The Road to Perversion Is Paved With Pornography 5/2/2006
By Jan LaRue, Chief Counsel
The Internet, “pseudo teen” porn and sites like MySpace.com are making perversion even easier.
Part I: 'Regular guys' becoming sexual predators of children.
Millions of men and boys are falling for the destructive myth that looking at "adult" porn is normal, healthy and harmless for "regular guys." Way too many are finding themselves handcuffed between two cops, under arrest for sexual conduct with a kid. The hook-ups with kids are occurring on the main streets of U.S. cities and the dark alleys of the virtual world.
Experts estimate that 50,000 sexual predators prowl the Internet for children every day. As long as myth trumps truth, the next estimate could be 10 times what it is today. Stopping predators before they ravage our kids and grandkids will be insurmountable.
The easy access to millions of pages of online porn is speeding up the dependence and escalation to harder-core material and more.
The centerfolds no longer gratify? There's an unending supply of harder-core images instantly available within a few mouse clicks and free for the taking. Want deviant? There's deviant beyond anything uncorrupted minds can fathom. Want some younger "stuff"? There's "pseudo" child porn where young-looking adults dress and act like teens and even toddlers sucking a pacifier and hugging stuffed animals. Want real child porn when the pretend doesn't do it anymore? It's traded for free by perverts in Internet chat rooms and encrypted Web sites, and for sale, and raking in billions. Want kids? There's a virtual playground full of kids ready to chat, instant message, and eager to send digital photos and videos to other "kids." Want a pimp for a hook-up with a kid? No need to risk being seen picking up a kid in a red light district. Their pimps and slave masters are online.
"'Men fly in, are met by pimps, have sex with a 14-year-old for lunch, and get home in time for dinner with the family," said Sanford Jones, the chief juvenile judge of Fulton County, Georgia."1
Stop and read it again until you get it. Men are flying home to dinner with the wife and kids after having sex with a kid. Who does that?
Most people can't even handle thinking about it, so they mix more myth and some truth to relieve their discomfort:
* They're all pedophiles.
* All child molesters are pedophiles.
* There are more pedophiles than I realized.
* Pedophiles probably get married and have kids to hide who they are.
* Pedophiles are only into kiddie porn.
* Regular guys stick with adult porn.
* No guy I know would have sex with a kid.
* I'm no guy who would have sex with a kid.
Not every guy who has sex with a minor is a pedophile. Most aren't. You may need to read that again too.
There is a difference between pedophiles who prefer to have sex with children and child molesters who prefer to have sex with adults but will have sex with a child if the situation presents itself. And it presents itself big time on the Internet.
For the kids' sake, educate yourself by reading Child Molesters: A Behavioral Analysis, authored by Ken Lanning for The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. spent 27 years investigating and apprehending child molesters of all types and training thousands of law enforcement officers the skills to do the same. America's parents and children are forever in his debt.
For the child, it couldn't matter less what the clinical definition of his or her molester may be. What should matter to the rest of us is stopping "regular guys" from becoming child molesters.
According to Gates and Goodman:
Half of the street-level prostitutes in Atlanta are believed to be under 18, according to experts. Others are booked through Internet sex sites and from social sites like Black Planet, where girls innocently post profiles. &ldots; In March, police arrested a Canadian man meeting a 14-year-old girl he found through the Internet. &ldots; Another man drove from North Georgia, with a bag containing a teddy bear, a love note and condoms, snorting methamphetamine on the way. He expected a 13-year-old girl, but instead found Heather Lackey, a corporal with the Peachtree City Police Department. &ldots; During the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, one man kept boys and hosted sex parties nightly.2
Recently a congressional committee heard the gut-wrenching testimony of a 19-year-old telling how he began operating his own commercial Web site where men could view sexually explicit photos he took of himself. Justin Berry's nightmarish story is that of a 13-year-old boy in a broken home allowed unsupervised access to a Webcam and the Internet. A lonely boy looking for friends and love in all the wrong places immediately "found" adult males who seduced him with attention, gifts and money. Personal meetings led to his sexual abuse, which led to him sexually exploiting other boys by encouraging them to join the sordid business.3
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's latest weekly report indicates that its Cybertipline has received "2,589 complaints of unsolicited obscene material sent to a child" from September 1, 2002, through April 9, 2006. Worse yet are the "15,995 complaints of online enticement of children for sexual acts" in the last six years.
