THE DAMAGING EFFECTS OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY
by Diana E.H. Russell, Ph.D.
Written September 2004

DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT OBTAINING MY PERMISSION.

Introduction and Background: I sent this manuscript to my editor at Routledge Publishers in September 2004. Unfortunately, I was very late in meeting my deadline for many reasons, especially my intense involvement in initiating a campaign against the richest landlord in Berkeley (after UC Berkeley) for his 15-year exploitation of minor sexual slaves imported from India -- among other crimes. My editor had just quit her position at Routledge to accept a job at the New York University Press, so my manuscript remained unread while Routledge searched for a new editor. By January of 2005, a new editor had still not been hired, so I wrote to Mary McGinnis, the Vice President of Routledge to ask her what I should do about this. I feared if I revised the manuscript before I had an editor, she might well request that I revise it yet again. Ms. McGinnis told me to go ahead and revise it. Meanwhile, she said she would also like to see my manuscript. Less than a week later, she called me and declared that, "There is no way that Routledge will be associated with a book of this nature." "Why not?" I asked her. "It's the branding issue," she replied. "What do you mean?" I asked her, but she didn't explain. I interpreted her statement to mean that she didn't want Routledge to become known for publishing such a shocking book. It included many sexually explicit child pornography stories written for pedophiles, as well as descriptions of child pornography, including gross cartoons, all of which were legal. I told Ms. McGinnis that I was willing to remove the material that bothered her, but she insisted that she had discussed the issue with members of the staff, and she wasn't willing to reconsider. She resolutely held to her position despite my continued pleas. Since my manuscript was late, I had broken our contract, so I knew she would have this excuse to disregard it. Of course, this wasn't a genuine concern for her, since she had told me that I should go ahead and revise my manuscript. She said that she would help me find another publisher for this book. However, she did not follow through on this promise. I contacted my previous editor at New York University Press to ask if she and this publishing house would be interested in publishing Stolen Innocence. It so happened that New York University Press had published the major social scientific book on child pornography in recently. So she said that there would be no interest in publishing a book that would be in competition with this volume. I considered suing Routledge for breach of contract, since the lateness issue was obviously not the real reason for refusing to give me a chance to revise my manuscript. A respected colleague advised me not to, because she believed this would make it next to impossible to find another publisher, as well as jeopardizing publishers' interest in future projects of mine.

Stolen Innocence: The Damaging Effects of Child Pornography
Chapter 6: Children's Access to Child and Adult Pornography

As recently as 1970, the National Commission on Obscenity and Pornography assumed that access to pornography was not a problem for children. More specifically, the Commissioners were satisfied "that juveniles rarely purchase explicit materials" (Rush, p. 168) -- neglecting to consider that many would have access to material owned by their fathers and older brothers. They naively believed that "once such materials were labeled 'for adults only,' or 'parental guidance recommended,'" their "obligation to the young was over" (p. 168). The Commissioners also maintained that, "the taboo against pedophilia" had "almost remained inviolate," and that "the use of prepubescent children is almost nonexistent" (Rush, p. 167).

On the basis of these inaccurate assumptions, the Commissioners "recommended the repeal of laws restricting the sale of pornography" -- including child pornography (Rush, 168). Their green light to the pornography industry resulted in a growing trade in child pornography in the 1970s and 1980s, and in adult pornography -- up to the present time. After Densen-Gerber and others brought samples of the easily available material to public attention, the Federal Government passed a law that criminalized child pornography. American society is currently much better educated about child pornography, and few people would now make the erroneous statements that were made by the Commissioners in 1970.

1. Children's Access to Adult Pornography

Given the constant changes in Internet technology, the laws relating to child pornography, and the vigor with which these laws are implemented, it is important to note the publication dates of the various statements made about children's access to pornography. Because of the increase in public concern about child pornography in recent times, and the lesser efforts to combat it that are being made by the police and legislators, non-Internet child pornography is less accessible than it was in the past. Indeed, there appear to be conflicting views at this time on how accessible it is to Internet-literate children and teenagers (Ofelia Calcetas-Santo (1996) makes this same observation). This makes Finkelhor and his colleagues' (2001) very recent quantitative study of children and adolescents' unwanted access to pornography on the Internet particularly valuable (to be described in section 2. below).

