Expanded Child Pornography Law Takes Effect

Congress cracked down on child pornographers in a new law that took effect Tuesday, making it illegal to appear to depict children in sexual situations, whether in films, computer images or photographs, even if no children are actually involved.

Previously, depictions of minors produced by computers without actually involving children had been outside the scope of federal law. The new law expands the definition of child pornography to include any image--photograph, video or computer-generated--that depicts or appears to depict a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

Computers can be used to alter photographs, films and videos to produce sexually explicit materials virtually indistinguishable from unretouched photographs. This has hampered prosecutors because it can be impossible to identify individuals or to prove that the materials were produced using children.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) said the law is designed to protect children from sexual exploitation and pedophiles.

“While federal law has failed to keep pace with technology, the purveyors of child pornography have been right on line with it,” Hatch said.

Hatch said the Judiciary Committee determined that computer-generated pornography posed many of the same dangers to children as did pornography made from unretouched photographs in that it could be used to seduce children or to encourage a pedophile to prey on them.

The American Civil Liberties Union decried the law as unconstitutional and said it has major ramifications for artists and the film industry.

The new law sets mandatory prison sentences of 15 years for production of child pornography, five years for possession and life in prison for repeat offenders convicted of sexual abuse of a minor.

The law is part of a broad spending bill President Clinton signed late Monday.