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4 of 6: I received a message from a man arrested for viewing CP. I asked him to tell me about it.
This item is part of a special series of posts.
A six-part series on child pornography and artificial child pornography, aka drawings, stories, etc. This series covers:
1. The morality of child pornography (this post).
2. The morality of artificial child pornography.
3. To the best of our data, what effect do both of those have on offending?
4. A story from someone recently arrested for possession of child pornography: how he got into it, how it affected his life, what happened next.
5. Two former users of child pornography talk about how they stopped viewing it, and their feelings now that they're off of it.
6. My own experiences with artificial child pornography and the role it's played in my life.
This article is the fourth in the series.
Content warning: This post is about someone who was arrested for viewing child pornography. It may be troubling to read on multiple levels. Please be careful.
A little while ago, I received the following message on Quora:
> Hi, sorry that I’m messaging you instead of asking publicly, but I’m really sensitive about this.
> I’m a pedophile from [redacted] and I’m having a real bad time. Please excuse my broken english. I’ve pretty much always been a pedphile from the moment I started puberty. But I only used drawn porn until i reached my twenties. But now im 27 and I got arrested last december for downloading child pornography. The amount was so much that I might be going to jail.
> And it hurts because I’m no criminal and I’ll probably be beaten daily in prison. I’m a really sensitive guy and won’t be able to defend myself. I’m seriously thinking about suicide if I get a prison sentence.
> I’ve been for 6 months now trying to get what help there is for pedophiles out there to prove that Im no danger to children. I went to rehab, I’m seeing two therapists (which i can only see once per month) and I joined a group meant to help people with mental illnesses except I am the only person there that can’t talk about my issue unless I get ridiculed and my therapists agree. But that’s it. There is no more help. If you are a pedophile, you are just supposed to be ashamed of yourself and not exist.
> Just last week I went for an interview at the police station. And they asked me if I had been downloading or viewing any child porn since I was arrested. I had viewed drawn porn once and I just cant bring myself to lie to the police so I admitted of having viewed drawn porn. I didnt know that was illegal but apperantly it is and now my chances of going to jail are even more. No one told me it was illegal, how should I have known? I knew it wasnt illegal in most countries and to me there is no victim in drawn pictures. I am going to go to jail because of some fucking cartoons on the internet. I cant eat. I cant sleep. Im so scared and I cant admit this to my family because they’ll reject me. And if I go to jail everyone will know. I cry so much that I get exhausted. I just cant live like this anymore.
> I dont know what Im asking of you exactly but I just needed to talk to someone that gets my problems. What should I do? What can I do to not hate myself? How can I survive jail without killing myself? Why me? I haven’t done anything to anyone...
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The writer and I talked some more. His court-appointed lawyer isn't helping, and so he has no way to understand what's required of him or what the best path forward is. He doesn't know how likely prison is, and he hasn't been able to get the help of therapists to avoid viewing child pornography.
I asked him to write up his story, and he responded with a beautiful and more detailed writeup than I had imagined. My sense is he feels that even if his life is crashing down around him, at least he can turn this into something that will help others. There are very few stories out there of just how someone ends up viewing child pornography, and I think understanding that process is essential to preventing it. Ultimately, I think it's a deep and sad story about how someone can be so frustrated by their struggle for normalcy that they are driven to awful depths.
Above all, though, this story serves as a warning. Avoid child pornography. It doesn't end well.
* * *
To understand this, you should know: 4chan is a notoriously popular and under-moderated image board that has many dark corners; "lolicon" or "loli" and "shotacon" or "shota" is artwork depicting girls or boys respectively in sexual situations; "cp" stands for child pornography.
And now, his words.
* * *
I’m a paedophile. I’ve known for a very long time. I believe I was born this way. I’ve had these feelings ever since I started puberty at like 10 or 11 years old (I was an early bloomer). My first crush was at that age. She was in my class and my heart would race around her.