There is a great deal more adult pornography than child pornography both on and off the Internet, so adult pornography is far more accessible to both children and adults. The fact that non-computer-generated child pornography (as defined by the Federal government) is illegal is another reason for its lesser accessibility. In addition, the majority of pornophiles are primarily interested in adult pornography. For these reasons, pedophiles use adult pornography more often than child pornography to try to arouse the curiosity of children about sex and/or to try to arouse them sexually and/or to use as a model for children to imitate. For example, in Burgess' study of sex rings, she reported that 62% of the 55 sex rings used adult pornography to get children involved in these rings (cited by Rush, Nov 1984, p. 3).

Donna Hughes (1999, March) (Pimps and Predators) quotes a pornographer's very important observation that

Older males who like pornography are "going to have it around, and kids are going to get a hold of it," the pornographer concluded (p. 48). Of course, this applies to videotapes as well. With regard to the Internet, Jenkins (2000) contends that "even the hardest [core] child pornography materials continue to be easily accessible for anyone with appropriate technical expertise" (p. 5). This statement presumably applies to children since their technical computer skills are often superior to adults, including those necessary to access, work and play on the Internet. Garry Webb (2001, May), p. 90 writes more specifically that

Barry Crimmins, in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings on Child Pornography on the Internet in ?1995/1985, described his own experience of being sent "over a thousand pornographic photographs of children" when he joined an adolescent chat group on AOL where he "adopted the on-screen identity of a 12-year-old"* (Boston Phoenix on-line version). [*Footnote: Durkin (1997) cites other "reports of children who use the Internet receiving unsolicited computer files containing pornographic pictures that were sent to them by adult users" (p. 15)] He testified that:

Crimmins told the Committee that in his opinion it is most serious when children access pornography that is sent to them by pedophiles who use it to arouse their curiosity. Once these pedophiles

Even more seriously, Crimmins suggested that it is very likely

An anti-pornography organization called Morality in Media set up a Web site in June, 2002, that provides people with a convenient way to report possible violations of federal Internet obscenity laws online (News release, emailed to me on April 14, 2003). On March 12, 2003, this organization asked all those who had reported receiving pornographic spam to the Morality in Media Web site if their child "was (or could easily have been) exposed to the porn spam." "Of the 2514 reports received March 12 through April 11 that indicated receipt of porn spam, 974 (38.7%) were checked" in the affirmative (News release). Robert Peters, president of Morality in Media, notes that:

For all these reasons, this chapter will examine children's access to both child and adult pornography on and off the Internet. First, however, we will examine quantitative studies of this issue.

2. Quantitative Studies of Childrens' Access to Pornography Off the Internet

Fortunately, it is not necessary to rely on anecdotal evidence regarding children and adolescents' access to pornography. The studies of pornography researchers James Check, Gloria Cowan and Robin Campbell, and Itzin and Sweet provide quantitative data about children and youth's access to pornography in Canada, the United States and Britain. These three studies substantiate Check's statement that "Children are major consumers of pornography" (p. 91).

James Check (1995) undertook a large scale survey in Canada of 1,100 children ranging in age from four to 12 years old. He reported that "39 percent of the children in the survey said that

In yet another study by Check, 275 teenagers "from a local high school in a middle-class Toronto neighborhood," whose average age was 14 years, were asked how often they watched pornography (pp. 89-90). Check reported that 90 percent of the boys and 60 percent of the girls had seen at least one pornographic movie. Gender differences are much greater with regard to the regularity of watching pornography: "one-third of the boys, but only 2 percent of the girls, watched pornography at least once a month," Check reported (p. 90). He speculated that "the girls watched once because a boyfriend or somebody wanted them to, or because they were curious, and then didn't want to watch again" (p. 90). Check made no attempt to explain the boys' motivation to watch pornography perhaps because he took it for granted that it is designed to appeal to males. Presumably, they used it for masturbation purposes -- as do adult males.

