Child Pornography in the XXI Century: Brief Considerations about Victims and Offenders
Mauro Paulino1*, Sofia Gabriel1, Laura Alho1 and João Hipólito2
1Psychologist in Mind, Institute of Clinical and Forensic Psychology, Portugal
2Full Professor in Autónoma University of Lisbon, Portugal
Submission:November 11, 2020;Published:December 01, 2020
*Corresponding author:Mauro Paulino, Coordinator of Mind, Institute of Clinical and Forensic Psychology, Lisbon, Portugal
How to cite this article:Paulino M, Gabriel S, Alho L, Hipólito J. Child Pornography in the XXI Century: Brief Considerations about Victims and Offenders. J Forensic Sci & Criminal Inves. 2020; 14(5): 555899 DOI:10.19080/JFSCI.2020.14.555899.
Abstract
In a digital age with a constant technological evolution, child pornography has transcended all barriers and has become a worldwide problem. Thus, it becomes imperative to know the characteristics of victims and offenders, with respect to sociodemographic, personality, history of development and criminal background, for a more rigorous strategy of prevention and treatment of both. This understanding requires identifying the specificities of the role of the digital world in the perpetuation of this crime, such as the strategies that facilitate contact with child pornographic material, what motivates offenders to share these materials with children on the online world and what factors prompt offenders to contact with children in the offline world, since the important risk to commit child sexual abuse on these circumstances. Regarding to the victims, is fundamental to explore the psychological consequences of this crime. In most cases, the victims feel that will be emotionally persecuted by the trauma and, objectively, by the impact of knowing that their images will be always available on the internet.
Keywords: Child pornography; Victims; Offenders; Prevention
Introduction
Accessibility, affordability, and anonymity of sexual exploitation of children in a digital age facilitator of the dissemination of pornographic material and anonymity of the perpetrator, has become a worldwide challenge in criminal investigation [1-4]. Child Pornography (CP) is a legal term that defines media depicting sexual exploitation of children [5]. These authors indicate other terms that tend to be used in the literature, such as child sexual abuse material and child exploitation material. Victims of child pornography can be direct and indirect. The direct victims correspond to minors who have suffered the abuses portrayed in images or videos. The indirect victims are those to whom these images are sent for gratification of the offender’s fantasies and which are at risk of become direct victims themselves [6,7]. Adds the risk to be aroused curiosity in secondary victims and they later become offenders and abuse other children. Primary victims tend to be female, caucasian [8], and often close to the offender, who manipulates them into producing pornography [8]. Not infrequently, the perpetrators of child pornography crimes are family members or acquaintances, and the crime tends to last more than a year [9,10]. When abuse is perpetrated by people close to them, it tends to have more serious and long-term consequences [52], as the shake of beliefs about trust and intimacy [11]. A risk that the child is dependent and/or lives with the perpetrator, making him or her more vulnerable to repeated abuses, inhibiting disclosure and seeking help as well as receiving more negative reactions, such as disbelief from adults [12,13].
