Pornography's link to rape

WorldNetDaily ^ | 7/29/06 | Judith Reisman

[wagglebee]

Would you try to put out a fire with gasoline?

No? Then you might disagree with an MSNBC online article, "Porn: Good for America!" by Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor. Reynolds suggests that pornography reduces rape!

As proof, Reynolds quotes a U.S. Department of Justice claim that in 2004 rape of "people" over age 12 radically decreased with an "85 percent decline in the per-capita rape rate since 1979" (DOJ's National Crime Victimization Survey of "thousands of respondents 12 and older").

But the FBI also estimates that "34 percent of female sex assault victims" are "under age 12" (National Incident-Based Reporting System, July 2000).

Since the DOJ data excludes rape of children under age 12, child rape may be up 85 percent, for all we know.

Although the FBI and local police departments are now swamped with teachers, police, professors, doctors, legislators, clergy, federal and state bureaucrats, dentists, judges, etc., arrested for child pornography and for abusing children under age 12, the Department of Justice excludes those small victims from its "rape" rates. Why?

Do DOJ, FBI harbor pedophiles?

You have to wonder: Are there pedophiles and other sexual predators in the governmental woodpiles?

When I worked for DOJ's Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in the 1980s, someone high up killed the order to collect crime-scene pornography as evidence in prosecutions. No Democrat or Republican administration has yet mandated such on-site pornography collections. Whom is DOJ protecting?

Reynolds, writes less like an objective scholar than a pornography defender:

Since 1970 … porn has exploded. … But rape has gone down 85 percent. So much for the notion that pornography causes rape. … [I]t would be hard to explain how rape rates could have declined so dramatically while porn expanded so explosively.

He opines that pornography possibly prevents rape (the old discredited "safe-outlet" theory).

The DOJ's preposterous "85 percent" decrease in rape ignores the obvious. The U.S. FBI Index of Crime reported a 418 percent increase in "forcible rape" from 1960 to 1999. That fear means we now keep our doors, windows and cars locked. Women seldom walk alone at night. Parents rarely let children go anywhere unaccompanied. Many states let people carry guns for self-defense. Rape Crisis Centers do not report rapes to police. More women perform as sexually required. A conflicting DOJ 2002 report says "almost 25 percent of college women have been victims of rape or attempted rape since the age of 14."

Why don't the feds call child-rape 'rape'?

In 1950, 18 states authorized the death penalty for rape; most others could impose a life sentence. Following Alfred Kinsey's "scientific" advice in 1948, many states redefined "rape" so the crime could be plea-bargained down to a misdemeanor like "sexual misconduct."

Missouri redefined rape to mean 11 different crimes for 11 different sentences, magically lowering "rape" rates. Like all states that have trivialized rape, Missouri relied on the Kinsey-based 1955 American Law Institute Model Penal Code.

"Rape" was eliminated from New Jersey's laws and replaced with a variety of terms during a 1978 penal law revision.

For example, Dr. Linda Jeffrey notes that the charge to which child-molesting teacher Pamela Diehl-Moore pleaded guilty was reduced to a second-tier crime, "sexual assault" – i.e., sexual contact with a victim under 13, or penetration where the "actor" uses physical force or coercion, but the victim doesn't suffer severe personal injury, or the victim is 16 or 17, with aggravating circumstances, or the victim is 13 to 15 and the "actor" is at least four years older. (Whew!)

Sex criminals copy what porn depicts

DOJ experts should read reports such as "Sex-Related Homicide and Death Investigation" (2003). Former Lt. Comdr. Vernon Geberth says today's "sex-related cases … are more frequent, vicious and despicable" than anything he experienced in decades as a homicide cop.

In "Journey Into Darkness" (1997), the FBI's premier serial-rape profiler, John Douglas wrote, "[Serial-rape murders are commonly found] with a large pornography collection, either store-bought or homemade. … our [FBI] research does show that certain types of sadomasochistic and bondage-oriented material can fuel the fantasies of those already leaning in that direction."

In "The Evil That Men Do" (1998), FBI serial-rape-murderer-mutilator profiler Roy Hazelwood quotes one sex killer who tied his victims in "a variety of positions" based on pictures he saw in sex magazines.

