CHRISTMAS has been cancelled for a second year, following the arrest of Santa for “evading the prohibition on the importation of indecent material”. According to the Metropolitan Police’s Paedophile Unit, Santa first came under suspicion after he was found to have travelled to Thailand more than 200 times over a period of just 200 years. Upon entering the UK, he was found to be in possession of sick images of child abuse, including copies of a music album which was recently censored by the Internet Watch Foundation.

“Gifts”

Santa protested his innocence, explaining that the records were merely gifts, however these claims were struck down by Shaun Kelly of childrens’ charity NCH. Kelly explained that “paedophiles often use jusitifications such as “it was only a hug”, “it was only a picture”, “this wouldn’t be a crime in any other country”, or “I really do like listening to The Scorpions”, however nobody in their right mind would believe this”. Jacqui Smith explained that “the Home Office will do everything it can to make the public feel safe, whether this means censoring artists, banning photography in public, or manipulating figures on the extent of knife crime in London”.

“Mistaken Identity”

Santa Claus, who The Daily Sun can EXCLUSIVELY unmask as Mr Paul Doe from Air Strip One in Oceania, claims that he is a victim of mistaken identity. Mr Doe argued that he was “just pretending to be Santa in order to make some extra money for Christmas”, however CEOP’s Jim Gamble does not believe this claim. He explained that “Mr Doe clearly sought a job where he would have access to young children, so he is obviously a determined and dangerous child molester. We need to send the message that if you work with children in the UK, we will find you and we will prosecute you; there is nowhere to hide.”

The Metropolitan Police stated that “it is our policy to arrest everyone who may have thought about committing a potential crime. Once we have arrested them and provided their details to the local press, we decide whether they are guilty before submitting their cases to the Crown Prosecution Service. It is then for the Jury to decide whether they look like a Muslim, a black youth, a paedophile, or somebody else who must be guilty.”

This incident came just two hours after Santa was turned away from Vatican City for wearing a coat which “looked too much like a dress”. The Pope declined to comment, stating only that he was acting under the authority of a higher power.

The amendments to Slovenia’s law against child pornography are presumably a result of the Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse which was discussed here.

Many people claim that simply downloading child pornography from the internet “creates a demand”, however this is an illogical assumption. The problem with applying the supply and demand theory to people who possess but don’t purchase is that they are not creating a demand, because the supplier is not interested in producing images for people who are effectively “stealing” them by downloading them for free, for the same reasons that artists don’t record music for people downloading it from file sharing networks. Supply and demand is an economic theory which applies to commercial sale, not products being used for free. Producers of any material do not want their material to be used freely, so an increased interest in freely available pornography would only harm them. People would be less likely to purchase child pornography if viewing freely available child pornography was legalised, as viewing freely available child pornography would become the safe [and legal] option. Production levels of child pornography would therefore fall because of a lack of commercial demand, meaning that less children would be used in pornography.

Another argument against the possession of child pornography is that the use of child pornography encourages viewers to abuse children, however nobody has been able to show a causal link between the use of child pornography and the commission of contact offences. A study by Freel in 2003, which focused on social workers with a sexual interest in children, explained that “If someone is fully inhibited from sexually abusing children, no amount of emotional congruence, sexual arousal, or blockage will lead them to abuse children.” Research by O’Carroll, published in 2000, found a correlation between an increase in the availability of child pornography and a decrease in the commission of contact sex offences against children, which suggests that, for some people, child pornography may serve as a substitution for contact offending.

Four members of the party peacefully joined the protest in The Hague (Holland) on October 11, however they were confronted by an aggressive fellow protester who, without holidng any authority, told them to leave. When the PNVD refused to forfeit their right to peaceful protest, they were approached by the police. Rather than asking the aggressive protester to cease the harassment of the PNVD, the police demanded that the PNVD leave or face arrest for “threatening the public peace”.

The four members of the PNVD agreed to leave without causing a disturbance, however the police followed them to the station until the activists stepped onto the train. The censorship of the PNVD may contravene Article 10 and Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The original news report can be found here, in Dutch.

Update, 2008/12/14: We still intend to make these changes; they have simply been delayed.

1. Denial of contact with children - a problem that has already seen some coverage in the media.[1][2] When violent and/or illegal acts against children are confused with universal feelings of affection and caring/physical responses, we end up seeing a degree of stand-offishness that denies young people their share of affection, and the right to feel valued. As a result, normal physical contact - common among closely related species and nearly always present in the more peaceful of human societies is characterised as perverse - something the young should fear.

