On May 8, 2012, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that state residents are entitled to view child pornography online if they wish - as long as they don't download or print it. Judge Victoria Graffeo wrote in her separate opinion that the decision "will, unfortunately, lead to increased consumption of child pornography by luring new visitors who were previously dissuaded by the potential for criminal prosecution."1
Fortunately, New York State legislators seem to agree with Judge Graffeo. The state Senatepassed a bill in June 2012 making it a crime to even view child pornography. The bill at press time was working its way through the state Assembly for final passage.
Patrick Trueman of Morality in Media feared the original decision would give "permission to pedophiles and child molesters to continue the sexual molestation and recording of child sex abuse." After all, if it's legal to view "kiddie porn" pictures, why should it be illegal to produce the images?
At least that's what pedophiles might argue. And they've been arguing for and seeking approval of pedophilia for decades. Even back in 1950, the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry clamored for sexual consent "at the age of 7"2 to be legitimized, citingAlfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior inthe Human Male as "the points bywhich we steered."3
Since then, the concept of acceptable child abuse has slowly gained "intellectual" traction among the far left. In August 2011, I attended a symposium put on by the pro-pedophile organization B4U-ACT. (See "Coming Attractions," Salvo 19, pp. 40-41.)The featured speaker was the famous Johns Hopkins psychiatrist Dr. Fred Berlin.
At this symposium, titled "Pedophilia, Minor-Attracted Persons [MAP] and the DSM: Issues and Controversies," Dr. Berlin said he wanted to "completely support the goal of B4U-ACT." A report on the symposium in the American Thinker noted that both speakers and attendees concurred that, "because it vilifies MAPs, pedophilia should be removed as a mental disorder from the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), in the same manner homosexuality was removed in 1973."4
Only eight months later, on April 27, 2012, I was present as Dr. Berlin engaged hundreds of medical,legal, and mental health participants at Johns Hopkins' "First Annual Symposium on Child Sexual Abuse."5 This conference, partially funded by an abuse survivor's family,6 was the first of its kind held at Johns Hopkins since Berlin and his mentor, pro-pedophile campaigner Dr. John Money (1921-2006)7 founded the Johns Hopkins Sexual Behaviors Consultation Unit in 1971.
In his introduction at April's symposium, Berlin promised his audience that they would gain "knowledge about etiology, psychopathology, treatment of both victims and offenders, and about prevention."
But this is the very information Berlin failed to provide. For example, the participants were not told that Berlin himself supported the cause of "minor-attracted persons" or that the Johns Hopkins sex clinic was founded for the purpose of keeping molesters out of jail. The clinic was designed, Dr.Money had said at its founding, to give "leeway to judges" by ordering "therapy" instead of jail.8 Berlin himself had refused to report to the police at least eight of his own patients who were molesting children during therapy sessions.9
At the Johns Hopkins symposium, Berlin also failed to disclose that exposure to pornography was a causal factor in sexual deviance. Instead, he claimed that "minor attracted persons," like "transgenders," have a natural "orientation," and he told conference participants that pedophiles "are born that way; there is treatment that can help, and punishment isn't the treatment."
But this statement is belied by an examination of Berlin's past work. A 1981 analysis of Berlin's "treatment" methods reveals only failure. Of the twenty patients included in the analysis, thirteen were child molesters; four of them were still "in treatment" at the time of the report, while nine had been released. Six of those nine (67 percent) "relapsed" within two years (no data were released beyond two years). Based on their prior abuse records, it is very likely that Berlin's six freed pedophiles went on to molest many more children during those two years.10
The next speaker, former Surgeon General Dr. Antonia Novello, injected a note of common sense into the proceedings. She briefy remarked upon the role of "sexualized images in the media" in causing our child sex abuse "epidemic," which, she said, was "worse than any other pediatric problem." So, she wanted to know, "Why is this the first time we are meeting?"
Psychologist Charles Patrick Ewing, PhD, JD, spoke next on "The Failure of Legislation to Curb Child Sexual Abuse," and tried to mitigate whatever pro-victim sympathy might have resulted from Novello's remarks. He asserted that registration, notification, and residency laws pertaining to sex offenders "probably" do not stop sex crime, and, he went on, since child sex abuse penalties are not heavy, we should also lighten child pornography penalties, making internet child-sex soliciting a misdemeanor punishable by a single year in prison.
Ewing repeated the pedophile mantra that no data show that exposure to adult pornography facilitates child sex abuse. Yet one victim at the conference reported that, as a boy, he was shown adult pornography magazines before being repeatedly sodomized. The homosexual assault almost destroyed his life, but he began to rebuild after he reported the crime to the FBI (he later became an FBI profiler himself). The official speakers ignored this counter-testimony.
Sociologist Dr. David Finkelhor, Director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center (CACRC), followed up with a talk on the "Public Health Implications of Social Trends on Sexual Abuse Prevention." Finkelhor's artificial definitions of the "family," widely distributed by the U.S. Department of Justice, have long justified distorted personal and public policy decisions.