Here are just two recent media reports:
* Lawmakers from both parties continued on Thursday to question the commitment of the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to halting the online exploitation of children. &ldots; William W. Mercer, a U.S. attorney for Montana, testified that the caseload of the child exploitation section had increased 445 percent in the last four years, adding that federal prosecutions of child pornography and abuse cases increased to more than 1,500 cases last year from 344 in 1995.4
* The Department of Homeland Security's deputy press secretary appeared in a Maryland state court and refused extradition to Florida, where he faces charges of using the Internet to seduce a detective he thought was a 14-year-old girl. &ldots; Over time, the authorities said, Mr. Doyle sent the detective "hard-core pornographic movie clips" and used the chat room service of AOL and his telephones "to have explicit sexual conversations." The sheriff's office said some of the exchanges "are too extraordinary and graphic for public release."5
Men and boys: Beware before you click the mouse one more time and take a step closer to becoming one of the bad guys.
End Notes--Part I
1. Verna Gates and Mickey Goodman, "Sex Tourism Thriving in U.S. Bible Belt," Reuters, April 6, 2006, as found at http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=N03210934.
2. Ibid.
3. Kurt Eichenwald, "Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World," The New York Times, December 19, 2006, A1, as found at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/us/07porn.html.
4. Joshua Brockman, "FBI and Justice Dept. Are Faulted Over Child Predators On The Web," The New York Times, April 7, 2006, as found at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/us/07porn.html?_r=1&oref=slogin.
5. Michael Janofsky, "Official Resists Extradition on Charge Involving Internet and Sex," The New York Times, April 5, 2006, A22, as found at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/washington/06doyle.html.
Part II: Porn industry panders to predators with "teen porn."
"Karen," who didn't want her real name used, was married for 11 years to her second husband before she discovered shocking images on his computer. "Usually girls, but sometimes boys, who are just over 18, but who are marketable because they look like they're under 18," said Karen. Her emotions went from confusion and anger to fear for her teenage daughter after discovering the collection. "I was very concerned that he was going to begin to sexualize her and her friends," said Karen.1
"Karen's" husband became a threat to his own child after starting down a dark, dead-end road with no safety rails, no warning signs and no speed limit. The "adult" porn industry paves the road, operates the toll gates, and cares nothing about who's wrecked and ruined along the way.
Ask yourself:
1. What kind of "adult" markets a product that portrays "kids" as sex objects?
2. Who is the porn industry pandering to by producing and distributing "teen porn"?
3. Who believes that what we feed our minds doesn't affect our behavior?
A "teen porn" search of the World Wide Web on any given day will provide 7 to 8 million "hits." And "regular guys" like Karen's husband are hitting on it.
One "teen porn" company, Extreme Associates, is facing trial in federal court on charges of distributing obscene materials through interstate commerce. Extreme lists 38 DVDs on its Web site with "teen" in the title. They're hard-core and prosecutable under the Supreme Court's ruling in Miller v. California.
When Extreme was indicted in 2003, No. 24 in its "teen" DVD series was named in the indictment. The box cover for No. 24 includes a photo of a very young-looking and barely developed "Black Cat" in pigtails, coyly lifting the top of her little girl pajamas. The promo for No. 24 describes "young 'suzie' donned in pink pajamas, pigtails, and sucking on a pacifier."
Do you know any "teen" that sucks a pacifier?
The box cover for No. 37 is a photo that matches the description of "young suzie," with the added touch of 'suzie' cuddling a stuffed lion. The caption below the photo reads, "Slumber Party Massacre!! 5 Young Willing Teens ******* Like Animals!"
When the Extreme indictment was announced, the "mainstream adult" industry tried to distance itself by feigning criticism of Rob Zicari, co-owner of Extreme Associates:
Paul Fishbein, president of Adult Video News [AVN],the trade journal of the pornographic film industry, said Zicari produced "horrible, unwatchable, disgusting, aberrant movies." Nonetheless, Fishbein said were he judging the case he'd have to rule that they "were not obscene, because the First Amendment is pure and has to remain pure."2
Fishbein exposed AVN's purely hypocritical backside by presenting its "2006 Adult Video News Reuben Sturman Award" to none other than Robert and Janet Zicari. AVN also presented the 2006 award for "Most Outrageous Sex Scene" to "Burning Angel/VCA," for "Blood, Disembowelment and F****** &ldots; What Fun."
Do the AVN awards mean that Fishbein has been desensitized by his porn consumption or is he just a fraud?