2. Priming of children for victimhood - whereby a child who has been raped, traumatised or has no conception of the “wrongness” of his or her sexual involvements is told that they must be a victim. This is a mechanism of coercion and constraint that contributes to the formation of moral absolutes and the persecution of pedophiles - who according to the proponents of such propaganda, make up the majority of child sex offenders - a false claim.

Plummer[3] applies this to Girls:

“Again, this floods over into their sexual meanings: their sexuality is much more a matter of something that others do to them and define for them. It is something relatively out of their own control. At its most extreme edge, little girls may come to realize that it is totally out of their control — in dim, inarticulate ways they may come to see themselves as the objects of massive sexual terrorism”

3. A lack of guidance for children - when all unofficial, non-parental relationships between legal children and legal adults are seen as exploitative, or at least dangerous (possibly due to their ability to subvert order), childhood becomes a matter of mere indoctrination and replication of “family” propaganda. Children become the property of their parents; exposure to mind-opening and diverse opinions, values and practises is prohibited. Such over-protection in a risk - oriented society is very likely to lead to overly risk-averse adults who have no will to exploit positive opportunities outside of a normative framework that they will in turn attempt to replicate. This kind of paranoia has also been covered in the media.[4]

4. Banning of children - and this can be taken quite literally. When groups involving children and generally accepted children’s activities become risky, the rational response is to impose bans, or risk prosecution. We are seeing at least some compromised reporting of this, from some sources. For example:

“Children could be barred from joining sports and hobby clubs because of the increasing burden of red tape, campaigners fear. Organisations which run activities for youngsters are already struggling to recruit volunteers because they must undergo criminal records checks. But when a new child protection database is introduced next year - which one in four adults will have to sign at a cost of £64 each - it is feared that many groups which admit members of all ages will decide it is cheaper and simpler to exclude children.” [5]

5. Obesity in children - self evident, and a natural consequence of the previous point. As fears of “stalking predators” have been ramped up, parents have become less likely to allow their children to be active outdoors, or join sports clubs - assuming that they have not been banned. With an expansive service economy and an increasing denial of physical outlet, it is important that we do not allow the youngest members of society to grow fat and lazy for other reasons.

In Part 2, I will cover the adverse effects for society as a whole. These are Vigilante Justice, Murders, Expenditure, Validation of Pseudo-Science and False Allegations and Validation of Psychic Mediums.

Reference:

1. http://www.freewebtown.com/newsstand/archive1/1272.html
2. http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,1408828,00.html
3. Plummer, K. (1990). Understanding Childhood Sexualities. In Sandfort, T., Brongersma, J, & van Naerssen, A (eds.), Male Intergenerational Intimacy. New York: Harrington Park Press.
4. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article1918842.ece
5. Daily Telegraph, 20/06/2008, “Child protection rules could see youngsters banned from sport and hobby clubs”.

When the Home Office originally outlined their plans to criminalise such cartoons, I urged people to send a reply to the consultation and many people did voice their concerns. In a display of total disregard to our views, the Ministry of Justice have issued a “Summary of responses and next steps“, which reveals legislators’ intentions in relation to this issue. A brief analysis of this response suggests that the primary aspect of the legislation will look something like this:

1. It is an offence to make, distribute, show or possess any visual depiction of a child which is not a photograph or a pseudo-photograph, which shows —


(a) An excessive focus on a child’s genitalia; or

(b) A person of any age performing an act of intercourse or oral sex with a child; or

(c) An act of masturbation by, of or involving a child; or

(d) Penetration of the vagina, anus or mouth of a child with a part of the person’s body or with anything else; or

(e) Bestiality involving a child;

and is of an obscene character.

Justice Minister Maria Eagle attempted to justify the proposed law by claiming that “paedophiles could be circumventing the law by using computer technology to manipulate real photographs or videos of abuse into drawings or cartoons.” This is blatantly untrue, as Section 69 of the recently enacted Criminal Justice and Immigration Act amended Section 7 of the Protection of Children Act, to the effect that a non-photographic image derived from an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph is treated for all purposes of the Act as an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph. In short, it’s already illegal to make, possess, distribute or show cartoons and drawings which have been manipulated from real photographs.

It is also illegal to distribute any “obscene publication” under the Obscene Publications Act, and despite the contrary claims of the Ministry of Justice, it is illegal to take, make, distribute, show or possess a pseudo-photograph, which means that all efforts to implement the proposed new law can have only one effect: the possession of material which is not derived from photographs of “abuse” and which is clearly non-photographic will be criminalised.

