In this Article, Professor Adler argues that child pornography law, intended to protect children from sexual exploitation, threatens to reinforce the very problem it attacks. The Article begins with a historical claim: Our culture has become preoccupied with child sexual abuse and child pornography in a way that it did not used to be. The Article traces the rapid develop ment of child pornography law, showing that a cultural transformation in our notion of childhood sexual vulnerability has coincided with the birth and dramatic expansion of the law. Professor Adler then introduces various causal accounts of this chronological correlation between the regulation of child pornography and the growing crisis of child sexual abuse. First, she explores the possibility that the burgeoning law of child pornography may invite its own violation through a dialectic of taboo and transgression. She then presents another reading of the relationship between child pornography law and culture: The law may unwittingly perpetuate and escalate the sexual representation of children that it seeks to constrain. In this view, the legal tool that we designed to liberate children from sexual abuse threatens us all, by constructing a world in which we are enthralled-anguished, enticed, bombarded- by the spectacle of the sexual child.
Ongoing concern about effects of sexually explicit materials includes the role of such material in sex offenses. Issues include sex offenders' experiences with pornography and the link between pornography and sex crime rates. Review of the literature shows that sex offenders typically do not have earlier or more unusual exposure to pornography in childhood or adolescence, compared to nonoffenders. However, a minority of offenders report current use of pornography in their offenses. Rape rates are not consistently associated with pornography circulation, and the relationships found are ambiguous. Findings are consistent with a social learning view of pornography, but not with the view that sexually explicit materials in general contribute directly to sex crimes. The effort to reduce sex offenses should focus on types of experiences and backgrounds applicable to a larger number of offenders.
WWW (Amazon): If any book of art criticism has the potential of becoming a bestseller, Pictures of Innocence is it. With her customary clarity of both thought and prose, Anne Higonnet, author of a biography of Berthe Morisot and Berth Morisot's Images of Women, examines childhood, cultural ideals, and popular and artistic images of children. She is both brilliant and careful in her analyses of paintings, photographs, and sculptures and the times in which they were made.
Pictures of Innocence--with 100 illustrations that range from Caravaggio's raunchy Cupid to Edward Weston's luminous, analytical nude studies of his son Neil to anonymous family Christmas-card snapshots--is the kickoff title in what is billed as "a new series of books about controversial themes and issues in the arts that cut across traditional disciplines." Higonnet marshals masses of material to develop her argument that the way we look at children and childhood is changing, and that this change affects our judgment of art, freedom of expression, sexuality, privacy, consent, exploitation, and child abuse.
"Pictures of children are at once the most common, the most sacred, and the most controversial images of our time," Higonnet writes in her introduction. Her concerns are not confined to the most obvious ones. In chapter 1, "The Romantic Child," Higonnet writes, "The image of the Romantic child replaces what we have lost, or what we fear to lose. Every sweetly sunny, innocently cute Romantic child image stows away a dark side: a threat of loss, of change, and, ultimately, of death."
In "Photographs Against the Law," Higonnet points out that "since the early 1980s, photography has been increasingly implicated in the crime of sexual child abuse." Carefully tracing this thread, she asks at one point, "Why photography? Because photographs can and do document actions." It comes down to the fact that a photograph (in this case, one by Dorothea Lange) "originated in the act of clicking a camera at a real person."
This complex, brilliant book will educate anyone who reads it. In its balanced, minutely detailed discussions of difficult issues, it illuminates issues that have heretofore been swamped in passionate but subjective rhetoric.
There are few case-study-based reports of the role of pornography in the lives of sex offenders in contrast with numerous studies of a survey and statistical nature. Very little is known about the ways in which offenders process pornographic and other erotic materials as part of their offending patterns. The research reported in this study was based on case studies of fixated paedophiles in a private clinic for sex offenders. The men were interviewed about a range of matters including their offending, their psychosexual histories, pornography, fantasy, and sexual abuse in childhood. Commercial pornography was rarely a significant aspect of their use of erotica although some experience of such materials was typical. Most common was "soft-core" heterosexually oriented pornography. Explicit child pornography was uncommon. However, Subjects also generated their own erotic materials from relatively innocuous sources such as television advertisements, clothing catalogs featuring children modeling underwear, and similar sources. In no case did exposure to pornography precede offending-related behavior in childhood. All of the offenders had experienced childhood sexual abuse by adults or older peers. The relationship of these findings to previous research and implications for legislation are noted.
