The origins of the child porn panic

An excerpt from one of many excellent pieces on the website, "Inquisition 21st Century"

The child pornography panic started in 1976 when Robin Lloyd, who was a correspondent for NBC, published a book For Money or Love: Boy Prostitution in America. Lloyd initially put forward a figure of 30,000 male child prostitutes working in the USA at that time. The figure was never scientifically or empirically proven and was, according to the author, a ‘gut hunch’ that he used to throw at law enforcement officers to gauge their reaction. They came back that the figure was possibly too conservative so he increased it tenfold and came up with the figure of 300,000 underaged male prostitutes. He also put forward the notion in the book, again with no research, that many of them were also involved in pornography and thus the origins of the child pornography panic were sown.

Later on, when he appeared before the Illinois Legislative Investigating Commission, which was investigating the claims, he admitted that he couldn’t substantiate the figures nor could he supply any sources for them. As a journalist, he broke just about every rule in the book but, as a sensationalist, he was, well, sensational.

His mythical figure of 300,000 children involved in pornography was taken up by Judianne Densen-Gerber, the director of Odyssey House, a chain of residential treatment clinics for drug addicts - it was also used by the European Council of Ministers who in a report on child exploitation in 1986 claimed that: ‘a study of boy prostitutes had suggested that there were 300,000 boy prostitutes in the United States, many of whom are designated runaways’.

Densen-Gerber used this figure to extrapolate her own figures, reasoning that there must be at least as many females as males involved in the industry, which took the figure up to 600,000 and then she doubled it again because she reckoned that there must be twice as many in reality, as only half the real number would be detected. In this way she arrived at the mystical figure of 1.2 million children involved in the production of child pornography in the USA alone. She used this figure as definitive when she appeared before a congressional committee in 1977 and again when she gave evidence to the UK House of Commons Committee, which led to the 1978 Protection of Children Act, on which Operation Ore was based.

Judianne Densen-Gerber was a controversial figure, but one who had, through the sheer force of her personality, the ear and patronage of various powerful politicians who were coerced into supporting her drug rehabilitation empire, Odyssey House, which she’d started in 1966. By the time she found her new role as the guardian of youth her empire was being given $3,000,000 a year in federal and state funding and had operations running all over the US and Australia. But it began to unravel in 1979 when Attorney General Robert Abrams launched an investigation into alleged financial mismanagement at Odyssey after former staff members and patients claimed that private donations and government funds were used to maintain Densen-Gerber's jet-set lifestyle

Moreover, there was considerable disquiet about the intensely racist and abusive methods she used in her organization. For example, she was reported to have tied young black people to chairs and then invited the white members of her facility to spit on them. Her Mabon program on Ward's Island, supposedly to assist addicted mothers had included women who were not addicts but needed temporary shelter for themselves and their children to shield them from abusive partners. On at least three occasions, when these women tried to leave, Densen-Gerber ordered her staff to keep them in the program by refusing to release their children, as she needed the money. Mobilization for Youth had to obtain a writ of habeas corpus to get two of the children returned to their mother. *

She was also exploiting two teenage prostitutes, who were not addicts, in national-television appearances instead of helping them. The two young women were housed and counted as addicts to help obtain extra funding. They were subjected to strip searches, including rectal examinations, when they entered and left the building. Their personal belongings were confiscated, and they were forced to wear signs round their necks with humiliating messages written on them and donkey’s ears if they complained about their treatment or broke one of her myriad rules.

Her staff had to pledge their personal loyalty to her, including lighting candles to honour her, and she used the inmates as personal servants catering to her every whim. Many of the inmates were not allowed to leave even after their treatment program had finished in order to increase the headcount and thus the funding. The treatment itself was disorganized and unclear and, in most instances the staff themselves had no idea how to implement it. The inmates wrote their own evaluations and there were no follow-ups to determine whether the discharged inmates had relapsed. She would not allow the inmates to have any physical contact and even holding hands would result in harsh sanctions.

She once famously remarked “There are times when, as in war, children must be sacrificed for other long range ends.” This is a slogan that seems to have been taken to heart by many of the people who are making such a good living out of the child porn panic.

She had tried to link the issue of child pornography and drug abuse by stating that it was because of youthful sexual experiences that many people went on to become addicts. A viewpoint that is still enthusiastically endorsed in government and ‘child care’ circles even today. Many people have asserted, with no little justification, that she started her child porn crusade in order to deflect the public’s attention away from the more unsavory aspects of her life. Eventually the Adams enquiry found she was indeed misusing the funds, which she promised to pay back but never did. She died in 2005 in ignominy.

To further her crusade, she teamed up with Sergeant Lloyd Martin, a vice cop in the Los Angeles Police Department and himself a controversial figure. He began working in the field of sexual exploitation of children in 1971 in Los Angeles after being appointed by Ed Davis who was then the chief of police. He was assigned to the pornography squad in 1973 and founded the Sexually Exploited Child (SEC) unit in 1976.

Martin pushed for every police department in the country to set up a Sexually Exploited Child unit, which has pretty much happened, plus more: there are now a considerable number of both state and federal units, for example the FBI's undercover operation, code-named ‘Innocent Images’. Other agencies include the US Customs Cyber smuggling Center, and the International Child Pornography Investigation and Coordination Center, founded in 1996. In 1999, the FBI increased its number of online child pornography task forces from one to ten. Just about every police force (including those in Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand) now has its own child pornography and/or child sexual abuse unit. Estimates put the number of police officers alone working in this field at over 50,000 and that does not include customs agents, the FBI, USPIS and so on.