Shaun Kelly, speaking for NCH, stated that “this is a welcome announcement which makes a clear statement that drawings or computer-generated images of child abuse are as unacceptable as a photograph“, effectively contradicting his previous claim that indecent photographs of children are wrong because, “for [..] images to be made children were abused.”

It is evident that the Ministry of Justice and NCH are attempting to hide the true intentions of this proposed law. To understand the motivations behind this proposal, a little background is required. As I explained at GirlChat,

The criminalisation of “non-photographic visual depictions of child sexual abuse” was first proposed by “children’s charities” - who are forever desperate to encourage donations by exploiting people’s emotions - in 2006. In 2007, the campaign was backed by low-importance MPs who wished to elevate their profile, but who were most likely uninterested in the issue in question.

The campaign became irrelevant when, earlier this month, any image derived from an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child became illegal under Section 69 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act.

Unfortunately, the UK economy is heading for recession and the criminal justice system is under attack due to a lack of space in prisons (the latter is ironically due to silly, politically-motivated legislation). The Labour government recently suffered a horrendous defeat in the recent by-elections, due to their drastic inability to deal with these issues. They have no choice but to use distraction techniques to divert attention from their incompetency.

Paedophiles are being used as pawns for political and economic reasons, simply because we are currently the weakest minority who nobody will speak out for.

The pathetic irony of the proposed legislation is that someone who is convicted of possessing a cartoon derived from an image of a child masturbating will get the same sentence as someone who is convicted of making a photograph of an adult molesting a child, because the person in the former case would be charged under the recently amended Protection of Children Act and the new law, whereas the latter would only be charged under the Protection of Children Act. It is clear that the UK government is not “only” using paedophiles as pawns; it is using children as pawns too.

The book Child Pornography: Crime, Computers and Society provides insight into the content of indecent images, using a sample of 106 cases in Ireland, between 2000 and 2004. The content of the images was described by police officers who had investigated the cases, and the following (legal) definitions are used:

The figures below - which can be found in page 123 of the book - refer to the most serious level of images involved in each case:

This suggests that, in roughly 44% of cases involving “child pornography” (in Ireland), people’s lives are being destroyed due to their possession of images which show no sexual activity at all.

Section 71 of the bill intends to make it illegal for a UK national living, working or travelling abroad to commit any of the child sex offences listed in Schedule 2 of the Sexual Offences Act. Currently, a UK national may be prosecuted in the UK if he commits such an offence abroad, if his actions also constitute an offence in the foreign jurisdiction.

The offences listed in Schedule 2 of the Sexual Offences Act include non-contact offences, such as the possession of indecent photographs (or pseudo-photographs) of children.

The bill also intends to amend Section 7 of the Protection of Children Act, making it an offence to engage in an act listed under Section 1(1) of the Act in relation to any image which is derived from an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child. Interestingly, this amendment would make it illegal to access images which appear to show adults, if the images are derived from indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of children. A knowledgable source believes that Parliament will actually criminalise all “indecent” depictions of children.

Of interest on a tangential level is Section 63 of the bill, which will make it illegal to possess extreme pornographic images of adults. An extreme image, according to the bill, is one which depicts activity which is threatening to the life of a person, one which could cause harm to the genitals, anus or breasts of an actor, one which involves sex with a corpse, or one which involves bestiality, which is also “grossly offensive, disgusting or otherwise of an obscene character.”

The proposed amendment regarding offences committed abroad - described in Section 71 of the bill - is a result of the “Council of Europe Convention on the Protection of children against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse“, which sets COE-wide guidelines on definitions of “child abuse” and “child exploitation”, how to establish jurisdiction over people who commit offences contrary to such guidelines, and how to punish people who commit a child sex offence.

The amendment described in Section 71 of the bill is somewhat surprising. One must ask why UK representatives within the Council of Europe were prepared to sign a document which means that UK nationals who are to be labelled as child abusers could be extradited to face charges in the UK. Although the public hates paedophiles, I suspect they would be happier for “paedophiles” to be viewing indecent images (or even committing contact offences) in a foreign country than posing a (perceived) threat to their children by being returned to the UK. I wonder how the public would feel if they knew about this aspect of the bill?

It is likely that nationals of other Council of Europe member states will also become subject to their country’s laws in all parts of the world, once the other member states enact legislation to conform to the treaty. Even the Netherlands has indicated that it intends to conform to the oppressive terms of the treaty, stating that it will criminalise the act of accessing child pornography on the internet, per Article 20 (f) of the treaty.