In a guest editorial for AVN, Rodger Jacobs leaves no doubt that Fishbein is financially dependent on pornographers. Fishbein does what it takes to keep the pimps' favor:
As a man who buys his groceries with the proceeds from a trade magazine, Paul Fishbein has ample reason to regain the good favor of producers and manufacturers any time that faith strays. Trade magazines rely on advertisers' greenbacks to create a revenue stream, even more so than general interest magazines because trades have limited commercial appeal and tend to have a high rate of controlled circulation (magazines sent free of charge to individuals who work within the industry).3
The consequences to kids couldn't count less to an industry driven by insatiable greed and depraved indifference. In 2002, Fishbein made a "plea" to the industry to self-censor rather than market pseudo child porn.
But Max Hardcore seems like Bambi compared to, say, the Extreme Teen series, with such scenarios as little girls being sodomized by their stepfathers. How did the adult industry get to this point? &ldots; Why does the industry need to simulate child pornography by depicting 18-year-olds, or even 25-year-olds, as underage? Just because the United States Supreme Court ruled this past April that depictions of people under the age of 18 having explicit sex, as long as they actually are not minors, are not child porn, does that mean producers really have to push that envelope. &ldots; Why do we always have to sink to the lowest level possible to try to titillate? Is this what our society needs?4
And who received AVN's "Best Vignette Series" awards for 2003 and 2004? It was none other than bottom-feeder Hustler, for its "Barely Legal" series.
The May 2004 AVN dispels any notion that Fishbein's "plea" had a scintilla of sincerity. AVN brazenly admits how the industry is "cashing in on the teen revenue stream":
AVN's database reveals literally hundreds of videos released in 2003 that contained the number "18," the words "eighteen," "teen," "young," "little," "virgin," "fresh," "ripe," "tender," or "cheerleader," and uses of the words "legal" and "barely" to indicate women who aren't long past their eighteenth birthdays. The abundance of "young girl" videos alone speaks to the genre's popularity. "Sin City is just pumping these things out," noted publicist Jeff Mullen. "We're on the eighth volume now of our Barely 18. [Vol. 24 is now available.] &ldots; We're making plans to shoot more Sin City Teen lines. It recognizes the success that has been seen in the marketplace by other companies, and it's a way to adjust the marketing of Sin City product to encompass the teen buyer." And it sells! Plenty of the industry's biggest buyers are only too happy to soak up as many "teen" titles as they can.5
Another resident of the lowest levels is "Max Hardcore":
"We make the girls look as fresh and as cute and cuddly as possible - 'adorable cupie dolls,' I call it - and of course, like they just turned 18," he explained. "Obviously, not under 18, because that wouldn't be too cool. And there's a title card at the beginning of each movie that reads, 'No actors or actresses are intended to be portrayed as being under the age of 18.' So it really doesn't matter what the **** they say; it's just open to interpretation of the viewer. I put it to the girls this way: 'You're 18 with the mentality of a 14-year-old. You want to experiment, you want to try things. Anything your parents told you not to do, you're gonna want to do.' I'm emphasizing the point that these girls are right up to the minute legal and eager."6
An April 15, 2006, search for "teen," "schoolgirl" and "boy" on AVN and its GAYVN Web site produced hundreds of titles and hard-core still photos from the videos, promo blurbs and the names of the production companies. And they're all for sale on the Web sites.
In addition to AVN, highly paid lawyers help the porn industry cash in on "teen porn" without checking in to prison. Attorney Paul Cambria, who represents several of the largest porn companies, says:
If you look at the storylines, they open up by clearly having the person say, "You know, I just graduated from high school; I'm 19 years old; I'm 18," that sort of thing in every story. So content plus cover plus title, my advice to them was that all those things be done, because they're not trying to create the impression that somebody's underage; they're just trying to convey the fact that someone is young.7
Does "teen porn" "titillate"? A Web search on April 15, 2006, combining the term "soliciting minor for sex" with "pornography," produced 256,000 "hits."
