]

Dennis Howitt (1995) disagrees with such research, explaining the weakness of correlational studies. He argues that "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."[36]

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 is 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." [34] According to the National District Attorneys Association, "In light of the documented link between individuals who view child pornography and individuals who actually molest children, each child pornography case should be viewed as a red flag to the possibility of actual child molestation." [37] The NCH has noted that many offending 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." [38]

Others, such as Czech sex therapist Petr Weiss,[39] and Canadian Justice Jeff Shaw,[40] 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 is "overwhelming evidence that [child pornography] is all but impossible to obtain through nonelectronic means."[41] The Internet has radically changed how child pornography is reproduced and disseminated, and, according to the United States Department of Justice, resulted in a massive increase in the "availability, accessibility, and volume of child pornography."[42] The production of child pornography has become very profitable and is no longer limited to pedophiles.[43]

Digital cameras and Internet distribution facilitated by the use of credit cards and the ease of transferring images across national borders has made it easier than ever before for users of child pornography to obtain the photographs and videos.[10][9] The NCMEC estimated in 2003 that 20% of all pornography traded over the Internet was child pornography, and that since 1997 the number of child pornography images available on the Internet had increased by 1500%. [10]

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.[44]

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.

In 2008 the Google search engine adapted a software program in order to faster track child pornography accessible through their site. The software is based in a pattern recognition engine.[45]

Collection by pedophiles

Viewers of child pornography who are pedophiles are particularly obsessive about collecting, organizing, categorizing, and labeling their child pornography collection according to age, gender, sex act and fantasy.[46][47] According to FBI agent Ken Lanning, "Collecting" pornography does not 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 if a collector of child pornography is also a pedophile, the owned collection is the single best indicator of what he wants to do. [47] 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." [48]

These offenders are likely to employ elaborate security measures to avoid detection.[46] 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.", also noting that pedophile bulletin boards often contain technical advice from child pornography users' old hands to newcomers."[47]

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. [22] Where child pornography involves depictions of children engaging in sexual conduct, the production of this material is prohibited legally in UN member countries.[49]

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 countries 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 South-east Asia.[22] INTERPOL works with its 186 member countries to combat the problem, and launched its first-ever successful global appeal for assistance in 2007 to identify a Canadian man, Christopher Paul Neil, featured in a series of around 200 photographs in which he was shown sexually abusing young Vietnamese and Cambodian children.[50]

Organized crime

Organized crime is involved in the production and distribution of child pornography, which is found as a common element of organized crime profiles. [35][51] When criminals organize to produce and distribute child pornography, they are often called "sex rings." [52][53][54][55][56] 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. [57]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 have 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. [58]

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. [59]

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.[60][61]

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.[9] 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.[62][63] Police agencies have deployed trained staff to track child pornography files and the computers used to share them as they are distributed on the Internet, and they freely share identifying information for the computers and users internationally.[64]

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.[65]

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.[66]

Legal status

 Please help improve this section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (April 2008)


Canada

Canadian law forbids the production, distribution, and possession of child pornography. Prohibition covers the visual representations of sexual activity by persons (real or imaginary) under the age of 18 years (although prosecutions in cases where all involved are over the age of 16 are rare)citation needed 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 persons or characters (fictional or non-fictional) under the age of 18 engaging in sexual activity.[67] Courts in Canada can also issue orders for the deletion of material from the internet from any computer system within the court's jurisdiction[68]

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 (e.g., web cam) or other sexual purposes has passed in 2002.[69] It also criminalizes the intentional access of child pornography.[70]

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.[71]

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, it is illegal to take, make, distribute, show or possess an indecent image of a child. Accessing an indecent image is considered to be "making" the image, meaning that a defendant can be charged under the Protection of Children Act if he accessed an image without saving it.[72] Indecency is to be interpreted by a jury, who should apply the recognised standards of propriety. A child is a person who has not reached the age of 18.

Under UK law, an image that appears to be a photograph of a child, but is not a photograph, is referred to as a "pseudo-photograph". It is also illegal to take, make, distribute, show or possess an indecent pseudo-photograph of a child, under the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act[73][74]. The children's charity NCH, stated that "this is a welcome announcement which makes a clear statement that drawings or computer-generated images of child abuse are as unacceptable as a photograph". Others stated that the intended law would limit artistic expression, patrol peoples' imaginations, and that it is safer for pedophiles' fantasies "to be enacted in their computers or imaginations [rather] than in reality". [75]

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,[35] it is 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.[76] In May 2008, the Supreme Court 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.[77][78] It has been stated that the Supreme Court’s decision has been criticized, yet it correctly enables legal personnel to fight crime networks where child pornography is made and sold.[79] Child pornography is illegal and it does not have to be looked at in terms of the typical guidelines of the First Amendment, because it is illegal due to the harm it creates to children when child pornography is made, sold and owned.[79] The demand for more and newer child pornography is believed by most to promote the sexual abuse of children.[79]

The PROTECT Act of 2003, a comprehensive bill related to many aspects of child aubse, prohibits all illustrations depicting child pornography, including computer-generated illustrations, also known as virtual child pornography.[80][81][82] Provisions against virtual child pornography in the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 had been ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002. However, the computer-generated child pornography provisions of the Protect Act are distinct, since they establish the requirement of showing obscenity as defined by the Miller Test, which was not an element of the 1996 law. One section of the PROTECT act has been challenged and was upheld by Supreme Court decision in May 2008.[83]

Australia

People have been successfully prosecuted after describing acts of abuse via SMS. [84]

Elsewhere

A review in 2005 of child pornography laws in 184 countries by the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) and other organizations including software giant Microsoft shows that more than half have no laws that address child pornography. [85] This review, however, only looked for specific laws related to child-pornography offenses. It did not take into account legislation that bans the "worst forms of child labor", nor did it consider countries in which there is a "general ban on pornography" to have legislation against child pornography because of the absence of legislation specific to child pornography. [86]

Artificially generated or simulated imagery

A small fraction of pornography involving minors is produced without the direct involvement of children in the production process itself. Forms of such pornography include: modified photographs of real children, non-minor teenagers made to look younger (Age Regression), and fully computer-generated imagery [87] or adults made to look like children.[88]. 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 hentai sub genre known as Lolicon, which has been the subject of much controversy regarding impact on child sexual abuse [89][90] The reported link between the 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.[91]

Realistic virtual child pornography is illegal in the United States [80][81][82] and in the European Union; in Germany it is punishable by up to five years in prison.[92][93] In the Australian state of Victoria, it is 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 has not yet been tested in the courts. [93][92]

In 2007, the virtual world online computer game Second Life banned what they describe as "sexual 'ageplay', ie, depictions of or engagement in sexualized conduct with avatars that resemble children".[94][95] The ban prohibits the use of child-like avatars in any sexual contexts or areas, and prohibits the placement of sexualized graphics or other objects in any "children's areas" such as virtual children's playgrounds within the game environment.[95]

Google announced in 2008 that it is 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.[96]

See also

References

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