A review of official reports and other research indicates that the circumstances surrounding sexual abuse are inadequately specified to allow specific causal interpretations. The role of pornography in contributing to such abuse is explored by reviewing laboratory studies and the circumstances of child sexual abuse. An assessment of the research literature suggests that pornography is a minor and indirect influence on child sexual maltreatment.
Cites the Danish liberalization of legal prosecution and of laws concerning pornography and the ensuing high availability of such materials as a unique opportunity to test hypotheses concerning the relationship between pornography and sex offenses. It is shown that, concurrent with the increasing availability of pornography, there was a significant decrease in the number of sex offenses registered by the police in Copenhagen. On the basis of various investigations, including a survey of public attitudes and studies of the police, it was established that at least in 1 type of offense (child molestation) the decrease represents a real reduction in the number of offenses committed. Various factors suggest that the availability of pornography was the direct cause of this decrease.
Cite (O'Carroll): Thus he took into account the possibility of a cathartic effect: pornography might be used as an alternative to sexual acts with children. 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. 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%.
The final report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (1986) claimed that exposure to sexually explicit material leads to sex offenses and recommended examining developmental patterns and pornography experiences of offenders. Questionnaires and frequency data on 51 sex offenders and 51 controls were analyzed. Child molesters were significantly older than controls when exposed to sexually explicit material. Frequency of adult use of sexually explicit material did not differ significantly among groups.
DD: Over de 'mythe' rond kinderporno, de reactie van de (Amerikaanse) overheid, onterechte rechtszaken in entrapment acties en anderszins, en oprekking van de wet die tot censuur leidt.
Wafelbakker: De auteur verdedigt zich tegen Gijs, die hem een 'voorstander van kinderpornografie' noemt.
Gijs 1997: Gijs antwoordt op een reactie van Wafelbakker op Gijs' bijdrage "Enkele beschouwingen over pornografie" in het Tijdschrift voor Seksuologie. GIjs heeft geen bezwaar tegen een wetgeving die seks zovele mogelijk positief benadert en heldere randvoorwaarden aangeeft over welk seksueel gedrag niet acceptabel is. In die zin deelt hij de bekommernis van Wafelbakker, Wel blijven volgens Gijs vooralsnog verschillen in oordeel over de plaats van kinderpornografie daarbinnen, en hoe één en ander operationeel juridisch aan te pakken.
Despite the public and scientific attention the topic has received, the evidence fora causal link between pornography use and sexual offending remains equivocal. This article critically examines the research literature on the association of pornography and sexual offending, focusing on relevant experimental work. The difficulty of this research is highlighted in a discussion of operational definitions of the term pornography, the choice of proxy measures for sexual offending in experimental research, and the emphasis given sexual assault of adult females over other kinds of criminal sexual behavior such as child molestation, exhibitionism, and voyeurism. We also review the major theoretical perspectives- conditioning, excitation transfer, feminist, and social learning-and some of the hypotheses that can be derived from them. From the existing evidence, we argue that individuals who are already predisposed to sexually offend are the most likely to show an effect of pornography exposure and are the most likely to show the strongest effects. Men who are not predisposed are unlikely to show an effect; if there actually is an effect, it is likely to be transient because these men would not normally seek violent pornography. Finally, we present a Darwinian perspective on the possible relationship between pornography use and sexual aggression.
Beschreven wordt het te haastige ontstaan van art. 240b Wetboek van Strafrecht, het zgn. kinderporno-artikel en het vrijwel ontbreken van een rationele onderbouwing daarvan. Het leeftijdsaspect, 'kennelijk zestien jaar bereikt', wordt nader geanalyseerd. De begrippen kalenderleeftijd, mentale leeftijd en biologische leeftijd leveren zowel theoretische als praktische vragen op. Voor de bescherming van de jeugdige wordt impliciet uitgegaan van een zekere gewenste mentale leeftijd. Bij onbekende kalenderleeftijd blijven als richtsnoer alleen algemene indruk en biologische leeftijd. Ter illustratie volgt de beschrijving van een rechtsgeding inzake 'kennelijke leeftijd'.