David Greenfield, psychologist and author of the book Virtual Addiction, says the Internet creates a sense of disinhibition. "People do and say things online that they never would do otherwise. The people I see in my office - they're not perverts, but they get online and suddenly, they're sex fiends."8
Kenneth Lanning, a former FBI profiler, believes many offenders have harbored?and suppressed?deviant urges for years. "They may never have acted out. They were able to control it, and along comes the Internet ... which is like pouring fuel on smoldering embers."9
A word to "regular guys": "Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned?"10
A few days ago a 26-year-old "with a fear of flying" flew from Massachusetts to Alabama after allegedly paying $1,200 for three hours of videotaping "two or three 10- to 12-year-old girls performing oral sex on him." His e-mail "order" says that "pigtails, freckles, and school uniforms would be a plus." FBI agents took Luke Simon Goljan, an "independent film producer for ITV Direct of Beverly" into custody.11
Michael William Schleicher, a high school band teacher, was arraigned in Anoka County, Minnesota, district court March 24, 2006, and charged with two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of soliciting a minor for sex. Schleicher allegedly solicited teenage girls for sex and used his live-streaming video Web cam to practice and record sex acts. "In his home, several computers and disks containing child and adult pornography were discovered, according to the complaint."12
The office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the arrest of Timothy McDarrah on September 14, 2005, on charges of using the Internet to entice someone he believed to be a 13-year-old girl to engage in sexual activities. According to the complaint, McDarrah allegedly responded to an advertisement in the "erotic services" section of the popular Internet Web site "craigslist," offering the "freshest, youngest girls" available in all ages, and specified in graphic terms the sexual activity he desired.13
An individual expecting sex with a 12-year-old had with him a duffle bag containing a digital camera, tripod, a video camera, four sections of nylon rope, one bottle of "Secret Passion love lotion" and a short story titled "The Seduction of an Angel." The story detailed an incestuous relationship between a father and his 16-year-old daughter. After the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received a cybertipline report on April 8, 2003, federal and state law enforcement took the suspect into custody when he arrived at a Knoxville, Tennessee, hotel.
A judge in a child pornography case opined that "if it were necessary for literary or artistic value, a person over the statutory age who perhaps looked younger could be utilized"14 in a sex scene.
Other than perverts and pornographers, who thinks the judge had in mind an entire genre of porn marketed as "teen," "young," "little," "virgin," "fresh," "ripe," "tender," or "cheerleader," or that it has any "literary or artistic value"?
Even though "teen porn" isn't prosecutable as child pornography if the performers are 18 or older, nothing prevents its prosecution under state and federal obscenity laws. Decent adults aren't going to be ideal jurors, as porn defense attorney Louis Sirkin worries:
The material's possible impact on the jury is, for Sirkin, of prime concern. The thing that's troubling is, with some of this stuff, the packaging has a psychological impact on the jury as to what the appeal is, or what it's trying to attract. &ldots; I mean, a prosecutor, when he goes back to the case in closing argument, he'll usually pick up the box and show it, and we're beginning to see that.15 [Italics added.]
A word to state and federal prosecutors--bring it on.
Whether one of you "regular guys" ends up running over a child, your drive down the dead-end porn road is hurting you and those you care about. Every mile defiles your thoughts about women and girls and affects the way you treat your mother, sister, friend, co-worker, wife, daughter and the rest of us. You can't consume degrading depictions and descriptions of women and "teens" and continue to treat us with respect as human beings.
Stop now and call for help if you need it. Otherwise, be prepared for the day when you need a mouse to reach the only "women" willing to spend time with you.
End Notes--Part II
1. Lynn Sherr, "Shadowy Addiction: Cyberporn Is Having Damaging Effects on Users Who Can't Stop Clicking," ABCNEWS.com, August 27, 2004.
2. Jake Tapper, "Court Deals Blow to U.S. Anti-Porn Campaign," ABC News, January 24, 2005, available at: http://www.sodomylaws.org/lawrence/lwnews165.htm.
3. Rodger Jacobs, "Punks With Slingshots," AVN, March 2001, available at: http://www.adultvideonews.com/archives/200103/editorial/edit0301_02.html.
4. Paul Fishbein, "No Conviction Thankfully, But Do We Really Need to Push This Envelope," Adult Video News, December 2002, available at: http://www.adultvideonews.com/editorial/edit1202_01.html.
5. "Chronic Youth: Safely Cashing in on Adult's Teen Revenue Stream," Adult Video News, May 2004.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Tracy Connor, "From Pillars to Pervs,"New York Daily News, November 1, 2003, available at: http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/132940p-118590c.html.
9. Ibid.
10. Proverbs 6:27, New International Version.
11. Shelley Murphy, "Salem filmmaker held in Alabama on child pornography charges," The Boston Globe, April 11, 2006, B4.
12. Sue Austreng, "Spring Lake Park High School band teacher charged on two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, one count of soliciting a minor for sex," ABC Newspapers, March 30, 2006, available at: http://www.abcnewspapers.com/2006/March/30offsex.html.
