CAPITAL REGION Child porn access, crimes grow Some who look also abusers BY SARA FOSS Gazette Reporter
Child pornography was once available only through underground networks, exchanged through the mail wrapped in brown paper. Today, just about anyone can access images of children being sexually victimized from their personal computers, in the privacy of their own homes. This change has led to an explosion of child porn. Now, researchers are investigating whether there’s a link between watching and acquiring child p o r n o g r a p h y and more serious crimes, such as trying to contact minors online to arrange meetings for sex and the sexual abuse of minors. Some experts believe online child pornography might function as a gateway, leading to more dangerous face-to-face contact. Earlier this month, state parole board member Chris Ortloff, 61, of Plattsburgh, was arrested on a federal charge that he used the Internet to solicit sex with minors. Prosecutors said Ortloff had repeatedly e-mailed what he believed were 11- and 12-year-old sisters and tried to arrange a meeting to have sex with them; he was actually corresponding with an undercover cop. Court papers indicated that he watched child pornography with the offi cer and told her he had once molested two young girls. NUMEROUS QUESTIONS Despite the increased attention to child pornography, many questions about child porn remain unanswered. A 2005 study released by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children found that 40 percent of the people arrested for child pornography were “dual offenders” who sexually victimized children and possessed child pornography, with both crimes being uncovered in the same investigation. An additional 15 percent were dual offenders who attempted to sexually victimize children by soliciting undercover investigators who had posed as minors. One in six investigations beginning with allegations or investigations of child pornography possession discovered dual offenders. Kimberly Mitchell, who worked on the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children Report, said it is difficult to tell whether most of the people who view child pornography online also contact youths via the Internet and try to set up appointments for sex. “This is hard to answer since most of the work done in this area is on incarcerated populations [since the average person wouldn’t likely admit to possessing child pornography],” she wrote in an e-mail. “Also, most sex crimes against minors [including child pornography and sexual abuse] never come to the attention of law enforcement. “The child pornography problem went from a largely hidden crime to one with quite a bit of public attention,” wrote Mitchell, a research assistant professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center. “Although we don’t have any real data about how widespread child pornography was prior to the Internet, I think it’s safe to say that the Internet has exacerbated the problem.” As for whether the problem of child pornography is growing or whether it simply appears that way because of increased awareness and publicity around arrests, Mitchell said, “There is no data about this to date.” ONLINE RESURGENCE At one time, child pornography had almost disappeared from the landscape, and by the early 1990s, it was almost impossible to obtain, the result of the government’s steppedup effort to uncover and bust these underground networks. “Child pornography had virtually gone away,” recalled Ernie Allen, the president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, based in Alexandria, Va. But it came back. Today, child pornography is more accessible and prevalent than ever, according to experts, who attribute the increase to the Internet’s ever-expanding reach. Efforts to crack down on online child pornography have made people more aware of the problem, and arrests for child pornography have become more commonplace. “This problem has exploded with the advent of the Internet,” Allen said. “The Internet has given people the opportunity to access content in the privacy of their own home. If you have the Internet, you can link to people all over the world and just explore. ... We are fervent supporters of the Internet, but clearly there is a dark side.” “In the past, if you were purchasing child pornography, you had to worry about sending money through the mail,” said Lt. Joe Donohue of the New York State Police Computer Crime Unit, which works with the agency’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Program. “You had to have personal contact with someone. Now you don’t have to go outdoors to get child pornography. It’s become much easier to get.” Making contact with children is much easier over the Internet, too, he said. “At schools, teachers and aides are very aware [of the risk of predators],” he said. “But you can sit in your house on your computer and talk to kids and maybe the parents don’t know what’s going on. If you groom a child and the child says no, there are other kids.” “The Internet has just given predators another avenue to access kids,” Donohue said. “It’s given them a greater reign.” LOOKING AND TOUCHING Allen and Donohue pointed to a Federal Bureau of Prisons study that suggests that 85 percent of men convicted of downloading explicit sexual images of children also sexually abused minors. The study, which has been written about but not released, is controversial; experts differ over how to