[part 4]

New laws enacted in 1984 forbid the trade of child pornography regardless of whether any money changed hands, though possession still remained legal. In fact, as recently as 1990, private possession of child pornography was legal in 44 of the 50 states, despite the inescapable fact that all such materials were, by necessity, illegally produced and/or illegally acquired.

Technology has for some time now played a key role in greatly expanding the availability of child pornography. The Polaroid camera, for example, eliminated the need for child pornographers to have access to complicit photo labs. Home video cameras did likewise for moving images. Personal computers, digital cameras, web cams, scanners, and - especially - the Internet, have vastly expanded the reach of child pornography networks.

In the age of the Internet, child pornography is a booming business. The Los Angeles Times noted in December of 1999 that: "the number of investigations for Internet-related child pornography is soaring. The FBI launched 1,125 such inquiries this year, more than twice as many as last year." In the wake of this rising tide, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling on December 17, 1999 which struck a serious blow to the prosecution of child pornography cases.

As the Times reported, the decision stipulated that "the government cannot prohibit computer-generated sexual images that only appear to be pictures of children." A later report noted that appeals court judge Donald Molloy stated that the First Amendment bars the government from criminalizing the generation of "images of fictitious children engaged in imaginary but explicit sexual conduct."

On January 22, 2001, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of the case. Should the presidential appointers on the high court choose to affirm the decision of the lower court, prosecution of child pornography cases will become all but impossible in all fifty states. Until that time, prosecutors are "barred from bringing virtual-child pornography cases in California and the eight other Western states within the jurisdiction of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals."

As critics have noted, graphics technology now available to the general public is so sophisticated that it is virtually impossible to determine if an image has been digitally altered, and if therefore any actual children were involved in the generation of the image. Justice Department lawyers argued that very point, noting that the "government may find it impossible in many cases to prove that a pornographic image is of a real child."

Any good defense attorney could, in other words, raise reasonable doubt as to the authenticity of an image. It could in fact be argued that all such computer images "only appear to be pictures of children." Computer images are not in fact photos, but are digital computer files that display as a facsimile of the original photo. A sound legal argument could be made that all digitally transferred and displayed child pornography is therefore legal, as it doesn't represent 'real children.'

That should come as great news to the international child pornography networks, given that the United States is their number-one market. According to investigative author Gordon Thomas, the majority of child pornography produced worldwide is targeted at the U.S., where by the early 1990s it was already a $3 billion a year business, and growing.

Thomas claims that - according to law enforcement figures - over 22 million copies of child pornography videos were sold or rented in the U.S. in 1991. He also writes that much of that pornographic material is produced here, where it is "part of the largest segment of movie making in the United States." Jan Hollingsworth concurs with that figure, describing child pornography as: "A three-billion-dollar - per year - U.S. industry that grossed twice that worldwide. It [is] bigger than Disney. Much bigger."

Speaking of Disney, Thomas notes that child porn videos are frequently trafficked internationally by deceptively packaging them as Disney videos. Strangely enough, the first man to benefit from the circuit court decision was Patrick J. Naughton. You may remember him as the executive with the Walt

Disney Co. who ran one of the company's kid-friendly web sites. Naughton was arrested and later tried on child pornography charges.

He was convicted on December 16, just one day before the decision was handed down in the case before the circuit court. Within hours of the appeals court ruling, Naughton was released by federal prosecutors on $100,000 bail. Despite the fact that he was, as the Times acknowledged, convicted of "possessing pictures of actual children," the decision was made to release him "until the impact of the court's ruling can be sorted out," illustrating the significant undermining of existing law that the court ruling portends.

Closely associated with child pornography is, of course, child abuse. It should go without saying that all kids used in child pornography are abused children, their abuse recorded on film and tape for the depraved enjoyment of other child abusers. Also closely associated with child pornography is the always controversial issue of 'missing children.'

There is considerable debate as to whether there is a problem in this country with missing children. Some claim that 200,000 or more children disappear without a trace every year. Others steadfastly maintain that numbers such as those are grossly inflated, and that abduction of children by strangers with bad intent is actually quite rare.

The problem is that nobody really knows for sure, since the FBI - America's compiler of crime statistics - doesn't bother to keep track. As Ted Gunderson, former FBI station chief for Los Angeles, has stated: "The FBI has an accurate count on the number of automobiles stolen every year. It knows the number of homicides, rapes and robberies, but the FBI has no idea of the number of children that disappear every year. They simply do not ask for the statistics."

Many believe that the numbers aren't compiled because the FBI doesn't want to know - or more accurately, the FBI doesn't want the American people to know. What is known though is that reports of child abuse have skyrocketed. Between 1963 and 1988, reported cases of child abuse rose from 150,000 to 2,000,000 per year, a 1300% increase in just a quarter-century.

Child abuse may in fact be the most prevalent - and possibly the most significant - crime in American society, given that it provides the breeding ground for so much of the more visible crime plaguing Western culture. As Thomas reports: "over 90 percent of the teenage prison population are now victims of child abuse," and that population is growing rapidly.

In the wake of this rising tide, the Los Angeles Times reported in March 2001 that: "President [a clearly inappropriate use of the word] Bush's budget will trim a program aimed at preventing child abuse and cut some child care spending ... A child abuse prevention program will see an 18% cut." That money will apparently be much better spent on handing out tax breaks for the wealthy and building missile defense shields ... but here I digress.