According to [14] being a victim of intrafamily abuse is highly correlated with having a younger age at the time of abuse. In Gewirtz-Meydan and colleagues [9], research, 83% of survivors were under 12 years of age, and the younger the exposure to trauma, the higher the risk of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder [15]. However, it has also been argued that advanced age is associated with a higher risk of psychopathology [16], Given the increased awareness of social stigma [17]. This traumatic experience becomes particularly disruptive due to the attitude of the victims in the images, who tend to be smiling or with neutral expressions. This phenomenon, on the one hand, helps offenders to convince themselves that their fantasies are not deviant, because the images do not tend to be indicative of refusal or displeasure. Not infrequently, coercion does not tend to be present, since that offender’s resort to seduction and manipulation, which once again allows them to feed their sexual fantasies [6]. On the other hand, it fosters victims’ feelings of guilt, shame, and concern to be recognized and judged for their appearance in images [10,11]. According to MacGinley, Breckenridge, and Mowll these feelings tend to negatively impact self-concept and the way victims understand abuse. Another characteristic of this traumatic experience is continuous victimization [11]. In addition to the offender being able to continue threatening and silencing the victim, with resource to possession of pornographic material, thus maintaining a perverse relationship with the victim the lack of control over the sharing of images of abuse and the consequent public accessibility when they go online may be one of the most difficult aspects to overcome, as the Canadian Centre for Child Protection (CCCP) (2017) warns. According to Martin [18]. symptoms of trauma do not occur in the aftermath of abuse. This abuse is, according to the author, always ongoing and without apparent end. The victims experience an ongoing fear about the circulation of their images online, as well as a concern to be recognized in public [11], which contributes to feelings of permanent vulnerability and powerlessness [14]. Studies show that victims experience, in adult life, symptoms of anxiety and depression, accompanied by ideation and suicide attempts; they adopt a posture of hypervigilance and register paranoid symptoms; they present low self-esteem, ideation difficulties in relationships, in sexual life and tend to resort to self-mutilation. But who are the offenders? According to [19], there are child pornography offenders on the Internet (ICPOs) and mixed offenders, who have victimized minors on the Internet (e.g., sharing photographs) and in the real world (e.g., sexual abuse of minors). Despite the fact that consumption of child pornography is not recognized for potentiating physical offenses against a child, it can be a means of sexual stimulation for those who have already committed offenses [19]. In accordance with Aslan, Edelmann, Bray e Worrell [20], when examining mixed offenders, the risk of a history of sexual contact with children before being charged and/or convicted of child pornography offences is high. And what distinguishes these offenders? Previous studies have found that ICPOs are less likely to be parents [21], and therefore, have less access to minors; they do not tend to have antisocial characteristics in their functioning [22] or criminal history [23]. In contrast, these offenders are more likely to present Personality Assessment Inventory results that suggests depression, borderline personality characteristics, and reduced levels of aggression and dominance. However, in the study by Bourke & Hernandex [24], involving ICPOs, they admitted that could have had sexual intercourse with a child if an opportunity had arisen that was conducive to crime. Mixed offenders admitted using child pornography as a substitute to avoid new contact offenses. They are significantly more likely to engage in sexually deviant behavior, such as talking to a minor, sending pornography communicating their sexual interests, and arranging a meeting [25], a greater likelihood of having antisocial characteristics [26] and the diagnosis of pedophilia [19]. In short, in what refers to risk factors for the consumption of pornography involving consequent contact with a child, it highlights the presence of antisocial traits (e.g., impulsiveness), an atypical sexuality (e.g., paraplegic sexual interests) and situational factors such as the opportunity to commit the crime [27-29].