Check then "provided a list of six possible sources of information about sex (teachers, peers, parents, books, schools, and magazines)" (p. 90). Unlike the girls who did not view pornography regularly, 29 percent of the boys reported "that pornography was the most significant source among those listed" (p. 90). Unfortunately, Check failed to include teen movies in his list of sources of information -- especially on TV -- and MTV in particular. Mass media researcher Dines considers these to be the major source of misinformation (Personal communication, March 2003).

Check noted that he had "five data sets ... all pointing in the same direction" (p. 91):

Check concluded that pornography is not 'adults-only' material. For children who are watching pornography -- some "as young as six, seven, eight, nine, or ten years old -- pornography is their sex education" (p. 91).

Gloria Cowan and Robin Campbell (1995) conducted a study of 453 high school students in California that reveals the widespread access children and teenagers have to pornographic videos and films. Out of all the topics that these researchers investigated, the focus here will be on their pornography-related findings which are recorded in Table 6.1.

Table 6.1

Exposure to Pornography:

Selected Findings	Boys (N=231)	Girls (N=212)
% who had seen explicit pornography	83%	48%
% who had watched pornography at least once a month	30%	10%
Average number of sex videos/films seen	12	5
Average age of first exposure to pornography	11	12
% who believed they had learned "some" or "a lot" from pornography	60%	48%

Missing information on gender: 10

Figures in table rounded to the nearest whole number. Table constructed from Cowan and Campbell's data, 1995, p. 150 Mean age: 14.57

[* Footnote: The term "explicit pornography" covers a wide range of material from nonviolent intercourse movies to extremely degrading, violent, torture movies culminating in the death of the female (this is a common scenario in R-rated slasher movies).]

Wherever the contents of the pornographic video or movie is on the continuum of misogynistic sex, pornography is sexist by definition (see Appendix), and therefore detrimental for both girls and boys to watch. In the light of this fact, it is distressing to see that almost half the girls (48%) had watched pornography by the age of 12, and more than four fifths (83%) of the boys had watched it by the age of 11.

In addition, almost half of the girls (48%) "believed they had learned 'some' or 'a lot' from porn," while three fifths (60%) of the boys concurred with this belief. It is unfortunate that Cowan and Campbell did not ask these high school students what they thought they had learned. Nevertheless, in light of the misogynistic character of pornography, these high percentages are very frightening. Given how poorly sex education is handled in U.S. schools, pornography often becomes the major source of miseducation about male and female sexuality for some pre-adolescents and many adolescents.

With regard to gender differences, Table 6.1 reveals the unsurprising finding that males scored significantly higher on all the variables compared except for the average age of first exposure to pornography in which the boys were one year younger than the girls (11 vs. 12, respectively).

Itzin and Sweet analyzed the answers of 4,000 readers of an issue of British Cosmopolitan magazine in November 1989 (published in March 1990). Ninety-six percent of the respondents were women, so I will refer to them as such. Because the sample is self-selected, and the readers of Cosmopolitan are not in the least representative of the British population, the results of this survey cannot be generalized beyond the readership of this particular issue of the magazine. None of the readers referred to pornography on the Internet.

Itzin and Sweet (1992) report the following findings about women readers' access to pornography when they were children:

The circumstances in which the women first saw pornography presumably includes the 39% of women who first saw it when they were older than 17 years. Therefore, only 61% of them were below the British age of consent.

Given that 39% of these women were first exposed to pornography after the age of 16, it is all the more striking how few women and girls were interested in seeing pornography. It would be interesting to know if the Internet has had any effect on this very low percentage of female interest.

As stated at the outset of this section, these studies show that there is no such thing as adult-only pornography. It is vitally important that people recognize this fact, and that they stop deluding themselves that children can be protected or prevented from having access to this material.

3. Studies of Childrens' Access to Pornography On the Internet

a) Involuntary Access

David Finkelhor, Kimberly Mitchell and Janis Wolak (June 2000) are to be commended for undertaking a large scale scientific study on children and adolescents' involuntary access to pornography on the Internet.