13. "U.S. Arrests Magazine Reporter for Using the Internet to Entice a Minor Girl for Sexual Activity," September 15, 2005, available at: http://www.gawker.com/news/crime/us-weekly-staffer-timothy-mcdarrah-arrested-125875.php.
14. New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 762-63 (1982).
15. "Chronic Youth: Safely Cashing in on Adult's Teen Revenue Stream," Adult Video News, May 2004.
Part III: Pornographers pursue profits and kids become sexually abused and abusers.
Guess who's "talking to the kids" on "MySpace.com"?
Eon McKai produces "alt-porn," and represents one of the biggest porn companies, VCA, now owned by Hustler. McKai says he is talking to the kids and urges the "mainstream industry" to do the same. "Since watching Suicide Girls [the popular alt-chick Web site] grow, I try and promote my product in the same way," says McKai, who is also promoted by his company, VCA. One of the first things I did was create a MySpace profile and start talking to the kids, I just open that channel. We sent buttons to people, IM'd people, flirted with girls."1
I joined MySpace on April 24 by submitting a birth date for an adult, but I could have been 10 years old. I found McKai's space and his invitation:
Who I'd like to meet: Cool kids that are open minded and like porn and want to be apart of my movement to make it better... If you want to be a porn star... I'm the guy that can make that happen for real... but I'll look you in the eye first to make sure you can hang...any Emo, Punk or Goth kids... your all my friends... be stylish and cute as all h***.2
McKai "warns" that only those over the age of 18 should talk to him. But nothing prevents kids from sending him messages, seeing porn ads, hard-core photos and reading obscene messages. A kid can let McKai know, if "you wanna be in some smut," by clicking "Let me know." That leads to McKai's response sans ellipses:
So you think you're a sl**? Tell me about it girl friend. Well it's not as easy as it looks kid. If you think you have what it takes. Send me pic and a one sentence assay [sic] about why you can do this. Boys can only apply with a girl, as much as I love getting your **** shots in my email. I need a girl to go with that mighty sword of yours. You can link to a pic in the forms below or email me at **************** Your Friend Eon.3
I decided to "ask Eon" what's up with promoting porn on a Web site that's open to kids. As yet, he hasn't gotten back to me.
If you're a parent with a child online and don't know about "MySpace," you should:
Popular online social networking hub MySpace.com on Monday said it will begin displaying public service ads aimed at educating its users, many of them teens, about the dangers posed by sexual predators on the Internet. MySpace, a division of NewsCorp., enables computer users to meet any of more than 60 million members. &ldots; The campaign warns parents and teens that sexual predators are increasingly using the veil of anonymity provided by online chat rooms, forums and social networking sites to target minors. &ldots; Some 78 percent of users on MySpace are 18 years old or older, the company said. Children younger than 14 aren't allowed on MySpace and 14-year-olds are allowed only restricted access. &ldots; Still, children regularly lie about their age to get around those restrictions. Last month, two men were arrested in what prosecutors said were the first federal sex charges involving MySpace. Two Connecticut girls involved in that case were 11 and 14, the FBI said.4 [Emphasis added.]
"Now, any kid can go online and find women and men having sex with animals, they can find torture, they can find simulated rape, they can certainly find any kind of oral, anal, vaginal sex, group sex, gay sex. &ldots; Many sites offer an alphabetical list of fetishes to click on."5
Carleton Kendrick, a Boston-area family therapist, has counseled many males he considers addicted to porn. "'The youngest was 10,' he says. 'If you're going on these sites every day, it's going to become part of your sexual DNA and your emotional DNA and your attitude toward women.' He says marriages have broken up because of husbands' obsessions with porn. 'Pornography changes boys' expectations of real girls, and that by default changes reality for the girls. What bothers me is that the girls aren't outraged by it.'"6
Any computer-savvy child with access to the Internet can see millions of pages of hard-core pornography. All that stands between them and depravity is a "warning" that is nothing more than an attractive nuisance:
This site contains explicit sexual content intended only for adults over the age of 18. If you are under the age of 18 or do not want to view sexual content, do not click the enter button. Exit by clicking the back button of your browser or click the exit button. If you wish to view material of a sexual nature click enter.
