Paul and Shirley Eberle wrote The Politics of Child Abuse, a book that accuses mothers, mental health professionals, and prosecutors of feeding children stories about sexual abuse. Since the book was published by Lyle Stuart in l986, the Eberles have been cited as experts in sexual abuse trials … What is startling about the Eberles' reputation as ground-breaking experts in the field is that their dubious credentials have not been widely challenged … Their publication, Finger, depicted scenes of bondage, S & M, and sexual activities involving urination and defecation. A young girl portrayed with a wide smile on her face sits on top of a man whose penis is inside of her; a woman has oral sex with a young boy in a drawing entitled ‘Memories of My Boyhood’.

Ms. Magazine, December 1988 

While the size and scope of pedophile rings have grown rapidly in recent years, America, as it turns out, has long been a nation whose laws were friendly to purveyors of child pornography. It was just twenty-five years ago, in 1978, that the very first federal statute on child pornography was passed into law. While forbidding production and sale, the statute placed no restrictions at all on the possession or trade of such materials. New laws enacted in 1984 forbid the trade of child pornography regardless of whether any money changed hands, though possession remained legal. In fact, as recently as 1990, private possession of child pornography was legal in 44 of the 50 states, despite the inescapable fact that all such materials were, by necessity, illegally produced and/or illegally obtained. 

Technology has for some time now played a key role in greatly expanding the availability of child pornography. The Polaroid camera, for example, eliminated the need for child pornographers to have access to complicit photo labs. Home video cameras did likewise for moving images. Personal computers, digital cameras, web cams, scanners, and - most notably - the Internet, have vastly expanded the reach of child pornography networks. In the age of the Internet, child pornography is a booming business. The Los Angeles Times noted in December 1999 that: “the number of investigations for Internet-related child pornography is soaring. The FBI launched 1,125 such inquiries this year, more than twice as many as last year.” 

In the wake of this rising tide, the U.S. 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling on December 17, 1999 that struck a serious blow to the prosecution of child pornography cases. As the Times reported, the decision stipulated, “the government cannot prohibit computer-generated sexual images that only appear to be pictures of children.” A later report noted that appeals court judge Donald Molloy had stated that the First Amendment bars the government from criminalizing the generation of “images of fictitious children engaged in imaginary but explicit sexual conduct.” As a result of the court’s decision, prosecutors were thereafter “barred from bringing virtual-child pornography cases in California and the eight other Western states within the jurisdiction of the U.S. 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals.” 

As critics have noted, graphics technology now available to the general public is so sophisticated that it is virtually impossible to determine if an image has been digitally altered, and therefore if any actual children were involved in the generation of the image. U.S. Justice Department lawyers argued that very point, noting that the “government may find it impossible in many cases to prove that a pornographic image is of a real child.” Any good defense attorney, in other words, could raise reasonable doubt as to the authenticity of an image. It could in fact be argued that all such computer images “only appear to be pictures of children.” Computer images are not in fact photos, but are digital computer files that display as a facsimile of the original photo. A sound legal argument could be made that all digitally transferred and displayed child pornography is therefore legal, as it does not represent 'real children.' 

That should come as great news to the international child pornography networks, given that the United States is their number-one market. According to investigative author Gordon Thomas, the majority of child pornography produced worldwide is targeted at the U.S., where by the early 1990s it was already a $3 billion a year business, and growing. Thomas claims that - according to law enforcement figures - over 22 million copies of child pornography videos were sold or rented in the U.S. in 1991. He also writes that much of that pornographic material is produced domestically, where it is “part of the largest segment of movie making in the United States.” Jan Hollingsworth concurs with Thomas’ figures, describing child pornography as a “three-billion-dollar - per year - U.S. industry that grossed twice that worldwide. It [is] bigger than Disney. Much bigger.” Speaking of Disney, Thomas notes that child porn videos are frequently trafficked internationally by deceptively packaging them as Disney videos. 

Strangely enough, the first man to benefit from the 9^th Circuit Court decision was Patrick J. Naughton. You may remember him as the executive with the Walt Disney Co. who ran one of the company's kid-friendly web sites. Naughton was arrested and later tried on child pornography charges. He was convicted on December 16, just one day before the decision was handed down in the case before the circuit court. Within hours of the appeals court ruling, Naughton was released by federal prosecutors on $100,000 bail. Despite the fact that he was, as the Times acknowledged, convicted of “possessing pictures of actual children,” a decision was made to release him “until the impact of the court's ruling can be sorted out” – illustrating the significant undermining of existing law that could result from the circuit court ruling. 

On January 22, 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of the case. In April 2002, the high court rendered its decision, upholding the ruling of the lower court. By doing so, the highest court in the land extended the ban on prosecutions of “virtual-child pornography” to all fifty states. As the L.A. Times reported on April 17, 2002, the “ruling creates an immunity for a new generation of ‘virtual’ pornographers who rely entirely on computer images.” The Times noted that it was “an unexpected move” for the conservative court, describing the decision as “a surprisingly strong defense of the right to free speech.” The decision was, alas, not all that surprising, given that the Supreme Court has demonstrated in the past - most notably during the 2000 election debacle - its willingness to toss aside its alleged principles when the need arises. Noted by the Times once again was the concern among prosecutors that they will “have a hard time proving that children portrayed on an Internet sex site, for example, are real children.” The decision handed down by the Supreme Court, notably, “does not answer that concern.” 