Martin admitted that children can and do initiate sexual activity with adults. In his testimony at the Kildee-Murphy hearings that preceded the first child pornography statute, he said, “The most difficult concept for most people to understand and accept is that very often these children are consenting partners in the sexual activity. In some cases they initiate the sexual activity with direct propositions or with seductive behavior.” Which rather puts paid to the assertion that all child-adult relationships are abusive. Particularly when he followed it up by saying: “Only 1 case in 200 involves a child who is the victim of force.” He also notes that that the relationship between a man and boy is often very warm and affectionate. His definition of a paedophile, which not surprisingly hasn’t been echoed by other members of the child abuse industry, is: “Somebody paying more attention to the child than the parent would.”

He seemed to have little interest in heterosexual paedophiles, but directed his ire instead at homosexual relationships. He covered up his intense homophobia by saying that he was only after men who had relationships with boys, an action which he reckoned was worse than death. Because, by his reasoning, death was over quickly but the scars of an adolescent (or indeed any) homosexual relationship will live with the person for ever.

Martin later had to take psychiatric leave from his post at the LAPD and was finally forced to quit for harassing witnesses and, unsurprisingly, falsifying evidence.

Gerber-Densen and Martin bounced around the USA in 1976 and 1977 making more and more outrageous claims, culminating in Martin stating on television that "pedophiles actually wait for babies to be born so that, just minutes after birth, they can grab the post-fetuses and sexually victimize them." ** He also went on to claim that ‘police have found evidence that Mexican children are being smuggled into California in specially constructed cars. They lay eight children under the floorboards and fender wells, they stuff those kids in. Then they take them across the border, put them into a hotel, and clean them up’. He said that these children were smuggled in for use by sadists ‘who can only achieve sexual gratification by torture and killing’. Densen-Gerber, not to be outdone, said that foreign children are smuggled into America ‘primarily for the purpose of killing. An American youngster has a school record and a family. But if a child has been taken off the streets of Guadalajara or Acapulco, it's much easier." She also claimed that American children are being sold to rich Arabs because ‘in their world, blond, fair-haired children would get a higher price’. Which, in my mind contradicted her previous assertion regarding American kids.

The fact that these claims were never substantiated, nor - despite millions of dollars being pumped into investigations – has there has never been a proven case of a single ‘snuff’ movie being made, didn’t stop the press from getting in on the act. In the national periodicals during 1977 dozens of articles appeared; even the New York Times, a newspaper not known for sensationalism, printed 27 articles that year compared to one in the previous 2 years.

A Time article on April 4 1977, called ‘Child's Garden of Perversity’, described horrific scenes such as a movie of a ‘ten-year-old girl and her eight-year-old brother in fellatio and intercourse’. It was later found to be false. And in May 1977, the Chicago Tribune reported that ‘child pornography has become a nation-wide multi-million dollar racket that is luring thousands of juveniles into lives of prostitution’ and exploiting up to 100,000 children at any time. Again it was a lie.

This press hysteria culminated in May 1977 in the popular television journalistic series ‘Sixty Minutes’, devoting a program to child pornography. This was so shocking that a flood of letters to politicians ensued, even though it was subsequently proved to be untrue as well.

Other firebrands emerged, again primarily targeted at the gay community but under the child abuse banner, like Anita Bryant. Although she did not testify at the Kildee-Murphy hearings, she screamed loudly enough about the homosexual threat to children to have her viewpoint heard and the press loved quoting her. It is interesting to note that her charity, the ‘Ministries for Counseling Homosexuals’ was later charged with financial mismanagement; 1978 tax returns show that the Ministries raised $1 million, of which $450,000 was spent on ‘direct fees for raising contributions’, including the anti-porn and anti-child abuse activities of the, illegal, subsidiary Protect America's Children. Only $150 was ever spent on counseling.

Foremost amongst the politicians was Congressman Mario Biaggi, who was also noteworthy after having to resign from congress after being found guilty of embezzling public funds, diverting defence contracts and tax evasion. He was actually using the subject of child porn to prove how unworkable Reagenomics were, so he turned it into a political bunfight. He was forever interviewing almost tearful social workers who were complaining that their child protection activities were under threat because of the budget cuts. He opined: “There is a highly sophisticated and organized child pornography industry operating in this nation. It has already captured an estimated 300,000 children nationally as victims. It has produced 264 different publications sold nationally, depicting pornographic activities involving children as young as three years old. The industry is both national and international in scope. Large quantities of pornographic materials are imported each year, primarily from Europe. Hundreds of children from Mexico are smuggled into this nation each year to engage in child pornography.”

If indeed the market was this size, then you’d expect the child pornographers to have an army of lawyers and lobbyists fighting for them. Think of all the other things that are intrinsically bad for society and the planet that are not sanctioned, even encouraged, because they can muster the funds, legal clout and the political wherewithal to fight their corner. There are armies of lawyers and lobbyists in Washington who’d take up any banner as long as the pay was right. Yet not a single person spoke up for the industry, which, in itself should have set alarms bells ringing as to the real size of the market. Even at this early stage the people in the know must have realized they were grossly exaggerating the market but, obviously, it didn’t suit their purposes to let the cat out of the bag.

On the back of this hysteria a subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives was formed, before which both Densen-Gerber and Martin appeared and they held a series of hearings on the subject which lasted until late that year. The chairman of the committee was Representative John Conyers Jr., who had organized the hearings to pass judgment on the proposal of Representatives Kildee and Murphy for a first Federal law against child pornography. Conyers took the figure of children involved in the ‘industry’ from Densen-Gerber and doubled it again because it didn’t include, at least according to him, all the 16 and 17 year olds involved, even though they’d supposedly been counted in already. CONTINUE READING