At that age there wasn’t really a problem yet. These feelings were normal to me since we were both the same age. But this never changed for me like it does for most people. This is still the age group that I’m attracted to today.
I discovered internet porn at 11 years old and I used to occasionally look up porn. Like most people do when entering puberty, I was just figuring out my sexuality. But even though most porn was interesting to me, it didn’t manage to excite me all that much. Sex seemed weird to me and I just couldn’t get off to most straight porn. There is just something about adult men that still today kills it for me. But solo women and lesbian videos worked for me and as you can probably guess the younger they were the better. At such a young age that wasn’t really a conscious choice I made; I just watched what felt right and that was as close to right as I could get using tube site porn videos.
I used to draw a lot as a kid. So naturally I would gravitate towards Anime. Mom had shown me a cool Anime called Inuyasha. It has a lot of action scenes which I used to imitate on paper. One of the protagonists is a 15 year old schoolgirl called Kagome. I was browsing google one day and found a nude picture of her. I had always thought she was pretty and now I found porn of her. I finally found something that felt right. I discovered Lolicon and since I was just a kid myself I didn’t really question this. At this time Kagome was still older than me and other Lolicon I’d look at were of kids my own age so it just felt natural.
Later on when I became a teenager, about 14 or 15, I started realizing that these feelings may not be entirely normal. Since the drawn pictures I was looking at were of kids younger than me, I started asking myself if I was a paedophile. But “no, come on, I’m no monster. I’ll stop this once I’m an adult.” I thought “These kids are still around the same age as me.”
However the thought that I might be what was and still is considered the worst that society has to offer weighed heavily on me. I became heavily depressed. I couldn’t reveal it to anyone unless I outed myself as a monster.
I once admitted to my dad that I and another boy had experimented with each other when I was 11 years old (something my therapist tells me is completely normal for kids at that age). He was furious. He yelled at me for what felt like an eternity and stayed mad at me for the rest of the day. I didn’t ever dare admit these feelings to him or what I was watching online. Mom had also left us so I had no one to talk to. I felt so alone with these feelings of guilt and shame.
It wasn’t long until I started abusing drugs and alcohol to escape. When I was 16 I was partying roughly every weekend and smoking weed daily, trying to get laid with girls to prove to myself that I was just a normal straight guy with a problem. I went through many bouts where I deleted the porn and said “never again!” But I just couldn’t ever maintain a boner through sex with girls. It didn’t matter how much I abstained from porn.
My depression grew with every year that passed and around my early 20’s I was still attracted to children. This is the part of my life that I’m least proud of, and I’m sure many who read this will be disgusted with me. But if it prevents this from happening to anyone else it will have been worth sharing.
I was browsing 4chan one night and stumbled on this Shotacon thread. (Shotacon is essentially drawn porn where the focus is on boys.) I wish every day that I had never found that thread because it would take me down a rabbit hole that I would otherwise never have discovered. Coupled with the fact that I was a substance abuser at the time that made my judgement even worse.
Someone on the thread started posting pictures of real boys. Please don’t let this make you think that drawn porn is then somehow a “gateway drug” to the real deal. Because it isn’t. For many drawn porn is their only way to deal with these feelings. Banning drawn material only increases the likelihood of a real child getting abused!
Many on the thread were reporting the guy, but it took a while for the mods to respond. So before he was banned, he had already explained to two others how to download real cp.
I won’t go into details for obvious reasons but at that moment I had read instructions on how to download real cp.
It would take me a week to make up my mind on whether I would do it or not. After another failed sexless weekend, I was frustrated enough to try. I would only take a look... out of curiosity...
I downloaded the smallest video clip I could find. It was literally less than 10 seconds long and I didn’t even finish watching it. I freaked out too much. I immediately deleted it and deep cleaned my computer. I even quit drawn porn for the millionth time. I was sure I was now on some watchlist somewhere and the police would come knocking on my door any day now. But nothing happened.