"Thrill Killers, a Study of America's Most Vicious Murders," by Charles Linedecker, reports that 81 percent of these killers rated pornography as their primary sexual interest. Dr. W.L. Marshall, in "Criminal Neglect, Why Sex Offenders Go Free" (1990), says based on the evidence, pornography "feeds and legitimizes their deviant sexual tendencies."

In one study of rapists, Gene Abel of the New York Psychiatric Institute cited, "One-third reported that they had used pornography immediately prior to at least one of their crimes." In 1984, the U.S. Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence reported, "Testimony indicates that an alarming number of rape and sexual assault offenders report that they were acting out behavior they had viewed in pornographic materials."

More pornography equals more rape of children and women. We need to ask whether Big Government is now selling out to Big Pornography as it did to Big Tobacco for half a century.

[Renfield]

I think the ratio may be even higher than 80/20. Someone has probably gathered statistics on this....I wouldn't know where to find them...but I watch a lot of those forensic crime-solving shows on TV, and I see constantly that someone who is arrested for a saxual crime based upon a DNA print, is then linked to numerous previously unsolved crimes.

[Zechariah_8_13]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't there been an overall decrease in violent crime, largely due to new jails being built?

The author's argument is non sequitur. Perhaps he doesn't understand the difference between causal and correlated.

Is he aware that there's a positive correlation between stork populations and human baby births, too? Do storks bring babies, then?

[oldenuff2no]

Our children see a lot more murders on TV than they see porn and yet I do not personally know a single child who has committed murder. I do know several teenagers who are sexually active but none of them have ever been accused of rape.
Sorry, but this line of crap does not pass the smell test, in fact it stinks.

[The_Pickle]

My views on pornography have changed considerably over the years. Years ago it could reasonably be argued that the vast majority of women that got involved in pornography did not do so entirely of their own "free will". Be it economic reason, lack of marketable skills or being forced into pseudo sexual slavery by some other person in their lives (usually a man), they viewed involvement in pornography as either a last resort or something not within their control and either way it was a shameful and degrading way to live.

Over the years however ideas and attitudes towards porn have changed and I would now say that the great majority of women that get involved with porn do so with their eyes wide open to the realities of the business. They have made a conscious "choice" to utilize their "assets" for their own benefit to make relatively large amounts of money with what they view as very little effort.

For years our culture has viewed women’s sexuality as some type of commodity yet men have historically controlled that commodity i.e. Father, Brother and even Boyfriends. Yet recently women have realized they it is in fact they that control this "commodity" and they have chose, in droves, to use it for their own benefit without being controlled by a man.

As to the argument that porn causes rape i.e. cause and effect, I have yet to see a study that doesn't utilize some type of half-assed syllogistic logic.

Example:

Major point: Rapist view Porn (True, for the most part, according to many studies)

Minor point: Porn depicts the sexual subjugation of women (a subjective description at best)

Conclusion: Porn causes people to commit Rape

Sorry, but until a truly scientific study shows a direct cause and effect relationship showing that viewing porn will cause a person, who would not be otherwise incline to commit rape, to actually commit rape, I will call BS on every single one of these junk science articles.

[MikefromOhio]

Just like with guns and violent movies, people kill people, not the guns or what they've watched on TV.

Rapists don't rape because of porn, they rape because they are rapists.

[MrEdd]

Ping for later.

[Calpernia]

ping

[JimRed]

We need to include all non-consensual sex crimes, regardless of their different labels, under the heading of "rape".

That includes statutory rape as a minor cannot legally consent.

[MrEdd]

I've always been curious why the stats in the U.S. are so much higher than Europe or Japan. Is there a cultural difference or something to account for this?

When I was in Japan there was one case I knew of the family would not prosecute. In that culture I think it is the norm not to do anything unless law enforcement personnel are a witness. Even then a stigma is on the victim, so families try to hush it up. I love anime, but I don't miss that place at all.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Since the DOJ data excludes rape of children under age 12, child rape may be up 85 percent, for all we know.

