Federal Study of Sex Magazines Assailed : Senators Find Waste in $734,371 Analysis of Portrayal of Children

Members of a Senate subcommittee Tuesday criticized the Justice Department’s funding of a $734,371 study of the portrayal of children in photographs and cartoons in Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler magazines.

“I have read these magazines myself,” Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on juvenile justice, said. “We’ve had them at these hearings. I have never seen a picture of a crime being committed on a child.

“Once you have a detailed analysis, what good does that do you? It gives you a body of information . . . that stops short of the only question involved: Does this material cause child molestation? It doesn’t seem to me it warrants the expenditure of three-quarters of a million dollars.”

Judith Reisman, who is conducting the study, said it will not attempt to draw conclusions about whether such photographs and cartoons lead to child molesting. Instead, she said, the project might provide the basis for future research.

$200,000 to Redesign

Specter also criticized the Justice Department for spending nearly $200,000 to redesign the project after questions were raised about it during congressional hearings.

Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) called the grant “off the wall” and a “waste of government funding,” especially when the federal government is spending only $1 million to study teen-age suicides.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who did not attend the hearing, asked the Justice Department in a letter this week why the money was allotted for the project at a time of severe budget cutting.

The department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, headed by Alfred S. Regnery, is financing the current study under a non-competitive award to the American University School of Education, which hired Reisman.

Asked for Examples

Specter asked Reisman for examples of cartoons or pictures that depicted crimes against children, and she handed him several, including one cartoon of persons at a beach.

“A man is under water with his hands” on a girl, Reisman said.

“You’re seeing a different picture than I am,” Specter said. “I see a man moving toward her. How does that show how a man may molest a child?”

Metzenbaum, noting that Reisman is seeking examples of children depicted sexually with fairy tale characters, asked Regnery: “How does that fit in?”

Regnery replied: “I assume it would affect the mind of the adult.”

Metzenbaum said: “It’s difficult to understand how an adult gets turned on by Dorothy or the Wizard of Oz or Snow White.”

The study is supposed to focus on sexual depiction of children with such imaginary characters as those Metzenbaum mentioned; on children involved sexually with “influential adults” like government officials, policemen, doctors and teachers; and on the “use of paraphernalia, including teddy bears, hair bows, bobby sox and dolls.”