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Most people in society seem to think that all pedophiles are child molesters. The fundamental message of Virtuous Pedophiles (and an increasing number of other pedophiles online) is that this is not true. There are a great many people who feel a sexual attraction to children who never act on it."Acting on it" in the most obvious sense is acting sexually with a child who is right there, physically present, and aware of what's happening. Let's call it "hands-on abuse".
Another way of acting on it is to view CP. If email to Virtuous Pedophiles is any indication, this is much more common than hands-on abuse. I have tried in a long series of posts (search for the "CP" tag) to analyze CP from many different angles.
Public reaction is that CP viewing is just as bad as hands-on abuse. If some concede it is not literally as bad, it is in any case over the line in the arena of unforgivable, despicable crimes calling for long prison sentences.
In part, this is understandable. In order to have something to film, child pornographers must abuse a child. While some hands-on abuse might be somewhat understandable as an impulsive decision made in a given moment that is deeply regretted later, this can't be true of CP makers. They must decide, in a not at all impulsive fashion, to post these images for others to see.
Another connection is people who buy this material. If CP makers are making it to earn money, then blame lies on those who buy it, just as we accept that those who wear fur or eat meat are responsible for whatever cruelties are needed to produce fur and meat.
However, I suggest that in today's world, where a veritable flood of images and videos is available for free on any subject imaginable, there is a separate class of CP viewers which is quite different from those who make, distribute, or buy.
Why they deserve sympathy:
Everyone has sexual attractions. Most people in society can find a willing adult partner to have satisfying sex with. It is typically considered part of the good life. Many of us want a long-term partner for a relationship that must contain sex as one of its elements. Others are satisfied with a series of briefer sexual encounters. If any young person laments that they see no prospect of a sex life, we are sympathetic — it is reasonable for them to feel distressed about that. That is exactly the position that exclusive pedophiles (those with no attraction to adults) are in. They have an attraction they did not choose and cannot change. If you believe that the vast majority of pedophiles solve this problem by molesting children, you will not be sympathetic, of course. But if you accept the reality that a great many do NOT ever molest a child, you should feel the same sympathy for that group.
People who are attracted to adults who don't have any prospect of a real "hands-on" sex life achieve partial fulfillment vicariously. Both sexes get the hots for attractive people in films. Beyond that, women tend towards romance novels, while men tend towards plain old pornography. The men see people doing the sexual things they would like to do, are aroused, and masturbate as they imagine themselves in the same situation.
Pedophiles enjoy innocent videos. This includes girls doing gymnastics or dancing or swimming, child modeling sites, and innocent family videos. Some also look at CP. How should we think about such men? One way is that they are part of the entire CP industry and deserve the same condemnation as hands-on molesters. This is too simplistic.
A crucial question as we consider the morality of CP viewers is how they think about it. There is a continuum. A few might enjoy watching children who are visibly suffering. A few others might think it is good that this apparently happy child is actually feeling distressed. Others might not actively want the child to suffer, but are willing to have the child pay that price so they can enjoy what they are watching. Others might feel strongly that they wish such material was never made, but also figure that what's done is done and they might as well enjoy the resulting video.
But at the end of the continuum is another group, and I have reason to think it is a large group. They feel terrible about the idea of getting enjoyment out of video of a child's suffering, and they are horrified at the idea — except in those moments when lust is powerful and they feel the desperate need for some sort of sexual fulfillment. As soon as orgasm has taken the edge off that desire, they feel awful about themselves. Some report self-loathing that makes them feel actively suicidal. There is also a large group that feels terrible masturbating to innocent videos of children. All these pedophiles have a strong sense of morality. I tried to paint a sympathetic sketch of , in "Compassion For CP Viewers".
Compare the other ways that men sometimes act when sexual desire is strong. We have too much plain, indisputable rape. Society rightly treats this as a very serious crime. But we also have many lesser insults, such as , groping, wolf whistles, public and obvious leering, or sexually suggestive remarks in the workplace. They are rarely treated as crimes at all, but simply nuisances. "Me too" is rightly trying to raise awareness of how damaging they can be and make them less common. But few people are seriously proposing years in prison as an appropriate penalty.
In contrast, no child is aware of a given act of CP viewing. There is no direct harm. Yet that viewing is considered a serious crime, worthy of years in prison and a lifetime on the sex offender registry. This is unjust.
But criminal penalties aside, how should we think of those men who do view CP sometimes, who feel bad that it was ever made? They despise themselves for getting sexual satisfaction from a child's suffering. They seem to have the same moral standards as the rest of us, though trouble living up to those standards. Still, they never engage in hands-on abuse. Can't we come up with some genuine sympathy for these men?
I hope we can, and start the process of reducing penalties for simple CP possession.
There is the other class — those who make and distribute CP, who pay for it, or who are happy that it was made. We can rightly continue to despise them. But they are quite distinct from the others who deserve our sympathy.
9/17/2019
tags: cp
From a CP download trace to a crime — all the ways to go astray
Law enforcement keeps a library of the digital signatures of known CP. Their primary way of detecting CP viewing is by seeing digital signatures of such files going to a particular person. Then they get a warrant based on that information, seize the person's electronic devices and look for copies of the material on the person's devices.
Here I consider the many ways that things can go wrong in that process.
