The Phony War on Child Pornography
In the era of modern technology, society has become desensitized to the frequency of arrests and convictions of those who produce, distribute, collect and view child sex abuse material (CSAM), commonly referred to as child pornography.

Prior to the age of social media, peer-to-peer file sharing, and high-speed internet, CSAM was difficult to obtain and was often procured through the underground, overseas markets on videotape or print material. Today, anyone can, with relative ease, obtain this material through common social media apps and file-sharing programs.

Laws against CSAM exist at the federal and state levels and perpetrators are prosecuted based on what agency catches them. Federal laws are more punitive with offenses for production and distribution carrying mandatory minimum sentences. Those convicted must also submit to Megan’s law for a minimum of 5 years and be subject to invasive monitoring and participate in therapy programs while being branded a “Sex Offender”.

The exploitative and sexualization of children in any form is morally reprehensible. As statistics show, the occurrence of such offenses in the digital age is skyrocketing. One of the benefits of CSAM materials proliferation on the internet is an increase in prosecution. However, is this making children safer? Are the prosecutions promoting respect for the law? And is society doing enough to protect everyone from exposure to these materials?

The proliferation of these materials on the internet has confirmed that thousands upon thousands of children and teens are sexually abused each year, and often in very horrific ways. In some cases, the material found online by law enforcement is used to track down victims and prosecute the perpetrators, but unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to prevent this material from ever appearing on the internet again. Part of the problem is those big tech companies are protected from prosecution under Section 230 of the Communication Decency Act. Tech companies are not held liable for content posted on their platforms and do not have mandatory reporting requirements. These tech companies include instant messaging platforms which include group chat where anyone can post anything. Simply being in a chat room where someone posts a CSAM image is enough to bring charges that could land anyone in Federal Prison.
Step 1 of reducing the proliferation of CSAM material online is to hold tech companies equally responsible as individuals who possess and distribute these materials. Society must equally hold everyone, including corporate entities and their leadership responsible for the content on their platform and equal penalties for those who choose not to comply.

Step 2 is redefining the penalties and culpability for those caught with CSAM material. Certainly, those who produce videos and images of children having sex with adults should be given the most severe penalties. Next are those who distribute such materials. Distribution prolongs the revictimization of the crimes committed against the survivor of child abuse. However, distribution in today’s environment is not a one-size-fits-all label. There are those who distribute entire libraries of media, and others who trade one for one to get new material to consume. There are also some who reluctantly re-post existing images to remain included in chat groups and not for material gain. At the bottom of the list are those who possess or access and view materials. Those individuals are furthest removed from the original crimes committed against these children: either the sexual assault or the production of the materials prior to distribution.

The current law mass incarcerates anyone suspected of even attempting to access CSAM; even in cases where one’s computer was compromised by malware. The government treats every child porn suspect the same. It starts with a SWAT team raid, harsh interrogation, arrest, negative publicity, and a very humiliating trial. Many who are convicted of such crimes are sent to medium-security prisons where they may be assaulted, raped, or isolated if their charge is made public.

Long prison sentences of otherwise law-abiding citizens, especially those furthest removed from causing child abuse, benefit no one. Providing appropriate punishment based on the perpetrator’s history, motives, disposition, and duration of lawbreaking should give judges wide latitude to sentence a serious offender to several years in prison while a first-timer who made a series of bad decisions resulting from an addiction should be given help, and a term of probation.

There are many motives for an individual’s involvement in child abuse or pornography. The most disturbed are classified as pedophiles, who have a persistent, primary sexual attraction to prepubescent children, male or female. Pedophiles are men and women. There is a rise in female pedophilia over the last decade. To say pedophiles are evil is disingenuous to addressing the problem. Leading psychologists suggest that adults classified as pedophiles were born that way or experienced abuse themselves as a child and stayed locked in their sexual disposition as a child. Diagnosis of pedophilia is rare, and for first-time offenders, treatment, not prison should be the norm, not the exception.

There are also legitimate porn and sex addicts. Sex addiction is still considered a controversial diagnosis and does not have an official DMV designation for psychologists. Despite this, there are numerous support groups and therapists for those addicted to sex. Again here, criminalizing addiction – specifically in cases where there was no physical or emotional harm to anyone benefits no one. The ideal outcome for our society is rehabilitation, when possible. Our justice system has a number of tools available to ensure those who want to recover from their addiction are given the chance to do so.
Finally, there are those who inadvertently access this material and for any number of reasons, allow themselves to be drawn into the world of child pornography. One example is men and women who were themselves abused and raped as children and involuntarily relive the trauma of their abuse through the image of others being abused.

What is clear is that our society and system of justice is not doing enough to reduce, as best as possible, the proliferation of child pornography on the internet. Our system is operating on outdated laws with out-of-touch sentencing guidelines that are focused on grinding out crippling prison sentences instead of rehabilitation, whenever possible. Not every registrant is a pariah that needs to be isolated and locked away. Some are. But the majority are otherwise law-abiding citizens, husbands, parents, and productive workers who wind up using the material which has become too easy to access, to live out addiction or trauma. It’s time for Congress and the sentencing commission to review and rewrite the anti-child pornography laws that protect children, deal with offenders humanely and appropriately and hold EVERYONE, including corporations, accountable. Until then, children will continue to be victimized and needlessly men and women will spend years in Federal Prison for having an addiction or trauma that did not directly harm anyone.

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