Author and e-zine editor Robert Sterling has written of what he refers to as "a pattern of trivialization of child molestation evidence" that seems to characterize high-profile media stories. He points out, for instance, that in the highly publicized Woody Allen and Mia Farrow child custody case, all the attention was focused on Allen's illicit romance with Soon-yi Previn.

Almost entirely ignored in the media coverage was the fact that Allen was also charged with molesting his own seven-year-old adopted daughter, Dylan. While the press dismissed those allegations as unfounded and unworthy of reporting, Sterling notes that "Connecticut state authorities, based on the testimony of Dylan and others, have stated that they do believe Woody did molest her, but decided not to prosecute anyway," allegedly to spare the child any further trauma.

Sterling also takes note of the "case of the Menendez brothers, who, after admitting to murdering their parents, painfully revealed that they were ruthlessly abused and molested by them over the years." Their claims were never fully investigated and the boys were "viciously demonized for trying to escape the murder charges and accused of making up their abuse," though there was in fact clear evidence of that abuse, according to a private investigator who worked on the case.

Also noted is the kid-gloves treatment afforded Michael Jackson when he was charged with molestation: "even though the accusations against him are widely believed to be true, [they] are merely passed off with a laugh among other smirking monologue jokes on Jay Leno." And of course, though unmentioned by Sterling, sister LaToya was ridiculed by the media when she came forward with stories about the sexual abuse suffered by the Jackson kids at the hands of their father.

Sterling references other cases as well, including the over-hyped au-pair trial in which evidence of prior abuse of the child by his parents was consistently ignored, and the Susan Smith case, in which the media refused to consider whether her own severe childhood abuse could have been a factor in the murder of her children, despite the fact that her father admitted to the chronic abuse.

Coupled with the fact that the press have consistently downplayed the occurrence of child molestation is the equally disturbing fact that that very same media have actively promoted the sexualization of children - a trend that has been greatly accelerated in recent years, and which serves to legitimize pedophilia.

Taking note of the proliferation of young teen - and even pre-teen - sex symbols, Tom Junod wrote in Esquire that: "the entire culture is besotted with the erotic promise of teenage girls ... The lure of jailbait now supplies the erotic energy to a popular culture desperate for what's new, what's young, what's alive."

The Junod article is, by the way, a profile of Greg Dark, one half of the former 'Dark Brothers' - notorious purveyors of dark-themed, occult-tinged porno films. Dark is rather noteworthy for openly peddling child pornography, in that many of his films featured a very young Traci Lords, who began working with the Dark Brothers at the age of thirteen.

But Dark has put those days long behind him. He is now working comfortably in the mainstream. And he is no longer marketing teen sexuality. No, now he is creating music videos ... for Britney Spears, Mandy Moore and the pre- pubescent Leslie Carter (sister of Aaron Carter and Back Street Boy Nick Carter). That is, according to Dark, a completely different line of work.

Some interesting facts about Dark emerge in the Esquire profile. It is revealed, for instance, that he was raised by a satanist father. Dark's father "used to read to Gregory from the works of Aleister Crowley, the noted satanist, when Gregory was very young." His father's collection of 'black magick' books is one of Dark's most cherished possessions.

Also revealed is that Dark is a master manipulator, as he candidly admits to his interviewer: "And the thing is, I like manipulating people. I'm comfortable manipulating people. I'm good at it." Junod adds that, during Dark's porno days, he "asked people to do things ... curious things ... and they did them." Such is the nature of the man crafting the images of America's teen sex symbols and marketing them to millions of pre-teen fans ... but here again I digress.

Also closely associated with child pornography is the issue of child prostitution, which - make no mistake about it - is a booming business. A&E's "Investigative Reports" has noted that law enforcement figures indicate that there are currently some 600,000 child prostitutes working in the United States and Canada and that $5 billion a year is generated worldwide by pimp organizations specializing in the exploitation of children.

A&E also reported that, throughout North America, there is a "growing use of children in the sex trade," and that young boys make up 51% of that trade. The FBI has, of course, turned a blind eye; for the last quarter-century, "federal prosecutions of major pimp operations have been virtually nonexistent." As Dr. Lois Lee has noted: "It's not a high priority with the FBI to go after kids that are being transported across state lines. It's really a disgrace."

Dr. Lee is the founder of "Children of the Night," an organization devoted to helping repair the shattered lives of child sex trade victims. Her facility, said to be the only one of its kind in the world, has seen 10,000 kids pass through its doors. Fully ninety percent of them have suffered a lifetime of abuse - first at home, and later on the streets and alleys of America's big cities. Most of them suffered their first abuse before the age of three.

Many of these victims are runaways recruited from small towns across the country, then brought to prime child prostitution markets such as Los Angeles

and Las Vegas. Once there, they have an average life span of just seven years; many of them never reach adulthood. For as long as they survive though, they reap enormous financial rewards for their pimps. The younger the child, the more popular they are with the 'Johns,' and therefore the more profitable for their exploiters.

All of this would tend to indicate that America is in something of a state of denial about the proliferation of child molestation, child prostitution, and child pornography rings, which constitute a vast underground in this country. But does this pedophilic underground extend into the halls of power? Is America's political, corporate and military elite hiding a particularly dirty little secret from the American people? A secret that, if exposed, could shatter America's cherished political and economic institutions and bring the house of cards crashing down?

[part 5]