Child pornography has got to be one of the more despicable crimes an individual can commit. Frankly, it makes me sick to write about it. But it’s real.
In an article in the February 19, 2006 issue of Parade magazine, attorney Andrew Vachss, notes that child pornography is one of the fastest growing “businesses” on the Internet. He observes that the production of child pornography is incredibly inexpensive and easy, requiring only the equipment on can purchase in any discount store. Once a picture is taken and posted in cyberspace that picture lives forever. As Vachss says, “Images on the Internet can never be destroyed. The only things ‘used up’ in the child pornography business are its victims.”
Pornography of all kinds is more available, accessible, and affordable than ever before. Literally, anytime you get on the Internet you are just two clicks away from some of the most morally reprehensible material ever produced. Pornography of any kind is about presumed pleasure and profit. But for the victim it’s about exploitation, abuse, enslavement, violation, emotional destruction, and sometimes physical death. Child pornography simply takes all these tragic outcomes to an even deeper level of debasement.
As Vachss puts it, “No child is capable, emotionally or legally, of consenting to being photographed for sexual purposes. Thus, every image of a sexually displayed child—be it a photograph, a tape or a DVD—records both the rape of the child and an act against humanity.” So called Kiddie porn is egregiously named. There’s nothing cute about it.
As gambling is driven by compulsive gamblers, yet it sucks money from many casual gamblers as well, so child pornography is driven by pedophiles, yet it entices the curious and the emotionally crippled too. Certainly it attracts the corrupt—those who demand the product and those who profit from it. Men are primarily responsible, of course, but women are also participating as purchasers and purveyors, sometimes using their feminine personas to attract and reassure the victims.
Other than pedophiles, probably no one but the most extreme libertarian or maybe no more than a very few members of the American Civil Liberties Union would defend child pornography. It is a heinous crime.
Resources are available for those wanting to help. The National Association to PROTECT Children is one such nonprofit agency. This organization offers assistance to victims of childhood sexual abuse as well as knowledge and contacts for those wishing to work the political process on behalf of children.
This is admittedly a very ugly subject, but it seems to me that Christians ought to be talking more about it, perhaps even leading the charge for appropriate legal, social, and ministerial response. Obviously we care about child victims. We can also demonstrate care for pedophiles as human beings tragically in the grip of horrendous sin.
I don’t think it is self-contradictory to push for more stringent laws and consistently applied criminal justice for child porn perpetrators even as we work spiritually to reach their hearts. Accountability and forgiveness are twin themes in Scripture from which I and every other believer have benefited. So it can be for those who seem the worst among us.
© Rex M. Rogers - All Rights Reserved, 2006
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