In the context of situational factors, Houtepen, Sijtsema & Bogaerts [26], distinguish as risk factors environment online versus environment offline. In the first, child pornography offenders may experience habituation through regular exposure, which results in the need for more severe pornographic material and, in some cases, turn to hands-on offenses [30]. On the internet, the offenders may be at risk for negative influences from others who provide tips to offend, reinforce distorted cognitions that justifying sexual offenses and provide social status and support [30]. In the second, when child pornography offenders are isolated from people with more healthy views about this type of offending, may be at greater risk for committing child sexual abuse [30]. Once again, the offline access to children is also a risk factor for cross-over, since these offenders tend to choose victims who are easily ‘available’ [31]. A tool built to distinguish these two types of offenders corresponds to the Kent Internet Risk Assessment Tool [23]. In a few words, this device allows the police to prioritise the most dangerous offenders, which means the most likely to commit hands-on sexual offences against children [23]. Through the evaluation of four domains: previous behaviours (e.g., convictions for a range of sexual offences); access to children (i.e., any access to children but particularly those of friends, acquaintances or neighbours); current behavioural facilitators (e.g., sexual communication online and offline) other factors (e.g., domestic abuse). In this regard, stands out the investigation of Chiua, Seigfried-Spellarb & Ringenbergb (2018) [32], which analyzed the differences between contact child sex offenders (CCSO), also known as hands-on child sex offender [33], and fantasy child sex offender (FCSO) also known as Internet solicitors [33] in online interaction. In opposition to FCSOs, who might psychologically harm children, CCSOs are a greater threat to children [30]. CCSOs can both physically and psychologically harm children and, according to McCarthy (2010), are much more likely to repeat the crime. This study has revealed that CCSOs, in their online chats, were more likely to use specific categories of words in their messages, such as for example first-person pronouns with negative or positive emotion words. It was demonstrated that the offenders recurred to self-disclosure as a strategy for building trust and therefore try to meet their victims in the offline world. These messages on the online world suggestive of selfdisclosure elicited reciprocation, that is, after a message with a first-person pronoun (positive emotion or negative emotion), the next person’s message often had some words from the same category(ies), suggesting that self-disclosures elicited other’s selfdisclosures [30]. According to the authors, the replication of these study can inform undercover police training and serve as the basis for a digital forensics tool that detects CCSOs. In this sense, undercover police can be trained to recognize the presence of self disclosures (especially involving negative emotions) and, in turn, identify CCSOs [30]. In line with Seigfried-Spellar, Ringenberg, Chiu and Rogers another idea is building a digital forensics tool that automatically analyzes online chats to detect CCSOs. In this sense, Fortin, Paquette, and Dupont suggest another promising tool: script analysis. This strategy explains how different types of crime may be committed in a particular sequence and, according to the authors, this tool is particularly important in considering the future orientation of research and prevention of child pornography. In the investigation of the mentioned authors, four episodes were identified:
The Beginning: The offender begins with the consumption of legal pornography.
Exploration: the traditional tools and material no longer suffice the purpose and the offender explores virtual spaces and tools, embarking on a process of socialization that facilitate the discovery of illegal child sexual exploitation material.
Immersion: the offender interacts systematically more with other internet users in order to access content that is rarer and considered more interesting, while learn how to acquire content and avoid apprehension by law enforcement agencies.
Acting Out: the objects of collections become real world targets and the child sexual exploitation material is used to facilitate their assaults by disinhibiting, seducing or blackmailing victims and/or to stimulate themselves prior to their assaults; others offenders use chat rooms to recruit victims for webcam sessions and in some cases, real-world meetings that may involve the filming of the assaults in order to share this content and try to obtain peer approval and community status.
As for the rates of recidivism in the consumption of child pornography, these are reduced, ranging from 0% to 9% for new crimes of child pornography [30,34-36], and 0% to 4% for new crimes of child sexual abuse [14,36]. When the samples include mixed sex offenders, there was an increase in sexual recidivism rates to numbers like 25% [10]. A recent study by Elliott & colleagues [37] examined the recidivism rates of 584 offenders consuming child pornography and 106 mixed offenders, and after an average follow-up of 13 years, only 2.6% of the first group were convicted of a sexual contact offense, as opposed to the 9.4% identified in the mixed group. Although the majority of the offenders are male, there is a small number of women involved in this crime [38]. These women record in their biographies significantly higher rates of abusive experiences than the general [39] and forensics [40] population, including women convicted of violent crimes as sexual and physical abuse in childhood [38,41,42] and adulthood [39] perpetrated by multiple social network offenders [38]. Given the intensity of the experiences of abuse [9] and parental neglect [43] experienced by these women, weaknesses in mental health arise, such as a history of suicide attempts and substance abuse [38] relationships of dependency (Gannon et al, 2008), weak social skills (Hislop, 2001), low selfesteem [38], antisocial characteristics [44] substance use, traumarelated mental disorders [45-47]. Regarding the characteristics of child pornography crimes committed by women, in the study of Gottfried, Shier and Mulay 29% were convicted for possession, 32% for production of pornography without contact and 40% were convicted for production with contact. About 66% committed the offenses with a male co-offender and 71% of the victims were the children of these women [38]. Elliott & Ashfield [48-57] suggest that women are more likely to be driven by an effort to maintain the perpetrator’s emotional involvement than by the monetary or exchange value of child pornography. This crime tends to involve three actors, namely a man motivated to acquire pornography, a child victim, and a person who gives access to that victim - not infrequently, his own mother.