interpret the results. Previous studies, such as the one Mitchell was involved in, have estimated that 30 percent to 40 percent of those arrested for possessing child pornography also molested children. “What this is showing is that there’s a link between abusing children and looking at the images,” Donohue said of the Federal Bureau of Prisons study. “That’s a big deal.” JoAnne Malatesta, assistant dean at the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany, spent seven years researching online child pornography for her doctoral thesis. She conducted a massive online survey, questioning users on a whole range of issues, such as where they look at content, what sort of content they look at and how often they look at content. Users who engage in “online sexual deviancy” — a category that includes a whole range of unusual sexual behaviors, including viewing child pornography or contacting minors — were much more likely to join in online communities and interactive chats and explore new ideas that they would not have explored offline. They were also more likely to prefer engaging with others online rather than offline and four times more likely to say things online that they would not say in a face-to-face conversation. Malatesta found that there were two types of users of online pornography: hardcore pedophiles who would have found a way to access child pornography whether the Internet existed or not and a second group she termed “explorers.” In the past, the barriers to obtaining child pornography were so high that many of these explorers would never have accessed child pornography, even if they had the inclination to do so. “There are individuals who were going to engage in this sort of thing anyway, but you’ve got this whole other group of people interacting online, and the Internet allows them to explore in ways they would not otherwise have explored,” she said. “The Internet is making a difference.” Some of the people Malatesta surveyed indicated that they had no interest in going offline to find children or making contact with them and only wanted to look at child pornography. But she noted that her study was a snapshot, not a time study. Over time, she said, maybe their behavior would change and they would try to facilitate a real-world encounter. WORSENING ADDICTION Malatesta said that possessors of child pornography often have strange rationalizations for their behavior and that these rationalizations are reinforced by their communication online with people who share their interest in child pornography. “They might believe that children like being in pornography,” she said. Donohue had similar observations. He said the literature from the North American Man/Boy Love Association, an organization that advocates the legalization of sexual relations between men and underaged boys, suggests that sexual relationships between men and boys are loving and positive. “They say, ‘We’re not hurting these children, we’re giving them love,’ ” he said. “They say, ‘Kids should be learning about sex earlier in life.’ ” Meanwhile, the content of child pornography is becoming increasingly brutal and extreme. “With people who have these tendencies, what we’re seeing is a kind of addiction,” Allen said. “What happens is a continuing quest for new content, for something different. They’re demanding images of younger children, images that are more graphic and more violent.” The 2005 National Center for Missing & Exploited Children study found that almost all child pornography possessors arrested between July 1, 2000, and June 30, 2001, were male, 91 percent were white and 86 percent were older than 25. Few of the people arrested for child pornography possession had criminal histories or other problems. Few had been diagnosed with mental or sexual disorders, and just 11 percent had previously been arrested for sex offenses committed against minors. Most had sexually abusive images of prepubescent children and images graphically depicting sexual penetration. Approximately 1 in 5 people arrested had images depicting sexual violence such as bondage, rape and torture. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, an estimated 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys will be sexually victimized before they reach the age of 18. Twenty-seven percent of child pornography possessors were classified as “organized CP collectors,” meaning that their collection of child pornography comprised more than 1,000 graphic child pornography images, videos, books, magazines and photographs. Collectors were also more likely to have images of children younger than the age of 6 and sophisticated computer systems and use sophisticated methods to store or hide the images. One of the things that makes online child pornography unique is that once the images hit the Internet, the content can be accessed over and over again. “When people access that content, they’re revictimizing the victim again,” Allen said. “The images are out there. We’re literally watching a child grow up abused.” In 2007, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children received its 475,000th report on its CyberTipline, where callers can report sexual exploitation of children. More than 89 percent of those calls concerned child pornography. Allen noted that a Texas couple arrested for running an online child pornography ring had 70,000 customers from all over the world.
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