In order to find out more about the prevalence of on-line victimization of children, Finkelhor and his colleagues conducted "a telephone survey of a representative national sample of 1,501 young people, ages 10 through 17, who use the Internet regularly" (p. xi). Their criterion for regularity was extremely low in view of many children's use of the Internet for doing their homework: at least once a month for the previous six months (p. xi). The interviews were conducted between August 1999 and February 2000. Fifty-three percent of the survey participants were males and 47% were females; 73% were non-Hispanic white, 10% were African American, 3% were American Indian or Alaskan native, 3% were Asian, 2% were Hispanic white, and 7% were "other."

The Finkelhor team of researchers reported that "nearly 24 million youth ages 10 through 17 were online regularly in 1999, and millions more are expected to join them shortly" (p. viii).

Of the different forms of sexual victimization that Finkelhor et al. inquired about, only unwanted exposure to sexual material is relevant to our interest in children's access to pornography (the other two forms of victimization studied were being sexually solicited and harassed). Finkelhor et al., defined "unwanted exposures" as "those that occurred when the youth were not looking for or expecting sexual material" (p. 13). They also limited the unwanted exposures they were interested in "to pictorial images of naked people or people having sex" -- excluding written pornography and lists of pornographic videos, websites, etc. (p. 13). Because they believed their respondents "could not be reliable informants about the ages of individuals appearing in the pictures, they viewed," this research team did not attempt to find out "how many of the exposures involved child pornography" (p. 14).

Following are some examples of interesting findings about children's unwanted exposures to sexual material reported by Finkelhor and his colleagues.

"A quarter (25%) of the youth had at least one unwanted exposure to sexual pictures in the last year" (p. 13).

71% of these exposures occurred when the youth were searching or surfing the Internet or misspelled addresses, and "28% happened while opening E-mail or clicking on links in E-mail or Instant Messages" (p. 13).

"Slightly" more boys than girls reported unwanted exposures (57% and 42%, respectively). Unfortunately, Finkelhor et al. provided no test to ascertain whether this 15% difference was or was not statistically significant. The possible explanation for this finding that more boys than girls reported unwanted exposure to pornography may be that boys spend significantly more time surfing the Internet than girls and are therefore more likely to encounter unwanted exposures. [Footnote: The research team suggests that this finding "may reflect the reality that boys tend to allow their curiosity to draw them closer to such encounters" (p. 14). I think they are implying here that more boys than girls follow up pornographic pop-ups and other invitations to access pornography, and then become upset by the pornography on some of these sites.]

With regard to the content of the unwanted exposures, "94% of the images were of naked persons"; 38% were of people having sex; and "8% involved violence in addition to nudity and/or sex." Regrettably, no examples of the violent pornography or the pornography involving people having sex are described or quoted.

"More than 60% of the unwanted exposures occurred to youth 15 years of age or older". Although nearly one quarter (23%) of the sample were between 10 and 12 years old, only "7% of the unwanted exposures occurred to 11- and 12-year-old youth." None of the 10-year-olds reported an unwanted exposure (p. 13).

Almost half (48%) of the incidents of unwanted exposures were reported to a parent (p. 15). [Footnote: Finkelhor et al., report three different figures for this finding; the other two are 39% (p. 15) and 40% (p. ix).]

In 44% of the incidents of unwanted exposures, the young respondents did not disclose them to anyone.

In only 3% of the incidents of unwanted exposures did the youth inform an authority figure such as a teacher or school official, and in only 3% of the incidents did they disclose it to their Internet servers. No incidents were reported to a law-enforcement agencies (p. 15).

"In 93% of instances [of unwanted exposures through email], the sender was unknown to the youth" (p. 14).

Pornography websites are often programmed to make them difficult to exit. Viewers' attempts to exit frequently take them into other pornographic websites. This occurred to the youth in just over a quarter (26%) of the incidents in which pornography was encountered while surfing. (p. 15).

"In households with home Internet access, one third of parents said they had filtering or blocking software on their computer at the time they were interviewed." (p. ix).