Conclusion
The constant evolution of new technologies has brought new challenges to forensic science and criminal investigation. In the case of child pornography, the importance of psychological intervention with victims, who experience feelings of fear, impotence, stigma and hopelessness in the face of the impossibility of obtaining some control over the material circulating on the Internet, deserves particular attention. At the same time, there are also challenges in intervening with offenders, who reinvent their strategies, using the online world, to reach their victims in the offline world. As far as offenders are concerned, it is important to outline measures also based on technology for an automatic analysis of online content as a way to prevent the act from happening, as well as to develop, for example, longitudinal studies for a better understanding of the risk assessment of these offenders, distinct from other crimes. According to Westlake part of the existing gap between offenders who use technology and forensic sciences in the study of these offenders refers to the lack of knowledge of recent phenomena that cover both areas and translate into a slow response to sudden phenomena such as sexting. This phenomenon also reinforces the imperative need for digital literacy for a parenting in the digital age, given the risk of children and adolescents feeding the world of child pornography, without any intention or awareness of the consequences of this act.
References
- Soldino V, CarbonellVayá EJ SeigfriedSpellar KC (2020) Spanish Validation of the Child Pornography Offender Risk Tool. Sexual Abuse.
- Henshaw M, Ogloff JRP, Clough JA (2017) Looking beyond the screen: A critical review of the literature on the online child pornography offender. Sexual Abuse 29: 416-445.
- SeigfriedSpellar KC, Soldino V (2019) Child sexual exploitation: Introduction to a global problem, (In:) THolt, AEossler (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of international cybercrime and cyberdeviance. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 1-21.
- Soldino V, Guardiola García J (2017) Pornografíainfantil: cambiosen las formas de obtención y distribución [Child pornography: Changes in the means for obtention and distribution. RevistaElectrónica de Ciencia Penal y Criminología 19: 281-225.
- Ly T, Murphy L, Fedoroff JP (2016) Understanding online child sexual exploitation offenses. Current psychiatry reports 18(8): 74.
- Prat S, Jonas C (2013) Psychopathological characteristics of child pornographers and their victims: a literature review. Medicine, Science and the Law 53(1): 6-11.
- Krone T (2004) A typology of online child pornography offending. Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology.
- Quayle E, Jones T (2003) Sexualized images of children on the internet. Sexual Abuse. A Journal of Research and Treatment 23(1): 7-21.
- Gewirtz Meydan A, Walsh W, Wolak J, Finkelhor D (2018) The complex experience of child pornography survivors. Child abuse & neglect 80: 238-248.
- Canadian Centre for Child Protection (2017)Survivor’s survey.
- Gewirtz Meydan A, Lahav Y, Walsh W, Finkelhor D (2019) Psychopathology among adult survivors of child pornography. Child abuse & neglect 98: 104-189.
- Paine ML, Hansen DJ (2002) Factors influencing children to self-disclose sexual abuse. Clinical psychology review 22(2): 271-295.
- Ullman SE (2007) Relationship to perpetrator, disclosure, social reactions, and PTSD symptoms in child sexual abuse survivors. Journal of child sexual abuse 16(1): 19-36.
- Ventus D, Antfolk J, Salo B (2017) The associations between abuse characteristics in child sexual abuse: a meta-analysis. Journal of sexual aggression 23(2): 167-180.
