Task Force to Target Hard-Core Pornography

Asserting that Los Angeles has become “the smut capital of the United States,” federal and local authorities on Friday announced the creation of an interagency task force to step up prosecutions of producers and distributors of hard-core pornography.

The task force, designed to focus tough federal obscenity laws against the burgeoning hard-core film industry, represents the first time Southern California law enforcement has launched a coordinated attack against pornography, U.S. Atty. Robert C. Bonner said.

Federal prosecutors also announced the first Los Angeles indictment charging an alleged obscenity distributor with violation of federal racketeering laws--enabling prosecutors to seek forfeiture of the distributor’s residence, company stock, bank account and office equipment.

“Over the last few years, distributors of obscenity and child pornography have expanded rapidly, utilizing new technologies and reaching new audiences,” Bonner said at a news conference with Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner and representatives of eight state and federal law enforcement agencies that will make up the task force.

“The hard-core pornography being distributed today is truly degrading, vile and repulsive,” Bonner said.

Bonner emphasized that the task force will target only those film and video products considered “clearly obscene,” but declined to specify how deep into the industry that legal definition might reach.

Local authorities have moved in recent years to prosecute producers of pornographic films under state pandering statutes, but Los Angeles Police Department Capt. Jim Docherty said convictions under state law have brought little more than “a light fine.”

A 1986 amendment to the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) permits use of racketeering laws and their potential 20-year penalties in obscenity cases, Bonner said. New federal sentencing guidelines also specify minimum sentences of 8 to 14 months for obscenity convictions, he said.

Use of the RICO statute also enables prosecutors to confiscate assets of convicted pornographers much as drug dealers’ assets are forfeited under other federal laws.

The Adult Video Assn., a coalition of 100 producers and distributors of adult films and videos, filed suit in Los Angeles against the Justice Department late last year, challenging use of the stricter federal penalties in obscenity cases. They argued that such enforcement efforts are unconstitutional because they discourage production and sale of even mainstream adult films.

John Weston, a spokesman for the association, said the real target of the stepped-up enforcement efforts remains unclear.

“To the extent that the statement really means what it says, that only fringe materials involving child pornography or bestiality or other sorts of . . . materials, then there’s no particular concern because those are not materials which are within the mainstream and the distribution of AVA members,” Weston said.

“But historically, we well know that when the Meese Commission (appointed by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III to study pornography) made reference in its self-justification to the kinds of fringe materials referenced by Mr. Bonner, it was simply a smoke screen to permit declaration of open season on the overwhelming preponderance of mainstream sexually oriented materials, principally videotapes,” he said.

Only hours after announcement of the task force, a federal grand jury indictment was unsealed charging two Van Nuys video companies and the companies’ top officials with violation of federal racketeering, obscenity and child pornography laws--the latter charge because of the alleged distribution of videotapes featuring pornographic film star Traci Lords when she was a minor.

The indictment names X-Citement Video Inc. and R. G. Sales Co., along with the companies’ owner, Rubin Gottesman, 55, of Woodland Hills, and shipping manager, Steven Orenstein, 25, of Los Angeles.