I kept trying to change myself over the years and it wouldn’t be until two years later that I tried to download real cp again. This time I downloaded more than before, maybe like 5 videos. Then I stopped again. And again nothing happened.
I repeated this pattern through most of my early 20’s until at around 25, I think, I just completely lost control. I was day drinking and high all day every day. I hadn’t held a job for months due to my depression. At this point I was just downloading non stop. I remember looking at a portable hard disk drive where I stored the porn and thinking to myself “this can ruin your life...”
One night I just snapped. I needed help, but I didn’t know what to do. I certainly couldn’t tell my friends or family. I knew well what they thought of paedophiles. A therapist maybe? But I had heard that they have to report to the police if their client is planning to or is currently abusing a child. I had never abused a child nor would I ever. I had always been adamant about suicide before it would come to that. I didn’t know whether downloading cp was also something they had to report, but I had to do something! So I saw a therapist that specialized in porn addiction.
I may very well have a porn addiction but I doubt that I’m a paedophile because of that addiction. I didn’t really start using porn that frequently until my 20’s and I’ve had these feelings for way longer.
Anyway, I started seeing the therapist without admitting to being a paedophile. But he suspected it and he tried to get it out of me. Still, I just couldn’t admit to it out of fear. I didn’t want to be put on a registry and go to prison where after I’d be branded as a predator or a potential rapist.
It turns out other than following those 4chan instructions, not talking to that therapist right then and there was the biggest mistake of my life so far. I write this in hindsight of course so I try not to blame myself too harshly since I just didn’t know any better. But my life would be far less shitty right now if I had just known that talking to that therapist about my problem would not have involved the police.
If you are viewing real cp or live in a country where drawn cp is illegal... stop now! Seek help before you ruin your life.
I could go on a whole another tangent on how there needs to be more information out there for people struggling with paedophilia but I’ll leave that to Leonard.
The aftermath:
One night last December I had drunk and smoked myself to sleep like I had many nights in a row watching some video game video on YouTube. Just a normal typical night. I was still downloading cp and I had stopped seeing the therapist. I had gotten a job as a security guard just 3 months prior.
Things were looking pretty good actually. I was planning on dating a co worker and having another go at quitting the cp and the drugs. She was different from other girls I had dated before. She was a cute nerd basically and I was really hoping she’d be the one to save me. I really, really liked her.
I didn’t have a shift until 4 pm so I had fallen asleep early in the morning. I woke up to a knock on my door at 3 pm. I thought it might be my grandmother, she had wanted to visit me. I open my door and immediately get a paper pushed in my face. “We have a search warrant and an arrest order on you under the suspicion of downloading pornographic content concerning children.”
It didn't take anything more than that. I knew then that everything I'd been dreading but pretending I was safe from had finally happened.
* * *
Leonard here again.
It won't surprise readers of this blog that the story above breaks my heart. I can imagine other replies. I can imagine someone saying that this person deserved no sympathy. Maybe that he was a ticking time bomb. I don't believe that. It also just... I feel like it's fundamental human empathy not to condemn someone, not at that stage of their life, for this.
But it is what it is.
The author above stayed in touch with me for a while. I know that his trial was coming up, although he didn't know exactly when it would be, and his lawyer seemed to be completely uninterested in helping him out. I never heard what happened next; it's been a few months since he wrote to me.
I don't know what happened. He was writing to me from a separate e-mail address; perhaps he decided to try to put this side of his life behind him, and simply stopped using that e-mail. On the other hand, perhaps he was convicted and is now spending many years in prison. I just don't know.
Readers might wonder if I'm trying to make a point here. I suppose I am; I've already said that I think the laws are too harsh for this kind of thing, for someone who has never committed a hands-on offense. But the debate isn't my goal. My goal is to share a story. To people who ask, "how can anyone possibly end up watching child pornography?," well, this is one way. It's not the only way, not at all. But it's one.
I hope it adds to the discussion. I hope that my friend's wish to help other people out can be realized, at least a little bit, through this post.
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