- Ozer EJ, Tschann JM, Pasch LA, Flores E (2004) Violence perpetration across peer and partner relationships: Co-occurrence and longitudinal patterns among adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health 34(1): 64-71.
- Cutajar MC, Mullen PE, Ogloff JRP, Thomas SD, Wells DL, Spataro J (2010) Psychopathology in a large cohort of sexually abused children followed up to 43 years. Child Abuse & Neglect 34: 813-822.
- Ruggiero KJ, McLeer SV, Dixon JF (2000) Sexual abuse characteristics associated with survivor psychopathology. Child Abuse & Neglect 24(7): 951-964.
- Martin J (2015) Conceptualizing the harms done to children made the subjects of sexual abuse images online. Child & Youth Services 36(4): 267-287.
- Ly T, Dwyer RG, Fedoroff JP (2018) Characteristics and treatment of internet child pornography offenders. Behavioral Sciences & the Law 36(2): 216-234.
- Aslan D, Edelmann R, Bray D, Worrell M (2014) Entering the world of sex offenders: An exploration of offending behaviour patterns of those with both internet and contact sex offenses against children. Journal of Forensic Practice 16(2): 110-126.
- Elliott IA, Beech AR, Mandeville Norden R (2013) The psychological profiles of internet, contact, and mixed internet/contact sex offenders. Sexual Abuse 25(1): 3-20.
- Long ML, Alison LA, McManus MA (2012) Child pornography and likelihood of contact abuse: A comparison between contact child sexual offenders and noncontact offenders. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment 25(4): 370–395.
- Lee AF, Li N, Lamade R, Schuler A, Prentky RA (2012) Predicting hands‐on child sexual offenses among possessors of Internet child pornography. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 18(4): 644-672.
- Bourke ML, Hernandex AE (2009) The Butner Study Redux: A report of the incidence of hands‐on child victimization by child pornography offenders. Journal of Family Violence 24: 183-191.
- McCarthy JA (2010) Internet sexual activity: A comparison between contact and non‐contact child pornography offenders. Journal of Sexual Aggression 16(2): 181-195.
- Babchishin K, Hanson RK, VanZuylen H (2015) Online child Pornography offenders are different: A meta‐analysis of the characteristics of online and offline sex offenders against children. Archive of Sexual Behavior 44(1): 45-66.
- Seto MC (2013) Internet sex offenders. American Psychological Association.
- Seto MC (2019) The motivation-facilitation model of sexual offending. Sexual Abuse 31: 3-24.
- Seto MC, Eke AW (2015) Predicting recidivism among adult male child pornography offenders: Development of the Child Pornography Offender Risk Tool (CPORT). Law and Human Behavior 39: 416-429.
- Quayle E, Taylor M (2002) Child pornography and the internet: Perpetuating a cycle of abuse. Deviant Behavior 23(4): 331-361.
- Sheehan V, Sullivan J (2010) A qualitative analysis of child sex offenders involved in the manufacture of indecent images of children. Journal of Sexual Aggression 16(2): 143-167.
- Chiu MM, SeigfriedSpellar KC, Ringenberg TR (2018) Exploring detection of contact vs. fantasy online sexual offenders in chats with minors: Statistical discourse analysis of self-disclosure and emotion words. Child abuse & neglect 81: 128-138.
- Briggs P, Simon WT, Simonsen S (2011) An exploratory study of internet-initiated sexual offenses and the chat room sex offender: Has the internet enabled a new typology of sex offender? Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment 23(1): 72-91.
- Eke AW, Helmus LM, Seto MC (2019) A validation study of the Child Pornography Offender Risk Tool (CPORT). Sexual Abuse 31: 456-476.
- Faust E, Bickart W, Renaud C, Camp S (2015) Child pornography possessors and child contact sex offenders: A multilevel comparison of demographic characteristics and rates of recidivism. Sexual Abuse 27: 460-478.