In his 1979 study Sexually Victimized Children, Finkelhor appropriately warned that children in non-biological families are at a high risk of sexual abuse, noting that almost 150 percent more "family" sexual abuse was perpetrated by stepfathers than by biological fathers.11 Yet, by 1990,Finkelhor had abandoned this significant distinction and merged biological fathers, stepfathers, and others together in a single category in his studies.
For instance, in Missing, Abducted, a 1990 CACRC report, his definition of "family" included anyone who was having "a romantic or sexual relationship with a parent" (p. ix). And in "Child Abuse Reported to the Police" (Juvenile Justice Bulletin, May 2001), he merged acts of abuse by "parents, stepparents, grandparents, babysitters, other adult family members, and parents' boyfriends and girlfriends" into one categoryas "offenses by parents and other caretakers."12
Tactics like these allow children to be counted at increased risk of abuse by "family members," but family has been redefined to include biological parents, boyfriends, girlfriends, lovers, caretakers, babysitters, and others. This facilitates a political agenda, not science.
A 2004 report published by Finkelhor in the Juvenile Justice Bulletin, which purported to provide "Explanations for the Decline in Child Sexual Abuse Cases,"13 also ignored data related to an obvious increase in child sexual abuse: In 1999, 58,200 children were abducted by non-kin - with roughly half returning home as sex-abuse victims; there are over 350,000 prostituted children; the number of molested foster children doubled from 1995 to 2000; and several hundred juveniles are murdered every year. There are also a significant number of plea bargains that make child abuse felonies into misdemeanors.
As society has accepted the licentious Kinseyan model of sexuality, the etiology of sexual deviance in "science" and society has exploded. Children continue to suffer as pedophiles keep pushing for recognition as "minor-attracted persons" and for destigmatization by the American Psychiatric Association.
Johns Hopkins, an elite and respected institution, held its First Annual Symposium on Child Sexual Abuse, thanks largely to funding by an abuse survivor's family. Yet it seems they were less interested in the victims and causes of abuse than in excusing the abusers.
Once pedophiles are legitimized as having an inborn "orientation," as Dr. Berlin and other "scientists" now claim, expect such "scientists" to justify the need to view child pornography. And then expect them to claim that, since pornography is harmless, child volunteers should be employed to make it. Indeed, family the rapistand Penthouse Forum advisor Larry Constantine made this claim as long ago as 1977.14 By, among other things, allowing "children to participate willingly in pornography under monitorable conditions," Constantine argued, we will tread "small step by small step, toward healthier acceptance of the sexuality of all, young and old."15
1 www.nycourts.gov/ctapps/Decisions/2012/May12/70opn12.pdf. [Back]
2 "Psychiatrically Deviated Sex Offenders," Report No. 9, Committee on Forensic Psychiatry of the Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (Feb. 1950). [Back]
3 David Allyn, "Private Acts/Public Policy: Alfred Kinsey, the American Law Institute and the Privatization of American Sexual Morality," Journal of American Studies, vol. 30, issue 3 (1996), pp. 405-428. [Back]
4 See www.americanthinker.com/2011/09/predators_with_phds.html. [Back]
5 The registration brochure can be found at www.hopkinscme.edu/pdfs/80027654.pdf. [Back]
6 Kathy Headley's Bloomington, Indiana family business, CarDon & Associates, was a major donor. [Back]
7 For background on John Money, see an interview with him in Paidika, The Journal of Paedophilia, vol. 2, no. 3 (Spring 1991), pp. 2-6; see also John Colapinto, "The True Story of John/Joan," Rolling Stone (Dec. 1997), pp. 54-97. [Back]
8 Ibid., Journal of Paedophilia. [Back]
9 "Doctor Skirts Reporting Law on Sex Crimes: Attorney general challenges policy of Hopkins clinic," The Baltimore Sun (Mar. 4, 1990). [Back]
10 Berlin, F. S., and Coyle, G. S., "Sexual Deviation Syndromes," Johns Hopkins Medical Journal, vol. 149, no. 3 (Sept.1981), pp. 119-125. [Back]
11 David Finkelhor, "A self-report symptom inventory," Behavioral Science 19 (1979), pp. 1-15. See also Finkelhor's book, Sexually Victimized Children (Free Press, 1981). [Back]
12 www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/jj-bul2001_5_1/page1.html. [Back]
13 www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojj-dp/199298.pdf. [Back]
14 Larry Constantine, "Sexual Rights of Children," presented at the International Conference on Love and Attraction, University College, Swansea, Wales, September 1977; reprinted in M. Cook and G. Wilson (eds.), Love and Attraction (Pergamon, 1979). [Back]
15 Ibid, pp. 261, 262; see www.ipce.info/ library_3/files/const_rights_text.htm. [Back]