We’re not “sleepwalking into Police states”, we’re being catapulted into a Police World at the speed of light.

Evidence further suggests that those persons whose primary sexual interest is genuinely pedophilic often exhibit a complex set of attitudes, beliefs, and perceived needs in regard to children of which sexual desire may be subordinate rather than superordinate (Groth, Hobson, & Gary, 1982; Howells, 1979, 1981; Lanyon, 1986; Ravitch & Weiss, 1962). Interactions between such persons and children sometimes have been characterized as “affectionate” and inclusive of many non-sexual components, some of which may be experienced by the child as rewarding (Groth et al., 1982; Howells, 1979: Ingram, 1981; Krivacska, 1990; Lanyon, 1986; Li et al., 1990; Money, in Geraci & Mader, 1991; Peters, 1976; Sandfort, 1984; Schultz, 1973).

~ Okami, P. & Goldberg, A. (1992).”“Personality Correlates of Pedophilia: Are They Reliable Indicators?”, Journal of Sex Research, 29(3):297-328.

From Table 4 [of our study] it can be seen that both physical appearance and personality characteristics are claimed as important determinants of the appeal of children to the paedophile, with personality descriptions being given slightly more commonly than physical descriptions. The most important personality trait that the men find attractive in children is their innocence and openness, this being expressed in a variety of different ways (lack of inhibition, honesty, simplicity, curiosity, openness to experience, willingness to learn, spontaneity, etc). Their warmth, affection, friendliness, charm, softness and understanding were also mentioned, although this might have referred to the particular children with whom the men were able to establish some relationship. Other descriptions related to energy level, e.g. vitality, vivaciousness, enthusiasm, mischief, liveliness.
…
Answers to the question concerning the kinds of relationships with children that are engaged in are summarised in Table 13, with some of the more typical and interesting responses given verbatim in Table 14. The most common descriptions were in non-sexual terms such as affectionate, caring, loving, gentle, intimate, platonic and fatherly.

~ Wilson, G. & Cox, D. (1983). “The Child-Lovers: A Study of Paedophiles in Society.” London: Peter Owen Publishers, 1983.

The general problems [faced by pedophiles] are not distinctive to pedophiles but common to all people. For example, the problem of a lost love or an unrequited love may occur more frequently amongst pedophiles, but all people can in principle have such experiences. As one heterosexual pedophile wrote:

“How can it ever be possible to convey to people that we can suffer the same pangs of jealousy, emotional distress, at being parted from a loved one, and suicidal tendencies (when it appears the child who is the object of affection seems to have vanished for ever) as “normal lovers” do. How can they understand the terrible loneliness of a crowded room because she is not there. Helpless, lonely, living in a world of hopeless frustration because the one you love is constantly absent and yet ever constant in dreams, awake or sleeping. How could we tell them of the tears that can be shed because a little seven year old girl is no longer there.”

Apart from the reference to a seven-year-old girl, that observation may be common to many people’s lives, as may the following:

“I get so desperately in love with these people. Any of them, you know. If I had any sort of relationship with anybody, in the first place I wouldn’t have it if I didn’t like the person, there comes a kind of possessiveness that nobody likes. I wish I weren’t possessive. Nobody likes anybody who is possessive. But if you are by nature possessive you can’t help being like that, and I always get very much in love with them. It sounds silly to express what you mean by being in love. I want that person all the time you know, and I don’t find many people like that.”

Such problems could be illustrated many times. It is important to distinguish them because some sexually different people can see their lives being full of such problems, unique to themselves, whereas in fact such problems are widespread through many groups of society.
[…]
This is not to say that the adult loses interest in the child, it is to say that the erotic component now dwindles. Many pedophile relationships established in early years can continue till the twilight of life, but the eroticism ceases at puberty.

~ Plummer, K. (1981). “Pedophilia: Constructing a Sociological Baseline,” in Adult Sexual Interest in Children, Eds. Mark Cook and Kevin Howells. London: Academic, 1981. 221-48.

Phenomenologically speaking, pedophiles are adults who fall in love with and at the same time erotically and sexually desire boys or girls.

~ Vogt, Horst (2006). Pädophilie; Leipzicher Studie zur gesellschaftlichen und psychischen Situation pädophiler Männe (”Paedophilia - Leipzig study on the societal and psychological situation of paedophile males”), Lengerich, Germany: Pabst Science Publishers. ISBN 3-89967-323-9

Pedophiles are men whose sexual wishes and desires for relationship bonds and love are focused either primarily or exclusively on children who have not reached puberty, whereby the relative importance of each of these three areas–sexuality, relationship, and love–may vary, as it does with other people as well.