- Goller A, Jones R, Dittmann V, Taylor P, Graf M (2016) Criminal recidivism of illegal pornography offenders in the overall population-A national cohort study of 4612 offenders in Switzerland. Advances in Applied Sociology 6: 48-56.
- Elliott IA, Mandeville Norden R, Rakestrow Dickens J, Beech AR (2019) Reoffending rates in a U.K. community sample of individuals with convictions for indecent images of children. Law and Human Behavior 43: 369-382.
- Bickart W, McLearen AM, Grady MD, Stoler K (2019) A descriptive study of psychosocial characteristics and offense patterns in females with online child pornography offenses. Psychiatry psychology and law: 26(2): 295-311.
- Levenson JS, Willis GM, Prescott DS (2015) Adverse childhood experiences in the lives of female sex offenders. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment 27: 258-283.
- Cortoni F (2018) Women who sexually abuse: Assessment, treatment and management. VT, Safer Society Press, Brandon, US
- Hislop J (2001) Female sex offenders: What therapists, law enforcement, and child protective services need to know. Ravensdale, WA: Issues Press.
- Johansson Love J, Fremouw W (2006) A critique of the female sexual perpetrator research. Aggression and Violent Behavior 11(1): 12-26.
- Gannon TA, Rose MR, Ward T (2008) A descriptive model of the offense process for female sexual offenders. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment 20: 352-374.
- Ford H, Cortoni F (2008) Sexual deviance in females: Assessment and treatment.
- Fazel S, Sjöstedt G, Grann M, Långström, N (2010) Sexual offending in women and psychiatric disorder: A national case-control study. Archives of sexual behavior 39(1): 161-167.
- Rousseau MM, Cortoni F (2010) The mental health needs of female sexual offenders. Female sexual offenders: Theory, assessment, and treatment. Chichester, John Wiley and Sons, UK
- Turner K, Miller HA, Henderson CE (2008) Latent profile analyses of offense and personality characteristics in a sample of incarcerated female sexual offenders. Criminal Justice and Behavior 35(7): 879-894.
- Elliott IA, Ashfield S (2011) The use of online technology in the modus operandi of female sex offenders. Journal of sexual aggression 17(1): 92-104.
- Fortin F, Paquette S, Dupont B (2018) From online to offline sexual offending: Episodes and obstacles. Aggression and violent behavior 39: 33-41.
- Long ML, Alison LA, Tejeiro R, Hendricks E, Giles S (2016) KIRAT: Law enforcement's prioritization tool for investigating indecent image offenders. American Psychological Association 22: 12-21.
- MacGinley M, Breckenridge J, Mowll J (2019) A scoping review of adult survivors’ experiences of shame following sexual abuse in childhood. Health & social care in the community 27(5): 1135-1146.
- Molnar BE, Buka SL, Kessler RC (2001) Child sexual abuse and subsequent psychopathology: results from the National Comorbidity Survey. American journal of public health 91(5): 753.
- Quayle E, Taylor M (2003) Model of problematic Internet use in people with a sexual interest in children. Cyber Psychology & Behavior 6(1): 93-106.
- SeigfriedSpellar KC, Ringenberg T, Chiu M, RogersMK (2017)Distinguishing contact child sex offenders vs. non-contact solicitors: Toward a digital forensics tool for automatic analysis of their chats with minors. Presented at the LEIU/IALEIA annual training conference in Bloomington, MN.
- Soldino V, CarbonellVayá EJ, SeigfriedSpellar KC (2019) Criminological differences between child pornography offenders arrested in Spain. Child Abuse & Neglect 98: 104-178.
- Strickland SM (2008) Female sex offenders: Exploring issues of personality, trauma, and cognitive distortions. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 23: 474-489.
- Von Weiler J, Haardt Becker A, Schulte S (2010) Care and treatment of child victims of child pornographic exploitation (CPE) in Germany. The Journal of Sexual Aggression 16(2): 211-222.