Closely associated with child pornography is, of necessity, child abuse. It should be self-evident that all kids used in child pornography are abused children, their abuse recorded on film and tape for the depraved enjoyment of other child abusers. As Anne Houston, the director of the organization Childline Scotland, has said: “Every image of child abuse on the internet is a crime scene.” 

Also closely associated with child pornography is the always-controversial issue of 'missing children.' There is considerable debate as to whether there is a problem in this country with missing children. Some claim that 200,000 or more children disappear without a trace every year. Others steadfastly maintain that numbers such as those are grossly inflated, and that abduction of children by strangers with bad intent is actually quite rare. The problem is that nobody really knows for sure, since the FBI - America's compiler of crime statistics – does not bother to keep track. As the Los Angeles Times reported in July 2002, there is a “lack of knowledge about the prevalence of a crime that historically has not been included in the federal government’s Uniform Crime Report. Local agencies have only sporadically kept data.”  Many believe that the numbers are not compiled because the FBI does not want to know – or more accurately, the FBI does not want the American people to know, how many children disappear every year. 

What is known though is that reports of child abuse have skyrocketed. Between 1963 and 1988, reported cases of child abuse rose from 150,000 to 2,000,000 per year, a 1300% increase in just a quarter-century. Child abuse may in fact be the most prevalent crime in American society – and possibly the most significant as well, given that it provides the breeding ground for so much of the more visible crime plaguing Western culture. As Thomas reports: “over 90 percent of the teenage prison population are now victims of child abuse.” And that population is growing rapidly. In the wake of that rising tide, the Los Angeles Times reported in March 2001 that: “President Bush’s budget will trim a program aimed at preventing child abuse and cut some child care spending … A child abuse prevention program will see an 18% cut.” 

Author and e-zine editor Robert Sterling has written of what he refers to as “a pattern of trivialization of child molestation evidence” that seems to characterize high-profile media stories. He points out, for instance, that in the highly publicized Woody Allen and Mia Farrow child custody case, all the attention was focused on Allen’s illicit romance with Soon-yi Previn. Almost entirely ignored in the media coverage was the fact that Allen was also charged with molesting his own seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan. While the press dismissed those allegations as unfounded and unworthy of reporting, Sterling notes that, “Connecticut state authorities, based on the testimony of Dylan and others, have stated that they do believe Woody did molest her, but decided not to prosecute anyway,” allegedly to spare the child any further trauma. 

Sterling also takes note of the “case of the Menendez brothers, who, after admitting to murdering their parents, painfully revealed that they were ruthlessly abused and molested by them over the years.” Their claims were never fully investigated and the boys were “viciously demonized for trying to escape the murder charges and accused of making up their abuse,” though there was in fact evidence of that abuse. Also referenced by Sterling is the kid-gloves treatment afforded Michael Jackson when he was charged with molestation: “even though the accusations against him are widely believed to be true, [they] are merely passed off with a laugh among other smirking monologue jokes on Jay Leno.” And of course, though not mentioned by Sterling, sister LaToya was ridiculed by the media when she came forward with stories about the sexual abuse suffered by the Jackson kids at the hands of their father. Other cases discussed in the Sterling piece include the over-hyped ‘au-pair’ trial, during which evidence of prior abuse of the child by his parents was consistently ignored, and the Susan Smith case, in which the media refused to consider whether Smith’s own severe childhood abuse could have been a factor in the murder of her children, despite the fact that her father admitted to the chronic abuse. 

Coupled with the fact that the press have consistently downplayed the occurrence of child molestation is the equally disturbing fact that that very same media have actively promoted the sexualization of children – a trend that has been greatly accelerated in recent years, and which has served to, to some degree, legitimize pedophilia. Taking note of the proliferation of young teen - and even pre-teen - sex symbols, Tom Junod wrote in Esquire (February 2001) that: “the entire culture is besotted with the erotic promise of teenage girls … The lure of jailbait now supplies the erotic energy to a popular culture desperate for what’s new, what’s young, what’s alive.” The Junod article is, strangely enough, a profile of Greg Dark, one-half of the former ‘Dark Brothers’ – notorious purveyors of dark-themed, occult-tinged porno films. Dark is rather noteworthy for having openly produced and peddled child pornography, in that many of his films featured a very young Traci Lords, who began working with the Dark Brothers at the age of thirteen. 

But Dark has now put those days long behind him. He is now working comfortably in the mainstream. And he is no longer marketing teen sexuality. No, now he is creating music videos … for Britney Spears, Mandy Moore and the pre-teen Leslie Carter (sister of Aaron Carter and “Back Street Boy” Nick Carter). That is, according to Dark, a completely different line of work.

It is not just the media that has been actively promoting the sexualization of children; certain segments of academia have been busily doing so as well. On April 19, 2002, the Washington Times carried a report detailing a “movement within academia to promote ‘free sexual expression of children.’” This “movement to legitimize sex between adults and children is ‘gathering steam,’ warns Stephanie Dallam, researcher for the Leadership Council for Mental Health, Justice and the Media in Philadelphia, an organization that deals with prevention and treatment of child abuse. ‘Some people view children as the next sexual frontier,’ Ms. Dallam says.” Referenced in the Times article