Law enforcement does not get a person's name associated with those files, they get an IP address. People who use the same WiFi system share an IP address. When police raid a home, they typically take all the electronics, as they don't know which family member they are looking for. This includes female relatives, who are statistically less likely to be looking at CP. But is the family enough? The owner might have given WiFi access to neighbors who live close by as a cost-saving measure. If the network is not password-protected, it could be used by any neighbor or someone passing on the street. It could be used by a house guest who was given the password. It could be used by that same house guest months or years later, if they park nearby long enough to download their illegal material.
When police search a home for drugs or weapons, the search is concluded in a matter of hours. Anything that has not been taken is available for the family to use. This is not true of electronic devices seized in CP investigations. They are often not returned for months or years, even if they have no illegal material on them. The devices may contain confidential, personal material that is not illegal but embarrassing. They certainly contain vital information a typical person in today's world needs to navigate life. Most people who do not expect to get their electronics back for months will be obliged to buy replacements, making the old one if returned next to useless.
There is also a grave stigma attached to a CP possession investigation, as there is to anything that suggests pedophilia. Drug possession has nowhere near the same stigma, especially in neighborhoods and social circles where it is common. Along with the risk of targeting too many people or the wrong people, the CP investigation will attach a serious stigma to them and other targeted people it decides not to prosecute.
The law has been framed so that any knowing possession of CP is a crime. But the intention is to catch people who look at the CP for purposes of sexual arousal. Since that is hard to prove, possession stands in for the actual wrongdoing. And yet how certain are we that possession really does show evidence of the crime that society intends to punish?
What of the journalist who seeks to write a story about CP? What of the scientist who wants to study it? What about someone who has been abused and downloads CP and perhaps just cries while watching it as part of their attempt to come to terms with what happened to them? What of a child who learns about sex and wants to know if people their age ever do engage in sexual activity and if so what it's like? This might be very common in "children" of 14 or 15. What of someone who is just attracted to things that are forbidden? It could well be that none of these people is looking at this material with any intention or actuality of sexual arousal. Does society really intend to slam them with the harsh penalties of CP possession?
Police can hopefully sort out some of these cases after the fact — though journalists and scientists live in genuine fear of conviction even if the evidence suggests they were not using the material for arousal purposes. But in the mean time, the police have seized the electronics of clearly innocent people and deprived them of their use, and cast stigma on an entire family.
All of those downsides need to be weighed against the upside. What are CP possession convictions actually accomplishing? In today's world, money hardly ever changes hands. There is no market that fuels further child sex abuse in the service of making a profit. No child is aware of any given act of viewing or possession. There is no evidence that looking at such material leads a person to commit hands-on abuse, and [some evidence](http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/1961to1999/1999-effects-of-pornography.html) that it prevents it.
It's worth reflecting on why the law requires police to get a warrant before searching premises. From the police perspective, the best way to find wrongdoing is to search everyone's home. If resources don't allow that, next best is to conduct a search on the slightest whiff of suspicion. This is then subject to the abuse that they could suspect people just because they don't like them. People in general like their privacy and want to be left alone, free of intrusive searches. This is why the US has a constitutional amendment barring searches without a warrant. The police need to show probable cause that evidence of a particular crime will be found in a particular place at a particular time. As argued above, CP possession searches are especially intrusive.
The UK's 1999 [Operation Ore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ore) illustrates many of these factors in operation. It resulted in "4,283 homes searched, 3,744 arrests, 1,848 charged, 1,451 convictions, 493 cautioned and 140 children removed from suspected dangerous situations and an estimated 33 suicides." There were 4,283 serious disruptions to privacy, with 1,451 convictions — two thirds were false alarms. The 33 suicides are the tip of an iceberg of enormous distress that only rarely led to suicide. Removing children from dangerous situations is a laudable goal, but the wording is telling. Would not the police report proudly on the count of children who were not just in "suspected dangerous situations" but actually being abused if that was proven? Might that silence suggest the number was close to zero? And the cost to removing a child from a home is huge to the child. It's a good guess (see the Westermarck Effect) that almost none of the CP downloaders were an actual threat to their own children. On balance, Operation Ore caused far more distress than it alleviated or deterred.
But my main point about Operation Ore is that something under 3% of the searched homes turned up children at risk. If you searched 4,283 randomly chosen homes, you would find 3% with children suffering actual physical or emotional abuse or child neglect. But that would be precisely the sort of search that civilized societies have deemed unjust and wrong and that has led them to require search warrants.
Viewed from a rational perspective, tracking down CP possession crimes is simply and clearly not worth it.
What really drives these laws is a gut-level hatred of the very idea of adult sexual attraction to children. This hatred supports a willingness to punish many innocent people as the price of nailing some guilty ones — and guilty of what? This is totally out of line with civil liberties and a free society, in which the law does not interfere with people's private behavior if it is not hurting anyone else.
Rectifying the injustice requires broader understanding of the basic facts: Pedophiles have a sexual attraction they did not choose and cannot change. Most mean no harm. A great many never act on that attraction with a child. Faced with no prospect of any sexual satisfaction in life, some give in to a temptation to look at past examples of child sexual abuse, though such looking does not directly harm anyone. This is morally questionable and no doubt disgusting to most people. But it is not a serious crime worthy of harsh criminal penalties. It is not worth allocation of scarce police resources and the disruption of the lives of innocent people.
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