Finkelhor et al., observe that "It is not simple for those who want to avoid sexual material on the Internet to do so" (p. 17). They argue that whatever the effects of accessing pornography may be, young people "have a right to be free from unwanted intrusion of sexual materials in a public forum such as the Internet" (p. 17). Their conclusion about all the unwanted experiences reported by the respondents -- not only unwanted exposures -- is that "the seamy side of the Internet spills into the lives of an uncomfortably large number of youth and relatively few families or young people do much about it" (p. viii).

Voluntary and Involuntary Access

According to Janet LaRue, an attorney and the Senior Director of Legal Studies for the Family Research Council, 74 percent of the public libraries in the United States provide some access to the Internet and related services, whereas only 15 percent use some kind of blocking technology "on at least some of their public workstations" (Burt, 2000, p. v). LaRue maintains that,

LaRue notes that "The ALA has acknowledged that the first Amendment protects none of this material" (p. vi). She argues that, "It is the height of hubris and duplicity for the ALA and public librarians knowingly to provide this illegal material and attempt to wrap themselves in the Constitution" (p. vi).

In 2000, David Burt, a public librarian in Oregon, conducted a six-month investigation of patrons' use of the computers at public libraries to access and download adult and child pornography. He sent more than 14,000 freedom-of-information requests to answer his questions "to the nations's 9,767 public library systems" (p. 5). This constituted almost 100 percent of these libraries. However, 71 percent of them ignored his requests. The unrepresentative 29 percent of libraries that responded provided "more than two thousand documented incidents of patrons, many of them children, accessing pornography, obscenity, and child pornography in the nation's public libraries" (p. 1). Unfortunately, the low response rate means that Burt's findings cannot be generalized to all public libraries in the United States.

Burt observed that many of the more than 2,000 incidents were "highly disturbing, as librarians witnessed adults instructing children in how to find minors engaging in public masturbation at Internet terminals" (p. 1). Furthermore,

Burt also notes that,

Burt (2000) points out that, "The anonymous environment of the public library offers the ideal place to access this sea of pornography" (p. 2). No "password, username, or other information" is needed to access sites on the Internet (p. 8). Table 6-2 below shows the numbers of individuals accessing pornography in libraries between 1997 and 1998.

Table 6-2*

The Number of Incident Reports, Patron Complaints, and News Stories Involving Individuals Accessing or Accidentally Viewing Pornography Between 1997 and 1998

*A modified version of a table in Burt (2000), p. 5.

The high number of children accessing pornography (472) is the most striking of the findings revealed in Table 6-2. Many of these children are likely motivated "to avoid supervised access to the Internet at home and school" (Burt, 2000, p. 2). Perhaps children who do not have access to computers in their homes also use library computers to view and/or download pornography on the Internet. Burt reports that "most of the children were young adolescents, but many of these children were quite young. In some incidents, older children were showing the younger children pornography" (p. 6). For example, Burt cites a case in which a patron at the Houston Library observed:

Burt notes that such incidents "often upset library staff as well as patrons. He cites a case in which a branch manager in Washington state reported the following incident to her director:

With regard to the motivation of men to use library facilities to access and download child pornography, Burt (2000) notes that,

Burt's finding that only 41 adults used library computers to access child pornography in his survey is surprising low given the large number of adults in the categories of men mentioned in the above quotation.

The Response of the American Library Association and Other Free Speech Organizations

Dorothy Field, Director of a Public Library in Florida, reported that: "A number of people were coming into the library and accessing sites that would be described as hard-core porn," which "they would view for hours on end" (p. 2). Burt noted that "the response of both the American Library Association and the 'free speech community,' organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way, has been to discount such reports" (p. 2).

Burt quotes Ann Symons, a former president of the American Library Association, as saying, "The whole issue of protecting children has been blown way out of proportion by the media and those who seek to promote their own agendas" (p. 2). Burt then quotes Judith Krug, the "director of the ALA's Office of Intellectual Freedom," as declaring that the number of individuals who access hardcore pornography sites "is so small that it is almost laughable.'" Krug estimated that "'only one child out of a trillion billion' might use library computers to seek out pornography." Burt notes that "other free-speech organizations have taken a similar line.... The ACLU has dismissed the many published accounts of patrons viewing pornography in libraries as 'a few unconfirmed press reports" (p. 2).

