Senate Report Cites Molesters’ ‘Networks’ : Panel Calls for Ban on Child Porn Ads

A Senate panel Friday urged Congress to ban the advertising of child pornography and child prostitution, to close the remaining loophole in a 1984 federal law prohibiting distribution of sexually explicit material involving children.

The Senate Governmental Affairs permanent investigations subcommittee, reporting on a two-year investigation, said that an advertising ban principally would affect underground newsletters and computer “networks” operated by pedophiles--people with abnormal sexual desires for pre-pubescent children.

Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.), the subcommittee chairman, said pedophiles can evade the current federal law against distribution of child pornography by “advertising” sexually oriented materials among themselves through newsletters and computer “bulletin boards.”

“There is no question about the link between child pornography and the sexual abuse of children,” Roth said in a statement accompanying the report. “Whenever you find child pornography, you’re almost certain to find an actual or potential child molester.”

Photos Shown to Children

Congress determined two years ago that prohibiting distribution of child pornography does not pose any serious First Amendment problem because such materials involve the sexual exploitation of children, the report noted. In addition, it said, pedophiles often use the photographs to convince children that there is nothing wrong with such conduct.

The study found that child pornography and child prostitution are closely linked. Pedophiles often advertise their willingness to exchange children as well as photographs, the report said.

Roth said the federal 1984 Child Protection Act has been “highly successful” in eliminating virtually all U.S. commercial production of child pornography, but the subcommittee found that Americans get a large quantity of this material from producers in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The subcommittee said the stereotype of the child molester “as a menacing deviate lurking in public places” is not an accurate picture of the threat most children face.

Rather, it said, police files show that child molesters and distributors of child pornography “come from virtually every type of background in society.” Convicted defendants in the last two years have included judges, police officers, physicians, lawyers, journalists, politicians, grandmothers, teachers and military officers, the report said.

‘Worst Form of Porn’

The Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, in its report on obscenity last month, called child pornography “the worst form of pornography.”

Unlike adult pornography, no link between child pornography and organized crime elements in the United States has been found, Roth said, principally because the market is not lucrative. Aside from European imports, most child pornography in this country “is produced by individual pedophiles for little or no profit,” he said.