And it isn't just boys who are confronted with porn on the Internet:
Additionally, girls are bombarded with online porn that they frequently describe as "sickening," "morally wrong," and "not my thing." They receive spam e-mails with porn links and often accidentally go to porn sites when looking for "legitimate" teen sites. When asked how they felt when they accidentally brought up porn sites, girls responded: "It was like a car crash. You want to look away but can't."7
And if allowing their porn sites to be viewable by kids isn't bad enough, pornographers were caught targeting kids looking for their favorite toy's Web site. Just before Christmas 2000, Envisional, a company in the United Kingdom that specializes in searching the Internet for trademark violations, reported that it had found nearly 12,000 examples of well-known toy names buried in the metatags of pornography Web sites, 30 percent of which were hard-core. "The pornographers are believed to be using the toy names to drive traffic to their sites, obtaining more 'hits' which in turn enable them to push up their advertising rates," according to The London Financial Times.8
John Zuccarini pleaded guilty to violating the Truth in Domain Names Act and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison on February 26, 2004. Zuccarini registered thousands of domains that were close misspellings or typos of popular sites such as Cartoon Network or even acquired domains identical to well-known brands such as Hot Wheels to deceive children and direct them to pornographic Web sites.
School kids in eighth and ninth grades in Massachusetts reported finding porn in lots of innocent places:
A middle school boy from a suburb west of Boston was searching for music on the Internet when up popped a porn site. A classmate looking for pictures for a school project Googled "perfect images." One of the sites offered was nude models. "I went to this site and there were all these hot girls," he says. A 14-year-old girl was doing a search for information on submarines, and up popped images of people having sex. Indeed, teens say, if you search for cartoon characters online, you can find pictures of them having sex.9
Once a child enters the wanton world of online porn, innocence is lost. Kids are pre-groomed for seduction by predators that don't have to waste time educating and desensitizing them to engage in sex with an adult or commit sex crimes on other kids.
Neither Michael Honnold nor his parents imagined that once he unlocked their suitcase full of pornography as a young boy, the end of the road would be a federal prison.
Honnold, now 34, holds a master's degree in music and was band director at his high school alma mater. He has a failed marriage and a 2-year-old son. Before sentencing him to five years in federal prison, the judge heard Honnold tell how "he developed an addiction for pornography, first adult and then of minors, and that his addiction was a factor in his now-failed marriage."10
From a young age I had access to pornography. My parents had a suitcase locked away with pornography in it. My brother and I found the key and I would frequently get it unbeknownst to my parents. This coupled with my curiosity about girls was the impetus for my porn addiction. In college I continued to purchase porn but it wasn't until the [I]nternet that I really developed an insatiable appetite for it. It was so easy to get. Instant messenger perpetuated it. I found others who loved porn and would steer me towards various sites. I would look up any type of porn I could think of. I found myself wanting more original/amateur and unique pics and videos. It wasn't till someone sent me a child pornography picture that I gained a curiosity for it. It spiraled out of hand as I found it so easy to obtain. I tried numerous times to delete all porn and not look but I always went back. I spent hours upon hours looking and talking online and had even skipped classes or gone in late to work because of it. I couldn't stop.11
Police and prosecutors in Denver, Colorado, say Reed Senterfit, a middle-school teacher, endeared himself to children only to exploit them. Investigators found that Senterfit had set up hidden cameras in the bathrooms, plied school-aged boys with pornography and then videotaped them as they touched themselves." Senterfit pleaded guilty to five felony counts of exploiting children.12
"Sex therapist Doug Weiss said he's treating more and more kids as young as nine who are addicted. 'Their total sexuality is connected to it and their need for a real person is really limited,' said Weiss."13
Juvenile sex offenders are heavy users of "adult" pornography, according to the Department of Justice:
Investigations into the role of pornography in juvenile sex offending are limited in number. One study (Becker and Stein, as cited in Hunter and Becker, 1994) found that only 11 percent of the juvenile sex offenders studied said they did not use sexually explicit materials. Another study (Wieckowski et al., 1998) found that exposure to pornographic material at a young age was common in a sample of 30 male juveniles who had committed sex offenses. A comparative study (Ford and Linney, as cited in Becker and Hunter, 1997) found that 42 percent of juvenile sex offenders, compared with 29 percent of juvenile violent offenders (whose offenses were nonsexual) and status offenders, had been exposed to hardcore, sexually explicit magazines.14
A football-loving 14-year-old with quiet parents, "driven on by exposure to hardcore pornography," raped four primary school girls in a park in Salford, England. The boy, now 15, pleaded guilty to four charges of rape on March 23, 2006. The forensic psychiatrist who examined the teenager said that the violent sexual images he had seen inspired him to carry out the offenses. David Steer, counsel for the boy, said: "He had been exposed to extreme and crude pornographic material at the time of these offenses." Susan Bailey, professor of Child and Adolescent Forensic Mental Health at the University of Central Lancashire, said: "The work I have done on children who have killed, committed sexual offenses or other crimes suggests that exposure to pornography is a factor. It is certainly well-documented in the literature."15