The official ALA policy statement is as follows:

"Libraries, acting within their mission and objectives, must support access to information on all subjects that serve the needs or interests of each user, regardless of the user's age or the content of the material." (Burt, 2000, p. 3)

Examples of Children Accessing Pornography on Public Library Computers

"Four children were ... observed who appeared to be masturbating, one to bestiality." (p. 9)

A staff member in Florida wrote that,

A staff member in Washington state filed a report,

When the four-year-old told his mother that he needed to use the toilet, she escorted him to the men's restroom which he entered by himself. He exited in about two or three minutes "and told his mother that there was a boy inside the bathroom who was willing to give him a quarter to 'suck his d---." (p. 9)

Damian, the young perpetrator, was 13 years old. He told the police that he had gone into a chat room on the computer where he talked with a self-described Macho Man, 73, who dared him to do perform fellatio. Damian also admitted that "he was going to the restroom after he had been looking at pornography on the Internet and he would masturbate himself while inside one of the stalls in the restroom. He told [me] that during his two to four hour period while at the library he would go a minimum of two times each visit and masturbate." (p. 10)

A patron in Olympia, Washington, wrote:

Examples of Adults Exposing Children to Pornography

There were 106 incidents of men exposing children to pornography in Public Libraries. Burt noted that "In most states, exposing children to pornography is a crime. Yet not one of these 106 incidents was reported to the police by library staff." (p. 14)

One library patron in a Florida Library wrote:

A Public Library in Jefferson County, Colorado, received

A mother in Florida wrote the following account of her daughter's experience in a Public Library:

Burt points out that the First Amendment is supposed to protect everyone, including children, "from forced or coerced expression" (p. 51). Yet

In conclusion, Burt makes a very strong case for the fact that the ALA and all those public libraries that choose to follow its policies, contribute significantly to the exposure of children to pornography as well as providing a safe environment for pedophiles to add to their collections by downloading child pornography.

Qualitative Data

Sometimes children inadvertently access child pornography sites by doing a key word search using popular words or phrases that are likely to be of interest to children (e.g., "Princess Diana," and "Walt Disney") (Doyle, Bad apples in cyberspace, 1999, p. 129). Doyle maintains that pornographic website operators deliberately use such terminology "in an effort to increase traffic to their sites," thereby increasing their advertising revenue (p. 129).

Donna Hughes (1999, March, Pimps and Predators on the Porn accessible to Children) explains how pornography website owners also

For example, when a female user typed in "Bambi," "she landed on a pornography site with whips and chains" (p. 54).

Trebilock (1999) [Child molesters on the Internet], reported that when he was "an Internet novice," he typed "alt.sex.incest" on his computer, and "In less than a minute, I was scrolling through hundreds of brief text messages from guys who offered to swap photographs or described their sexual fantasies with children" (p. 46). This included an example of child pornography involving a 6-year-old girl (p. 46). [get more info on this case] "In less than 15 minutes," Trebilock continued, "without any special software or expert knowledge, I'd found a deviant world without sexual boundaries, one that could be located by curious teenagers ...." (emphasis mine).

Doyle points out that a person who provides their email address to a pornographic website "may later find himself or herself receiving adult and child pornography on their e-mail" -- despite the fact that they did not solicit this material (p. 130). In such cases, an anonymous person on the same website "may have tried to increase business with free 'teasers,'" according to Doyle (p. 130).

Finally, Lawrence Haas ("Public Access information networks Abstract on internet) notes that: "Unlike a retail outlet, movie theater, or video rental shop, there is no one on the internet to check a child's age physically before granting access to what many people consider age-appropriate material" (p. 1).

Following are three testimonies and one edited account about children's access to pornography on the Internet (the emphases are all added).

1. Edited Testimony of Patricia Shao re: Daughters' Involuntary Access to Pornography

... Early this summer, my thirteen-year old daughter went to her friend's house to play on the computer. They were in the neighborhood; they were properly supervised; and I knew they were safe. It was shocking to discover later what they had experienced that afternoon.

[Child molesters] may have looked on school playgrounds yesterday, but the playground for the Children of the Nineties is the Information Superhighway.

