Following the Garda raids on people suspected of buying child pornography from the Internet, Max Taylor details the various types of offenders, and analyses the task facing the authorities in identifying the abused children
The Garda Operation Amethyst has confirmed what many of us involved in this area have long suspected - that Ireland is no different from other European countries in having large numbers of people involved in collecting child pornography from the Internet.
This operation seems to be directed at people who purchased child pornography through the Internet, and it remains to be seen if any of those involved have themselves been producing child pornography, or been involved in sexual assaults against children.
Given the difficulties people who are not engaged in this area would have in identifying the Internet source behind this operation, it is likely those apprehended have also been involved in trading child pornography through the Internet as well as purchasing it.
Clearly, the number raided underestimates the number of Irish people involved in collecting child pornography through the Internet.
Understanding collectors of child pornography is, at one level, simple - adults with a sexual interest in children meet their needs through fantasy around pornographic photographs. The evidence suggests there are different kinds of offenders.Some are involved in contact offences (through the production of material and/or through sexual assaults); others seem not to be, and satisfy their sexual needs through using photographs.
What we also know, however, is that engagement with child pornography can for some people facilitate the development of contact offending.
Thus, a prudent approach to this problem suggests that as a first step it is necessary to exclude contact offending by investigating people found in possession of child pornography, especially if they have ready access to children.
Such expression of a sexual interest also means that for the future these people must be seen as being at relatively high risk of committing a contact offence. We know from evidence of the treatment of offenders that child sex offenders are notoriously difficult to manage, and treatment success rates vary.
Whether such offenders commit contact offences or not, it cannot be stressed strongly enough that the child photographed in child pornography is a real child, who at some time has been subjected to a serious sexual assault, which has been photographed to aid sexual arousal for other people.
High-profile police actions directed at collectors of child pornography may aspire to reduce the availability of it, a worthwhile objective, although given the nature of the Internet, unlikely to be achieved. They can also serve as deterrents for other collectors.
But if the police lack specialist knowledge to identify the children in the photographs, then important opportunities may be missed to stop ongoing abuse.
There have been dramatic successes where children have been identified through photographs, and I am very proud to be associated with the COPINE Project in UCC, which has played a part in a number of such investigations.
However, despite enormous resources devoted to Internet child pornography, very few children are ever identified. It is impossible to get accurate data on this, but an estimate, based on material available to the COPINE Project, would indicate around 60 or more children were identified over the last four to five years, primarily in Europe and the US.
Over that same period, several hundred new children have appeared in pornographic material known to the COPINE Project.
It is a concern that so few children are identified. We have no idea if any Irish children appear on the Internet. On the other hand, the number of children appearing in child pornographic material on the Internet is relatively low. No one can estimate the number of children sexually abused over the past four or five years, but it includes many thousands of children, some of whom are undoubtedly in Ireland. What we see on the Internet is the tip of an iceberg.
This presents an enormous challenge to the authorities. Internet pornography is visible evidence of sexual abuse. This is a depressing area in which to work, but a positive and unique feature of child pornography on the Internet is that there may be evidence available from a photograph or from Internet data to aid identification of the child or an offender, either directly or through the identification data that is associated with communicating on the Internet.
Therein lie challenges for law enforcement and child protection agencies and governments. Relatively few children are ever identified, so should we place more resources into this area?
After all, a child pornographic picture is a picture of a sexual assault in progress and that photograph has evidential value as a picture of a crime scene. Or, should attention be directed towards disrupting the collection and trading of child pornography? Where should the balance lie?
A commonsense approach suggests there should be two agendas. The primary one must relate to the protection of children where identification is possible. Operation Amethyst has demonstrated that there are a number of Irish people with a sufficient sexual interest in children to collect child pornography. We need to address this problem by putting more resources into this, both in research and analysis (such as that for example conducted by the COPINE Project) and proactive monitoring of Internet activity.
Police organisations are central to implementing this, as the investigative arm of multidisciplinary teams, which are trained in the forensic and computer skills necessary.
The secondary agenda should be the disruption of child pornography trading networks, with effective deterrents for collection and possession of the pornography through prosecution and the courts.
Reducing the demand through making possession increasingly risky and dangerous is a worthwhile contribution to protecting the child. However, the principal agents in this area must be the Internet Service Providers, who enable access to the Internet, and through whom all communications flow.
Experience suggests that police action alone is unlikely to diminish sufficiently the availability of child pornography on the Internet, but police action and effective government regulations will enable this to occur.
Child pornography gives a view into the hidden world of child sexual exploitation, and seems at the moment to be largely domestic in character, with perpetrators having legitimate access to the child. If the current worrying evidence of a growing involvement of organised crime in distributing child pornography extends to its production, then, of course, the situation may need to be reassessed.
Above all, however, the needs of the child must always remain paramount, and social welfare or law enforcement agencies should have as their primary objective the empowerment of victims, however administratively or politically inconvenient that might be.
It is opportune that events are focusing our awareness on this issue at the beginning of a new Dáil. Addressing the problem of Internet child pornography as part of the broader problem of sexual exploitation of children must be given a high priority.
Max Taylor is Professor of Applied Psychology, and Director of the COPINE Project, University College Cork, Ireland. With Dr Ethel Quayle, he is author of 'Child Pornography: An Internet Crime' Routledge, 2002.