Risk-takers who break the biggest taboo

By Suzanne Carbone and Lisa Pryor
October 1, 2004

It occupies the minds of everyone from politicians to parents to police officers: child pornography, now accessible in every home and terrifyingly hard to stop.

Nearly all the men arrested in the nationwide raids have been charged with viewing and possessing pornography, rather than producing it themselves. Experts say that for many, this is where the interest in porn starts and ends.

Professor Paul Mullen, from the University of Melbourne's department of forensic psychiatry, said users fell into three categories.

First, there were those who intentionally viewed it because their sexual interest was exclusively in children. "This group may have other forms of sexual activity but usually they manage that by fantasising about children."

Then there are those who have poor boundaries about what is an acceptable sexual object and derive sexual excitement from a range of material and individuals. The last group were "just benders of rules" driven by a perverse curiosity.

Of wider concern to many is that consumers of child pornography are also using the internet to seduce children.

A recent survey by NetAlert, a federally funded internet safety advisory body, found that pedophiles and porn caused by far the greatest anxiety among parents whose children regularly used the internet.

Based on interviews with parents, NetAlert suggested that nearly 20 per cent of children using the internet had been approached online by a stranger, and almost half had been exposed to inappropriate material.

It is a problem that has exploded in recent years, leaving the law playing catch up. This week's raids came a month after Federal Parliament passed tough new laws imposing a possible 10-year penalty on anyone looking at, sending or publishing child pornography.

The new federal laws complement state laws where maximum sentences for possessing child pornography range between one and five years. In NSW, where the maximum sentence is two years, some offenders have received good behaviour bonds rather than jail time. Professor Paul Wilson, chairman of criminology at Bond University, said people who viewed child pornography were risk-takers who lived life on the edge, given the taboo about the exploitation of children.

"Often these people are very isolated, not in relationships, and are sometimes in networks with others like themselves. However, there are certainly exceptions to this general pattern. They are people who are in relationships, are not in networks and to all appearances, have normal adult relationships."

The new laws also put people who use the internet to "groom" children and lure them for sex at risk of 15 years' jail.