Campaigners for the rights of children who have been subjected to child sexual abuse are calling on Irish law makers to replace the term “child pornography” in the Child Trafficking and Child Sexual Exploitation (Amendment) Bill 2022.
The proposed amendment, entitled Call it what it is, wants to see the term changed to ‘child sex abuse material’, and will reach its third stage in the Seanad next week, with the campaign spearheaded by Senator Eileen Flynn.
Speaking to Gript, Assistant Professor in Psychology at DCU, Dr. Maggie Brennan, said that the use of the word “pornography” in respect of images that depict the sexual abuse and exploitation of children only serves to “completely mischaracterise the issue”.
Dr. Brennan said that the use of the term “can cause issues when it comes to sentencing” as well as “public understanding and awareness of what this material actually is.”
She added that what is labelled as pornography is in reality child sex abuse and exploitation material.
“Pornography is something where, presumably consenting adults are involved,” she said.
“People tend to downgrade how serious the material is in their heads which can then also lead to misapprehension in terms of the impact and the harm the material causes to children,” she said.
She said that “most people who work in the area and have seen the material and had to work with it”, for example, “for victim identification purposes, myself included in the past, would tell you that what tends to happen is, particularly when it comes to sentencing and judicial understanding, very often they don’t have to see the material itself.” she said.
Dr. Brennan added that this means that judges often “don’t understand what the contents are,” and that “wording in legislation has an impact,” on what sentence a judge may pass.
“Very many judges don’t understand what this material is and the gross stuff depicted in it,” she said.
Background working to fight the sexual abuse of children.
A native of Cork, Dr, Brennan has been engaged for over 20 years in preventative action against the production and spread of child sexual abuse material, part of which has involved viewing the images directly.
Speaking of the often lax custodial arrangements for those caught in possession of child sex abuse material, she said that offenders don’t come across it “by accident”, but “proactively search for it,” and that “every time an image is viewed” it “re-victimises a child”.
Suspended sentences for offenders.
Addressing the issue of those prosecuted for possession of child sex abuse material being given suspended sentences, she described the situation as “insane” saying that it “is promoting recidivism”.
“By not appropriately sanctioning a first time offender, you are encouraging, promoting recidivism,” and creating a scenario where offenders may not fear getting caught as they have little fear of serving a prison term.
She said this laxity “promotes” a situation where the consumption of child sex abuse material is “going on up and down the country.”
In the course of her work with law enforcement she said she has had access to certain tools which show a map of IP addresses who are “actively accessing or downloading child abuse material at that time”, adding that “Ireland is covered in red dots.”
“It’s literally down the road, around the corner, it’s everywhere,”.
She said that the language used in reference to these crimes “particularly matters to children who have been victimised in this way,” and that survivors have spoken of how “degrading” the use of the term ‘child pornography’ is to them and how it often makes them feel as though they were somehow “in” on what happened to them.
“It creates a sense of equivalence with adult content,” she said, “when it’s so vastly different.”
She said that while the move to change the language used “may seem small, it’s actually important and it’s part of a bigger piece.”
“Sometimes you’re talking about babies”
“It’s only if you’ve seen this content that you realise how horrific what’s happening here actually is.”
Explaining how a provision in Irish law allows for bonafide research institutes to legally possess child sex abuse material, Dr. Brennan explained how she had been involved in the development of what evolved into a system aimed at identifying the severity of the material as a way of trying to assist the police in prioritising cases in the UK.
In cases where victims were very young children, “sometimes you’re talking about babies here”, she said that this system is used in securing heavier penalties for those who consume material depicting the “grotesque” sexual abuse of smaller children.
“Everything you can imagine, I’ve seen it,” she said.
“I’ve seen videos of children being killed while they were sexually tortured.”
Dr. Brennan said that offenders don’t seek out this kind of material “in a vacuum” and that often, even if they are only charged in relation to lower level images, the scale of their actual offending goes far beyond that.
Offenders like this, she said, may have also been looking for children to abuse on forums.
She highlighted how “demoralising” it can be for law enforcement who watch offenders “for months” only to see them walk free from the courts in some cases.
“The burden of proof..is just so high, and the whole system is stacked against the interests of the child,” she said, adding that this “irks” and “upsets” her as someone who has been working in the area since 2002.
People in Ireland “commissioning” child sex abuse in the Philippines.
“These are people who are interested in raping children,” she said adding that, “very often the kind of possession cases that come before the court, very often these people have been at this for years.”
She said that these people often do much worse than “watching, downloading, and distributing” material, and are “actively involved in the first hand generation of that material”.
Dr. Brennan said generating child sex abuse material can be done “easily” online by liaising with traffickers on the ground in the Philippines, where most of her work is now focused.
According to research, 1 in 100 children in the Philippines have been trafficked, she said, with an estimated 1 in 20 having been exposed to some form of inappropriate contact.
She said that offenders are often prosecuted for the lower end of their offending, receive “a slap on the wrist” and are let back out into the community “where they are an obvious risk to children.”