2. Personal Account of Father Who Imposed Child Pornography on Young Son*

[*Footnote: This account is based on written and verbal information given to me by Mrs. Cook after she requested me to be an expert consultant in her custody battle with her ex-husband. She checked the accuracy of this account and gave her permission to publish it.]

Mr. and Mrs. Cook have a 3-year-old son called Cam. After living together for over nine years, Mrs. Cook found out in December 2001 that her husband had shown their son pseudo-child pornography on the Internet. Cam told her that he had seen a "scary movie" with his father when he stayed overnight with him. Mrs. Cook asked him why the movie was scary and he replied, "There was a man in a lady's tummy and there was fire." Cam also coincidentally began using the term "slut and slutty" at this time.

Mrs. Cook was afraid that her ex-husband -- whom she divorced over his addiction to pornography -- would continue to show their son pornography on the Internet when he exercised his visitation rights. She was also worried about his starting to sexually abuse their son as his pornography addiction became more extreme. After a long drawn-out battle with lawyers and a move to another city, Mrs. Cook won full custody of her son.

Voluntary Access by Children on the Internet

Newsweek journalist [name] -- ignoring gender -- maintained in 1995 that "Kids (sic) are very hungry to view sexual materials, and left to their own devices they will find that the Internet provides them with an unprecedented bonanza" (p. 48). In the same year, Keith Durkin and Clifton Bryant (1995) -- who also ignore gender -- warn that "Given the increasing computer precociousness of many adolescents, there is genuine reason for apprehension" that they will have access to pornography websites that facilitate "deviant sexual behavior" (p. 197).

Australian feminist researcher Dale Spender (1995) observed that, due to the generation gap in computer competency, "it is more likely to be the younger than the older male members of the community who at this stage are calling up the pornography" (p. 215). Spender quotes David Killick and Sonya Sandham's claim that "Teenagers are the biggest market for this pornography" for which "there is very little checking of age" by the Internet servers (p. 215). (Spender notes that "Craig Johnstone reaches the same conclusions" [p. 215]).

Spender (1995) maintains that,

In the following personal account, a mother ask her daughter, who has just turned 13, to show her how she accesses pornography on the Internet via AOL.

Mother: "You told me you knew how to find dirty pictures on the Internet,' I say, "Show me. I don't believe it." The girl rolls her eyes, "Anybody can do that." She turns back to the keyboard and starts writing. "Look. I'll just type in porn.com."

Up flashes a screen filled with pictures of women performing oral sex on men, women licking each other's breasts, a flashing red sign that reads BOOBS! and various little pop-up boxes showing tiny animated pictures of fellatio. The girl spins and covers her eyes as if blinded by a light. "I don't want to see those pictures! she shouts. "Get it off the screen!"

Her mother does so, and looks nonplussed. "I don't even know how to do that!" she tells her daughter. "How come you know?"

The girl looks at her mother quizzically. "It's easy, Mom. You just think of a word."

"But how did you know to go to that Web page?" her mother persists.

"I didn't. Don't you get it? You just type in a word. I could have thought of any word. Sometimes you get sex pages even when you're not thinking of anything dirty. I was in computer lab at school today, and I was looking for Britney Spears and I get a sex page. And we have filters on our computers. I got embarrassed and turned it off, and the boys behind me were, like. 'No! No! Leave it on! Leave it on!'" (Webb, p. 92)

4. Testimony by Dr. Susan Elliot re: Son's Voluntary Access to Pornography

I am a parent of three teenage children ‑ a girl, age 17, and boys age 14 and 12. Our brush with CyberPorn was, happily, not devastating or dramatic, but it was disturbing.

A respected teacher suggested that they might benefit from information sharing on the Internet. Our household had been inundated by promotional discs from America‑On‑Line and so we logged on line. The boys participated in the public chat rooms, then ventured into the more exciting realm of the "private" chat rooms. While "chatting" they were offered "pictures" by other participants. They accepted a few of these, as did their classmates. With great ease these children were able to E‑Mail hard core pornography in full color back and forth to each other. This might have gone on for some time if my husband had not noted that the memory of our computer was rapidly filling up. We opened up the "trash" file and found the graphics in question. They portrayed varying numbers of humans and animals engaged in a horrifying gamut of sexual activities. The pictures were lewd and obscene by any standards.