~ Schmidt, G. (2002). “The Dilemma of the Male Pedophile,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 31(6):473-477.

Pedophilia is not primarily a matter of sex, but of love, of being wanted, of childhood enjoyment, of things that the adult world cannot provide. […] Whether they feel that they are born pedophile, or that pedophilia is a normal and legitimate variation of human sexual expression, most of my informants have stressed the experience of love, affection, or closeness in their encounters with children. The sense of emotional contact with another human person is as important as, if not actually more important than, the excitement of sex. Among these informants, four have explicitly articulated their experience with children in terms of romantic courtship and love. […] To some pedophiles, their relationships with children are constituted by an intense love and affection.

~ Li, Chin-Keung (1990). “The Main Thing Is Being Wanted,” Journal of Homosexuality, 20(1-2):129-143

It’s not chronological age that’s decisive [for pedophilic attraction], but rather a combination of physical and personality characteristics. Therefore, the pedophile takes seriously those young people with whom he could fall in love.

~ Lautmann, Rüdiger (1994). “Attraction to Children.” Ingrid Klein Pubs. Inc., Hamburg. ISBN ISBN 3-89521-015-3

Individuals whose sexual orientation is directed toward children manifest the same range of personality, temperamental, and character traits as individuals whose sexual orientation is directed towards adults.

~ Berlin, F. S. (2000). “Treatments to change sexual orientation,” The American Journal of Psychiatry, 157:5.

The psychoticism score of the paedophiles [in our study] is slightly elevated compared with controls, but not drastically so, and certainly not to the extent that they could be called pathological as a group. There are several occupational groups listed in the Manual that have P[sychoticism] scores of approximately the same order, including actors, apprentices, architects, doctors, drivers, students and welfare officers, none of which could be regarded as clinically psychotic as a whole. Thus, there is no reason on the basis of these results to suppose that men with paedophile sexual preferences are necessarily marked by any exceptional degree of thought disorder.
[…]
The neuroticism scores of the paedophiles are again slightly higher than controls but not to an extent that would justify describing them as clinically abnormal. Among groups of men with similar N[euroticism] scores according to the Manual are actors, apprentices, machinists and students, and a great many of the female groups given in the Manual show N scores that are higher than these male paedophiles.
[…]
Perhaps the most striking thing about these results is how normal the paedophiles appear to be according to their scores on these major personality dimensions - particularly the two that are most clinically relevant (N[euroticism] and P[sychoticism]). The only marked characteristic of the PIE [Paedophile Information Exchange] members with respect to these major dimensions is their tendency to introversion, and this in itself is not usually thought of as pathological. Furthermore, the fact that the Lie Scale scores of the paedophiles are not distinguishable from those of controls would suggest that, overall, they were not bent on creating an artificially favourable impression on the questionnaire, but were giving an honest and accurate self-report.
…]
Obsessionality, as indicated by this particular item from the EPQ does not seem to be characteristic of the paedophiles; in fact, the proportion endorsing this item is lower than that for controls.

~ Wilson, G. & Cox, D. (1983). “The Child-Lovers: A Study of Paedophiles in Society.” London: Peter Owen Publishers, 1983.

Okami and Goldberg (1992) systematically reviewed the literature and found that pathology has not been reliably associated with paedophilia. They conclude:

The clearest finding of the present review is that relatively little may be stated about the personality or phenomenology of pedophiles […] Looking at the very scanty data pertaining to pedophilia per se, then, we are unable to report any reliable findings. […] as Wilson and Cox (1983) and several others have pointed out, the types of affective and social pathologies associated with samples of pedophiles … seriously beg the question of causal direction. Guilt feelings, feelings of ostracism loneliness, low self-esteem, etc., clearly are exacerbated by, if not sequelae of, the social condition of pedophiles … and should not be interpreted as representing etiological variables or intrinsic correlates of sexual preference for children. […] For example, because an unknown percentage of true pedophiles may never act on their impulses or may never be arrested, forensic samples of sex offenders against minors clearly do not represent the population of “pedophiles,” and many such persons apparently do not even belong to the population of “pedophiles.”

~ Okami, P. & Goldberg, A. (1992). “Personality Correlates of Pedophilia: Are They Reliable Indicators?”, Journal of Sex Research, 29(3):297-328.