Judy, Judy, Judy, why not do some research instead of basing your column on non-existent numbers?

[Choose Ye This Day]

Indeed.

[Calpernia]

The problem is not whether a few men have a Playboy magazine in their sock drawer.

The problem is the pornography the sex industry has created.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1472612/posts
Sex Tourism: Addressing the Demand for Trafficking

http://www.lifetimetv.com/movies/originals/humantrafficking.html
Human Trafficking

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1530000/posts
Illegal Immigration, Human Trafficking, and Organized Crime

http://losangeles.fbi.gov/pressrel/2006/la072606.htm
U.S. SHUTS DOWN WEBSITE ADVERTISING CHILD PORNOGRAPHY

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/7/16/221009.shtml
Bush Says Castro Welcomes Sex Tourism

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1472612/posts?page=45#45
Child sex slaves

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1472612/posts?page=46#46
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery

[Calpernia]

TESTIMONY OF ROSA, AGE 14
before U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee

When I was fourteen, a man came to my parents' house in Veracruz, Mexico and asked me if I was interested in making money in the United States. He said I could make many times as much money doing the same things that I was doing in Mexico. At the time, I was working in a hotel cleaning rooms and I also helped around my house by watching my brothers and sisters. He said I would be in good hands, and would meet many other Mexican girls who had taken advantage of this great opportunity. My parents didn't want me to go, but I persuaded them.

A week later, I was smuggled into the United States through Texas to Orlando, Florida. It was then the men told me that my employment would consist of having sex with men for money. I had never had sex before, and I had never imagined selling my body.

And so my nightmare began. Because I was a virgin, the men decided to initiate me by raping me again and again, to teach me how to have sex. Over the next three months, I was taken to a different trailer every 15 days. Every night I had to sleep in the same bed in which I had been forced to service customers all day.

I couldn't do anything to stop it. I wasn't allowed to go outside without a guard. Many of the bosses had guns. I was constantly afraid. One of the bosses carried me off to a hotel one night, where he raped me. I could do nothing to stop him.

Because I was so young, I was always in demand with the customers. It was awful. Although the men were supposed to wear condoms, some didn't, so eventually I became pregnant and was forced to have an abortion. They sent me back to the brothel almost immediately.

I cannot forget what has happened. I can't put it behind me. I find it nearly impossible to trust people. I still feel shame. I was a decent girl in Mexico. I used to go to church with my family. I only wish none of this had ever happened.

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"What you put in your mind always affects how you behave after."

Case in point: the Qu'ran.

[chesley]

Maybe not. As lawyers. They are still people, though, with moral obligations.

[bmwcyle]

I would not feel so uneasy about courts if they were not throwing out the 10 Commandments.

[MACVSOG68]

If Mr. Professor had included all the terms now used instead of "rape" in his skewed statistics, I believe he wouldn't have even had an article to write.

Perhaps, but the statistics do show that rape/attempted rape/sexual assaults are down 64% since 1995, about the time the Internet began being used.

http://www.rainn.org/statistics/index.html

Certainly no evidence of pornography as a causal factor in rapes, but I would question the idea that it may decrease rapes.

[Fish_Keeper]

The arguments that availability of porn correlates with a high frequency of rape have been made for at least a couple decades now. This hasn't been proved to any degree of certainty. In fact, countries with very strict laws banning porn (think Muslim mid-east, Pakistan, Iran, etc.) have very high rape rates. Countries like Netherlands that have few restrictions on porn, and even legal prostitution, have low rape rates. I'm not advocating any certain policy about how to handle porn in our country, just that this porn-rape link is a rather shaky argument.

[SDGOP]

I"d hardly call him a conservative, hes more of the libertarian mold

[little jeremiah]

I was swamped all day yesterday, and what happens when I finally sit down with FR and scan latest articles? I find that one "wagglebee" has posted the ones I saw and thought would be good to ping out!

How anyone can support porn and think it's covered by the Constitution amazes me. Folks, it's our friend the porn producers and the ACLU we can thank for EZ porn. Anyone who thinks the actual gentlemen who wrote the Constituion would approve of legal obscenity and porn is smoking too much.