St Andrews porter caught downloanding child porn

In recent times police agencies and child protection groups have been anxious to educate the public about the true nature of child pornography. Among other things they have tried to encourage the news media to replace the term 'child pornography' with 'images of child abuse'; the point being that the term child pornography may convey the idea of children happily posing possibly naked for a photographer while what is in fact involved are graphic images of often violent child rape and other forms of abuse.

I notice that the BBC have taken to referring to child abuse images where they would have spoken of 'child pornography' in the past.

Child protection lobbyists have also been insistent on the idea that every child pornography image is an image of child sexual abuse and every image has a real victim and that those who are viewing this material are as guilty as the people who perpetrated the abuse in the first place. However there is a problem promoting this idea where various forms of 'virtual' child pornography are concerned.

I think it is very understandable that child protection agencies should want to educate our society about the particularly vicious nature of some child pornography and about the harm that any child pornography does. Remember that when Operation Amethyst took place in Ireland six years ago that some newspaper columnists were openly wondering whether the simple possession of child pornography should be a crime at all.

But at the same time painting every case of possession of child pornography /child sexual abuse images as the worst case is not truthful and being truthful is essential to framing good child protection measures and to holding offenders accountable for what they have done.

While this may make us uncomfortable at times there are grey areas when it comes to all sexual offending including child pornography. The case of the Saint Andrews golf club porter illustrates some (though not all) of these.

According to the Scottish Daily Record:

Cops found 58 indecent images of young girls, aged between 12 and 14, in erotic poses, wearing only swimsuits or underwear. ...

Tasker ... pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of indecent photographs of kids and taking them, or permitting them to be taken or made.

The court heard Tasker, who lost his job and is now a delivery driver, downloaded the images from "teen model" websites in October 2005.

Jim Robertson, prosecuting, said: "Mr Tasker admitted accessing these sites and it is important to stress these are paid sites. They allow for a preview before payment and the accused did not pay."

He said the pictures were all category-one, the lowest level, on the Copine Scale used to determine the severity of such cases.

Douglas Williams, defending, said: "No images of children naked or undressed were downloaded.

From this report it seems that Mr Tasker downloaded preview photographs of 'child models' (for an idea of what these child modeling sites are about read the Wikipedia article here) from a pay per view site or sites, many of which openly operate on the web and which are legal within the jurisdictions (often the USA, sometimes European countries - though I am not an expert on the geographical or other distribution of these sites) where they are sited. These sites may carry notices to the effect that you will not find child pornography on the site and that they are in conformity with the law. I also understand that on the type of site Mr Tasker was accessing the child and teen models all pose with full parental consent.

While these sites ostensibly exist to promote the legitimate modeling careers anybody with two functioning brain cells will see that they have another agenda. They do vary in how risqué they are and some I think (I am not an expert) are very tame and would avoid any complaint of being indecent. But even for the most tame sites you would have a hard time convincing most people that they are there for any other purpose but the sexual gratification in one way or another of the people you use them.

Mr Tasker was charged not only with possessing the images but with "taking them, or permitting them to be taken or made".This is a technical point under UK law. In downloading the images under UK law he made or took a new digital copy of the image on presumably the hard drive of his computer. The charge of making or taking an image does not refer to the common sense understanding of the term of taking a photograph or of making a new pornographic image of a child. The equivalent charge here in Ireland would simply be of knowingly possessing the images.

My guess is that the images Mr Tasker had in his possession would not be illegal under Irish legislation and probably not illegal in most European countries. Their illegality in the UK depends on the courts interpretation of the term 'indecent' image and under federal legislation in the USA it depends on the courts interpretation of the term 'lascivious exhibition' of the genitalia which does not have to involve nudity - in other words, federal courts in the USA have decided that genitalia can be lasciviously exposed through clothing. Deciding what is 'indecent' (in the case of the UK (or 'lascivious' (in the case of the USA) can be tricky.

I would think that most men in the UK accessing these sort of sites are not aware that what they are doing is illegal. Their image of child pornography taken from statements of child protection groups and the police is of brutal rape scenes and bestiality which does not square with the sort of site they are looking at. The sites are operating openly, the children are modeling with parental consent, there is no nudity involved, and they have all the appearances of operating quite legally and in fact probably are operating quite legally. And we are living in culture where the Playboy brand name is being targeted at preteens so what is a normal and healthy manner for a young teenager to present herself?

If we are to combat child pornography we have to be truthful about it. That means recognising that is comes in many different forms and shades off in a grey scale into the kinds of images that are widely used in advertising clothes and other products to children and teenagers. We have to recognise that there are difficulties and honest differences in approaches to legally defining and delimiting child pornography. And if you want to help the likes of Mr Tasker to recognise that what they are looking at is child pornography then our public debate about child pornography / child sexual abuse images makes clear that not all child pornography involves children being raped and indeed that some of it does not involve even images of real children.

Our discussion of child pornography and child sexual abuse in general has to become more nuanced. People (men mostly) have to learn that you do not have to be a mad paedophile beast to commit a sexual offense, that the line you cross when you do is much more delicate and less obvious than much public discourse about beasts and perverts would have you believe and if you are not to cross it you need to be aware of that.