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THE LEADER

WHO, WHOM?

Looking at the wan, pathetic face of Pete Townshend,
the rock musician arrested for possessing child
pornography from the Internet, it is hard not to feel
a smidgen of sympathy for him. He has not yet been
convicted of any offence, and it may turn out that he
has not committed one  but his reputation has been
destroyed for ever. 

Over the next few weeks, we are going to see pictures
of many more men peering sadly out of car windows as
they are driven off for questioning by the police.
More than 7,000 British men are on the list of
individuals who have accessed child pornography sites
on the Internet. That list was passed on to British
authorities by the FBI. The policemen involved in the
inquiry have promised that doctors, teachers, judges,
politicians and other high-ranking public officials
are on it. The officer leading the inquiry has even
gone on record to say that he could make headlines
every day for a year by exposing the famous names on
his list. The lives and reputations of those men will
be destroyed, whatever their status. The suggestion
that a man has been involved in child abuse creates an
indelible stain on his character, a stench which
nothing can disguise or remove. Neither an acquittal,
nor the dropping of charges, nor even the acceptance
by the police and Crown Prosecution Service that they
have no merit can eliminate it. 

Still, whatever momentary sympathy there might be for
Mr Townshend and the others is eliminated by the
thought of what they are alleged to have done: pay to
see images of children being raped. They are under
investigation because they gave their credit-card
details to an Internet site providing pictures of the
sexual violation of small children. The excuses that
have and will be offered are as pathetic as the men
who make them: I might have been abused as a child,
whined Mr Townshend  as if looking at images of
violent child abuse could help anyone to deal with
that experience, even supposing it had actually
happened (and he says he cannot remember anything
about it). 

I was doing research on the issue, Mr Townshend and
others before him have also claimed. Research is one
of the statutory defences against the charge of
possessing child pornography, but the perusal of
images of child rape does not count as research into
perverted sexuality, any more than hanging round the
site of car-crashes so as to get a look at the
blood-stained victims counts as research into the
medical effects of high-speed collisions on the human
body. 

What action should be taken against the men on the
list? It is possible that some of them, perhaps many
of them, are not dangerous paedophiles  they are just
warped and pathetic individuals whose sexual
perversions do not harm anyone but themselves. There
is the risk that the investigation will turn into a
dangerous and degrading witch-hunt. But it would be a
bizarre inversion of priorities to use that risk as an
argument for letting the whole investigation drop. It
would also be politically impossible. Public outrage
would be colossal, and understandable, if it became
clear that there had been a decision to take no action
against these men because it was thought that it
might not be fair to them. 

While there may be a case for thinking that simply
looking at images of any kind, however horrific,
should not in itself be a crime, even the most diehard
libertarian would find it difficult to argue that
paying money to see repulsive images involving
violence to children should not be criminalised.
Perhaps just looking is indeed a victimless crime,
or at least a crime whose only victim is the person
foolish enough to look at repulsive images. Paying to
look at such images is, however, a quite different
matter, for the simple reason that paying for images
of the rape of children encourages their creation. The
more money there is to be made from such horrible
photographs, the more people will abuse children so as
to produce them. It is that fact which makes the man
who pays complicit in producing those images  and so
in the rape and abuse of children. That is why paying
for child pornography is, and should be, a criminal
offence. 

It is a regrettable fact that many of the dire
predictions of those who campaigned against the
liberalisation of pornography have come true.
Pornography has not acted as a safety valve. It has
spread like a virus and become more, not less,
violent, and it is now more exploitative and abusive
of children. Can anyone honestly assert that we would
not, collectively, be better off if there was no
pornography available? That, however, is a utopian
dream: we have to live with the reality of the most
disgusting images being available after a few clicks
on a computer mouse. The prosecution of those known to
have paid for child pornography wont discourage every
paedophile from conjuring up vile images from the
Internet. But it should discourage some of them  and
that is a start. 


=====
-Brian in Atlanta
The Who This Month!
http://www.thewhothismonth.com
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