Details of an alleged gang rape of a 15-year-old by eight adolescent boys in Lyon, France, emerged the day after the publication of a government-sponsored survey estimating that nearly half of France's children had seen an adults-only sex film by the time they were 11. Claude Rozier, who headed the survey, said: "Hardcore porn has become the principal vehicle for quite young children's understanding of everything to do with love and sexuality, sometimes their only point of reference." It found that 89 percent of boys aged 16 or 17 had seen one or more porn films, for girls, the figure was 81 percent.16
A Canberra, Australia, health unit for abused and abusive children has recorded a significant rise in the number of children aged younger than 10 who are committing sexual offenses, including "oral sex and forced intercourse against other children." Dr. Janet Stanley, a child protection expert in the unit, said, "We're suggesting there's an association between the children's exposure to inappropriate material on the Internet ... and their acting out in sexually aggressive behavior, experimenting and modeling what they're seeing."17
Of the 101 sexually abusive children seen over the past three years at a Canberra hospital, almost all had access to the Internet, and 90 percent admitted having seen sexually explicit material online, the report said. A full one-quarter deliberately sought out pornography online as their main use of the Internet, while about 40 percent said they used the Internet for other purposes as well as accessing porn. Twenty-five percent of the 101 children said someone else?usually an older sibling or an older child or adolescent?had shown them how to access pornographic images, sometimes exposing them to it against their will.18
Police wondered where two girls, ages 11 and 12, who had posted photos of themselves nude on the Internet, got the idea. They said they were influenced by pornography on the Internet. Photos of the girls were downloaded and distributed at their school.19
Police say a 13-year-old boy was charged with abducting an exotic dancer when she allegedly showed up for an appointment at what turned out to be a vacant house in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Police said that when the woman entered the house, she realized her client was a juvenile and tried to leave. But the boy pointed a shotgun at her and ordered her to dance for him.20
A 13-year-old boy in Tumwater, Washington, who allegedly loaded an Internet chat room with pornographic images, including photos of himself, was released to his parents while his case is pending. Police identified the boy after investigating who placed the 180 images intercepted by an Internet service provider.21
State police charged a 15-year-old Latrobe, Pennsylvania, girl with child pornography. The girl allegedly photographed herself in various states of undress and performed a variety of sexual acts. She then sent the photos to people she met in chat rooms.22
Deputies arrested a 16-year-old Woodlands Academy student Friday after the boy allegedly accessed an obscene Internet site from a school computer and showed images to a classmate, according to a St. Lucie County, Florida, sheriff's report. The boy was taken to the St. Lucie County jail and released to his parents after being charged with showing obscene material to a minor.23
Three high-school students, ages 14 to 19, posing as adult video producers, were charged in November 2002 as adults in the brutal sexual assault of an adult entertainer. Officer Derek Baliles of the Bethesda, Maryland, Police Department said the teenagers contacted the "adult entertainer" through an Internet ad to offer her employment. When the woman walked into the house, the three hit her in the head with a bat, took her cell phone and keys, and threatened her with a knife. They then ordered her to undress and assaulted her sexually with the bat and another object, authorities said.24
Four high school boys in Boca Raton, Florida, ages 15 to 17, are facing charges of lewd and lascivious battery and sexual performance by a child based on allegations that they videotaped themselves having sex with a 14-year-old girl. Police said the boys wrote up a contract for the girl that included plans to charge other students to view the tape on a home computer, and encouraged her to submit the tape to a porn company for a contest.25
Free porn leads to cashing in on the youth market. An insider advises the porn industry to "hook" the 18- to 25-year-old youth market with free access to "gonzo" porn-wall-to-wall sex acts with no plot to get in the way. "Every gonzo line should have a Web site," states Rob Rotten, 24-year-old freelance porn actor/director, "and don't make it a pay site, just make it a place where you can buy DVDs."26
The next step is making porn stars from the youth market. "Young people's attitudes towards sex and towards being in videos have definitely changed in the last 10 years," according to Jennie Grant, co-owner of Shane's World, a porn company built around "informal gonzo sex romps that take place in habitats natural to the college set." Grant says, "Ten years ago, the amount of girls that considered themselves bisexual was far smaller than it is now. If you go to colleges, it's no big deal to be having sex with your best friend."27 The Grants make "excursions to actual college campuses, where actual college students get to couple with actual porn stars."28
Always the first to exploit new technology, the porn industry has big plans for distributing smut via cell phones, iPods and MP3 players, all popular with the youngsters who are technologically advanced beyond most parents. Parents need to be ever vigilant to protect their children from exploitation.
