Children at Risk: Legal and Societal Perceptions of the Potential Threat that the Possession of Child Pornography Poses to Society
| Author | Suzanne Ost |
| Date | 01 September 2002 |
| Published date | 01 September 2002 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00227 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 29, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2002
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 436–60
Children at Risk: Legal and Societal Perceptions of the
Potential Threat that the Possession of Child Pornography
Poses to Society
Suzanne Ost*
This article examines legal and social discourses surrounding the
phenomenon of child pornography, considering the legal responses to
child pornography (particularly when an individual is found to be in
possession of such material), and the way in which such material, the
child, and the possessor of child pornography are socially constructed.
The article raises the question of whether there has been a moral
panic regarding child pornography and the possession of such
material, but also considers whether there are real reasons to consider
that the possession of child pornography should remain illegal.
Research studies which aim to establish the existence of a causal link
between possessing child pornography and the act of committing child
sexual abuse are examined, as is the argument that criminalizing the
possession of child pornography reduces the market for such material.
Finally, there is an analysis of the possible impact of social
constructions of the child as innocent.
INTRODUCTION
The current law surrounding child pornography would seem to be a direct
consequence both of the categorization of children as a vulnerable societal
group in need of state protection from certain threats to their physical and
psychological bodies, and of the perception of child pornography as material
which may be morally harmful to society. In social and legal discourses and
actual extra-linguistic institutional policies and practices, the phenomenon of
child pornography appears to be identified as harmful for a number of
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* Lancashire Law School, University of Central Lancashire, Preston,
Lancashire PR1 2HE, England
I am grateful to the anonymous referees for their insightful comments on an earlier draft
of this paper. Thanks are also due to Professor Michael Salter and Dr Julie Wallbank.
reasons. First, it is recognized that child pornography poses a clear danger to
children who are involved in the production of child pornography, whose
physical and sexual abuse is often the very subject matter of the material
created. Secondly, in recent years, a near consensus has emerged that
children are at placed at risk simply as a consequence of an individual being
in possession of child pornography. Finally, there appears to be an
acceptance of the possibility that the availability of child pornography is
harmful to society because it has a corrupting effect upon the general
morality.
1
This article analyses the social and legal response to the phenomenon of
child pornography with a particular focus upon the act of possessing such
material. Firstly, the statutory and case law surrounding child pornography is
elucidated in section one. Section two investigates the question of whether
the threat posed by child pornography may have been blown out of
proportion due to the existence of a ‘moral panic’ about this phenomenon in
our society.
2
The discussion in the first part of section three focuses upon the
question of whether there remain real grounds to suggest that the possession
of child pornography poses a threat to society because consumers/possessors
are – by the very fact of consumption/possession – actual sexual abusers of
children. This issue is addressed through a discussion and analysis of
existing literature and research which focuses upon both the occurrence of
and the perpetrators of this type of abuse. The latter part of section three
examines a further legitimating force behind the law, the argument that the
market for child pornography encourages those who create such material to
further abuse children in order to satisfy ‘consumer’ demand for harder core
and more explicit material. This section also includes a discussion of the
possibility that child pornography serves to promote the reification of
children as sexual objects.
Additionally, this article addresses constructions of the child and the
possessor of child pornography found in social, legal, and academic
discourses. Thus, in section four, it is submitted that whilst the construction
of the child as innocent in such discourses may promote society’s
compulsion to protect children from sexual abuse, children may actually
be placed at greater risk of sexual abuse as a result of the effects of this
construction. Furthermore, interpretations of the individual who possesses
child pornography as being an actual child abuser could become
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1 Whilst I acknowledge that there may be other reasons for the existence of the law
surrounding child pornography, this article is concerned with the justifications for the
law surrounding the possession of child pornography which seem to appear most
frequently in legal and social discourses.
2
By moral panic, I am arguing that there is a high level of concern in society about the
behaviour of those who possess child pornography, which in turn, causes the level of
hostility towards these individuals to rise as it becomes considered that they pose a
threat to society. For a discussion of the characteristics of moral panics which are
generally accepted amongst theorists, see K. Thompson, Moral Panics (1998) at 8–10.
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