We immediately confronted the children with questions about the pictures and they confessed all. Was any lasting damage done? I would say, "Yes," because their early sexual images will, forever, be something which is not tender, or beautiful, or even harmlessly titillating; but something which is coarse, vile, and ugly.

Children Unaware that They Have Been Used in Pornography

Robert Trebilock (1999) [Child molesters on the internet] refers to the fact that "The Internet has spawned sites featuring snapshots of children -- unwittingly photographed while at play in parks and at the beach -- who serve as pedophiles' love objects (sic)" (p. 47). The term "sex objects" would be preferable here, especially as pedophiles deceive themselves into perceiving themselves as lovers of children.

I have also heard of cases where the photographed heads of girls available on non-pornographic websites (e.g., school yearbook pictures, or sports teams) can be placed on photographs of the bodies of other naked young girls, or other girls engaged in sexual acts. Hence, anyone who recognizes their faces is likely to think that these unwitting victims have participated in the production of child pornography. Pornographers who want to create pseudo-child pornography which childifies women can also attach girls' heads to women's bodies.

Conclusion

Anti-pornography feminists have long protested the lies about women that pornography conveys. It has been repeatedly demonstrated in this volume that comparable lies are told about children, the most obvious being that they enjoy sex with adults, particularly men. Both adult and child pornography are constructed by males as masturbatory material. Hence, the content of these materials will be guided by whatever turns them on and gets them off. This includes violence and brutality to satisfy the more sadistic pornophiles.

Because of the lack of adequate sex education in most American schools and homes, "the negative consequences of the many distortions and lies about sexuality and sexual behavior inherent in pornography will have a greater impact on the children exposed to this material" (Kelly et al., 1995, p. 35). As Bryant over-tentatively notes, "kids may think that what they see portrayed on the Net is real sex and not an idealized or fantasized depiction of it" (as quoted by Webb, p. 136). Bryant's description of the sex as "idealized" reflects a male bias, since the portrayals of sex in both adult and child pornography using females typically degrades females.

As an example of the negative consequences of unrealistic images of females, Bryant maintains that, "Young girls notoriously sensitive about their bodies may conclude that in order to be wanted and desired, enormous breast implants and anal sex are a must" (cited by Webb, p. 136). Like Kelly et al., Bryant contends that Internet pornography

Because many children now become Internet-literate at a very young age, growing numbers of children have access to pornography much earlier than they had in the past. Consequently, they are being exposed to materials that, in Webb's words, "are sometimes brutal and almost always shocking" (p. 136). Webb also notes that: "much more of the innocence of childhood is being denied them" (p. 136).

It is common for advocates to say that it is up to the parents to monitor their children's use of the Internet, and to use a filtering system to protect them from receiving unsolicited pornography. This recommendation is very classist, in my opinion. Many of the less educated parents, single mothers, and parents struggling to make ends meet, do not have the time or know-how to monitor their children. Besides, we have seen that children can access such materials in most of the public libraries in the United States, and sometimes at their schools as well.

Crimmins also notes that such recommendations "completely disregard[s] a serious reality: in many cases the parents themselves are the perpetrators of these crimes. AOL constantly has rooms entitled "family fun," "Nudist families," "Incest is best," "Have hot stepdaughter," and so on. In these rooms, child pornography is exchanged, and incest is discussed and celebrated. Many of the photos that are exchanged are purportedly of people's own children. So, the myth that parents should be the sole entity that should protect children on‑line, or anywhere else, is once again exploded.

The most recent controversy relates to the popularity of file-sharing programs (when two or more individuals have access to the same files) among young people. These programs have caused

Furthermore, these pornographic materials include illegal images. Mark Ishikawa, a chief executive officer who monitors the Web, reports that child pornography is also available on filesharing networks. According to Evangelista, "8 percent of the images and videos downloaded during [a] study depicted child pornography" (p. E4).

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