CWA has tips for parents to protect children from exposure to Internet porn: click here.
Parents needing help with children who’ve become dependent upon pornography can find good advice from Rob Jackson, M.S., L.P.C., L.M.H.C., N.C.C., a Christian counselor and expert on porn and sex addictions: click here.
Mrs. LaRue is chief counsel at Concerned Women for America, the nation's largest public policy women's organization. She is a nationally recognized expert in pornography law.
End Notes--Part III
1. Peter Stokes, "We Want Our Porn and We Want It Now! The Youth Market: Who is it, Why is it, and What Does it Mean for Retailers," Adult Video News, November 2005.
2. www.myspace.com/1181034.
3. Ibid.
4. Alex Veiga, "MySpace.com to Post Ads Promoting Safety," Associated Press, April 10, 2006, available at: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/internetprivacy/2006-04-10-myspace-safety_x.htm.
5. Bella English, "The Secret Life of Boys," Boston Globe, May 12, 2005, available at: http://www.boston.com/ae/media/articles/2005/05/12/the_secret_life_of_boys/.
6. Ibid.
7. The Net Effect: Girls and New Media," Girl Scout Research Institute, available at: http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:HYitg-CW7HAJ:www.girlscouts.org/research/pdf/net_effect.pdf+Teens+Find+Porn,+Sex+Advances+Even+When+Not+Seeking&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=16.
8. Fiona Harvey, "Porn Sites Use Toy Brands to Attract Children," London Financial Times, November 16, 2000, p. 17.
9. "The Secret Life of Boys."
10. U.S. v. Honnold, No. 5:05 CR 0492, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7025, at *1 (N.D. Ohio, Feb. 23, 2006).
11. Ibid.
12. "Teacher Convicted of Sexually Exploiting Kids May Walk," TheDenverChannel.com, November 8, 2005, available at: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/7newsinvestigates/5282772/detail.html.
13. Lynn Sherr, "Shadowy Addiction: Cyberporn Is Having Damaging Effects on Users Who Can't Stop Clicking," ABCNEWS.com, August 27, 2004.
14. "Juveniles Who Have Sexually Offended," Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice, 2001, available at: http://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/report_juvsex_offend/sum.html.
15. Russell Jenkins, "Violent Pornography Blamed for Turning Boy Aged 14 into a Rapist," The London Times, March 24, 2006, available at: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,200-2101204,00.html.
16. "Pornography Forms French Children's Views on Sex: An Alleged Teenage Gang Rape 'Like Some Kind of Virtual Game' Underlines Survey's Fears," The Guardian (London), May 25, 2002, p. 16.
17. Patrick Goodenough, "Online Porn Driving Sexually Aggressive Children," CNSNews.com, November 26, 2003, available at: http://www.cnsnews.com/ForeignBureaus/Archive/200311/FOR20031126a.html.
18. Ibid.
19. Ed Hayward, "Girls, 11 and 12, Post Nude Photos on Net," The Boston Herald, January 17, 2002, 012.
20. "Thirteen-year-old Boy Charged With Abducting Exotic Dancer," NewsChannel 8.com, November 23, 2004, available at: http://www.news8.net/news/stories/1104/189734.html.
21. Scott Gutierrez, "Porn Defendant Released to Parents," The Olympian, October 15, 2004, available at: http://www.theolympian.com/home/.
22. "Teen Who Posted Own Photo Charged With Child Porn," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 29, 2004, available at: http://www.postgazette.com/breaking/20040329pornp6.asp.
23. The Palm Beach Post (Martin-St. Lucie edition), February 15, 2001, p. 2B.
24. "Two Teens in Sex Assault Case Released on Bond," available at: http://www.nbc4.com/news/1792417/detail.html.
25. Jon Burstein, "Teenager Jailed in Porn Tape Case; Video Brings Student Adult Felony Charge," Sun-Sentinel [Fort Lauderdale, Florida], February 3, 2002, 1B.
26. Peter Stokes, "We Want Our Porn and We Want It Now! The Youth Market: Who Is It, Why Is It, and What Does It Mean for Retailers?" Adult Video News, November 2005.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.