Child pornography: continual, unimaginable ABUSE

Dr Mathu H. Liyanage

Pornography is “printed or visual material intended to stimulate sexual excitement. It has its origins from Greek pornographos ‘writings about prostitutes’ (Oxford English Dictionary).

Child pornography, in fact, is images, films or writings depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child. Abuse of a child occurs during the sexual acts which are recorded in the production of child pornography where the memories of the abuse are maintained as long as visual records exist, are accessed, and are exploited perversely (Wikipedia).

It is, indeed, the darkest and the most sinister of all forms of child abuse, which destroys the child’s innocence and its charming beauty, leaving a scar for life that may never be obliterated.

Sexual love of children

Child pornography has come to stay, and it has become the fastest growing profitable business today for the producers of films, movies and DVDs involving child pornography. It is also a powerful element in the internet viewed by many for self-gratification, and others, especially paedophiles, who collect them not only to satisfy their sex urges and sexual fantasies but also to prepare children for sexual abuse, and to produce new child pornography with children the offenders have entrapped. Paedophilia, described as the sexual love of children, is a deviation which occurs both in heterosexual or homosexual men, and even in rare cases of women, to make up for their inability to form a successful sexual bond in an adult relationship and to redeem their self-esteem.

The sexual advances made to children usually take the form of verbal approaches or genital exhibition or caressing of the child’s genital organs or an attempt to persuade the child to manipulate the adult’s genitals, though sexual intercourse is rare. The unsuspecting child often becomes easy prey to paedophiles.

There is a remarkable demand for child pornography on the Internet which has inevitably increased child abuse to meet the demand by producing more, adopting novel methods as well, to attract viewers so that manufacturers could swell their profit-takings.

Sex rings – organisations into groups to produce and distribute child pornography – and sex tourists have been responsible for the widespread prevelance of child pornography across the globe.

The producers of child pornographic materials explicitly exploit poverty-stricken developing countries, and the innocent children unwittingly become the victims of molestation and are used for production of pornographic films, movies and DVDs for commercial purposes. They are invariably paid or are given gifts stealthily but the payments in cash or in kind do not commensurate with the everlasting damage they do to their lives.

Behavioural patterns

Peer-to-peer networking – sharing images with one another on their computers without the need to download from a web site; increasingly violent and graphic images involving the abuse of younger children, including babies; sexting – the use of cell phone messaging to transmit nude, semi-nude images of themselves and their sexual encounters to friends and others; simulated child pornography without the direct involvement of real children; and computer-generated imagery have almost reached the saturation point. No one knows where the process of pornography will end, and the precarious and harmful consequences that would follow.

Child pornography is illegal in most countries, but bringing the offenders to justice has become a long-drawn-out and expensive process, slowing down the attempts to reduce or eliminate child pornography.

Pornography plays a crucial and devastating part in the development of a child who goes through eight sequential stages of psychosocial development through life, as pronounced by the psychologist and psychoanalyst Eric Erikson.

During the impressionable years of a younger child, especially a girl child, it imitates the parents, especially the mother, their habits and attachments, and stores up experiences and emotions. They are clever imitators as most of us would have noticed that little girls dress up as their mothers, wearing their shoes as well, and play with dolls and other kids. It is not surprising that they will try out what they have learnt and experienced when they grow up.

Younger children

Exposure to pornography may prompt them to act out sexually against younger children. Besides, children exposed to X-rated, hard-core pornography, are likely to experiment some of the sexual behaviours they have witnessed or undergone, distorting and twisting their behavioural patterns.

As in the case of alcoholics and drug dependent persons who increase their intake of shots of spirits and drugs to get a higher level of satisfaction, children who are exposed habitually to mild forms of pornography tend to have a strong desire for more violent and deviant cases of pornographic images to re-ignite their diminished satisfaction and euphoria.

The inevitable result is that they become addicted to chronically pornography. Pornography brings sexual sensations and pleasure prematurely to children when they are not developmentally matured and ready to accept them.

This sudden rush of sexual pleasure may be too confusing and overstimulating for children which will prevent them forming a healthy and balanced sexual life in their late years. Child pornography has now become a very sensitive and highly emotive social concern. It is up to the government, religious groups and especially the parents to take a more active role in focusing their attention on children’s social activities and the use of modern technology, to protect, as far as possible, children’s innocence and purity of childhood.