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In Reply to: Re: What I want from this chatboard? posted by Thinker on June 13, 2008 at 09:51:13:
I was reading several posts by you and came to those about child sex. and not to add fuel to the flames, but you are right, you and Sia nara, about several ŽunpopularŽ statements you made. (I hope it is alright to participate in discussions b/c I never joined this group but I discovered this link after reading about Ricky. I admire you all as survivors and will never completely understand how you could have let yourself start up such a evil destructive group, but articles like these help me understand the sexual climate you were in during that time .)
FROM THE HISTORY OF PORNO PHOTOGRAPHY
During the 1970s sex shops from New York to Los Angeles offered explicit materials featuring bestiality, rape and children.
In 1977, Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber told a U.S. Congressional Panel probing the sexual exploitation of children that, "We are dealing with organized crime, the same group of people who filled this country with narcotics..." Dr Densen-Gerber said "kiddie porno was started...in Seattle, Washington, by a man named Tony Eboli, who headed the Genovese family." The doctor apparently refers to Tommy Eboli, also called Tommy Ryan, who was shot to death from ambush as he left the Brooklyn apartment of his mistress. He had fallen out of favor with fellow Mob leaders who invested in a heroin smuggling scheme he engineered that went sour and cost millions. Eboli briefly shared leadership of the Vito Genovese Mafia family with Gerado Catena after Genovese was sent to prison.
Most of the child pornography traded in the late '60s to 1977 was photographed in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. Many photos depicted erotic nudity rather than sex, and about 10-20% of photos in child porn magazines were pirated from nudist magazines, showing children playing innocently.
A number of experts who have observed the child pornography industry from its beginnings to its demise agree that the number of minors shown in commercial child pornography magazines and films did not exceed 5,000 - 7,000 worldwide. Few of the children were runaways, prostitutes or drug addicts. Most came from middle-class homes and knew the adults for whom they posed. Most were between the ages of seven and fourteen. Instances of infants being molested and photographed simultaneously are rare if they've occurred at all.
Claims of child auctions in Amsterdam, toll-free numbers and mail-order houses for ordering child prostitutes, child "snuff" films, satanic molestation rituals in which animals are dismembered, "chains of [American] brothels and bordellos...where children are kept...under lock and key," and motorcycle gang rapes are touted by anti-pornography activists, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, politicians, and others without presenting persuading evidence of such occurences. (Law Professor Lawrence A. Stanley)
Holland, Denmark and Germany produced kiddie porn magazines and films during the late '60s to mid '70s. Few such productions were made in the United States. The approximate number of commercial child pornography magazines produced in the United States and Europe from the late 1960s onward consist of: less than 550 magazines depicting children having sex with other children or adults,; 460 magazines depicting boys nude and less than 100 magazines depicting girls nude.
"Yes, we did publish a couple of child porn mags in the mid'70s," says Rupert James, who works for Peter Theander's Rodox corporation based in Copenhagen, Denmark. "We also did animal-sex mags and films. I suppose that we must have started about 1974 or so and it was all over 1978. One of them was called Children Love, and it went about 30 issues. The original idea was that everybody else was doing it, and in any case, it was supposed to be the softer, affectionate kind of child sex - not rape and brutality...
Bill Margold remembers receiving regular visits from Martin. "One day I queried him about snuff films and if he'd ever seen one. 'There are no such things,' was his response. 'We've created that myth to make you industry look even worse than it is. The only ways we can get the public to believe that you are really rotten is to make them believe that you make snuff films and do kiddie porn'."
In 1975, Houston police found a warehouse full of child porn, including 15,000 slides of boys engaging in gay sex. In 1976, Los Angeles Police found over 260 magazines in adult bookstores that dealt with child sex.
In New York City, Father Bruce Ritter, a Franciscan priest who started Covenant House, reported that "Of the 12,000 kids under 21 who come to...Covenant House for help, fully 60% have been involved in prostitution or pornography."
Some of the boys who came to Covenant House for help in the 1970s featured in magazines such as Lollitots, which showed girls eight to fourteen and Moppits which supposedly showed children three to twelve.
Robin Lloyd, author of the book For Money or Love: Boy Prostitution in America, claimed in the '70s that there were 300,000 boys, aged eight to sixteen, in the pornography and prostitution rackets. Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, whose efforts helped persuade Congress in 1977 to pass the first Sexual Exploitation of Minors Act, noted that Lloyd spoke only of boys, which led her to believe "that if there are 300,000 boys, there must be a like number of girls, but no one has bothered to count them. Lloyd postulated but cannot substantiate that only half the true number of these children is known. "That would put the figure closer to 1,200,000 nationwide - a figure that is not improbable... How many ways are there for a twelve-year-old to support himself?"
LA Police Chief Daryl F. Gates told a Congressional panel that organized crime ran the child porn business. "Possibly because of fear of public outrage, they operate through intermediaries, making it difficult to directly connect them with the sale and distribution of pornography involving children." Gates said the use of children in pornography appeared to have initially been the province of child molesters turned pornographers. "However, given the enormous potential for profit and any lessening of vigorous enforcement, it can be predicted that organized crime will become more deeply involved in child pornography."
Soon after child pornography appeared on the shelves of adult bookstores around the country in the mid '70s, "self-appointed moral crusaders and some feminists began storming the country to decry the shameful exploitation of children by child pornographers and adults who engage or desire to engage in sexual activity with children.
Articles and editorials appeared in nearly every newspaper in the United States calling for a stop to child pornography. Within a year or two, in the face of mounting public pressure, distributors and retailers of adult pornography had removed child pornography from their stocks and shelves. The federal government and state legislatures responded by enacting legislation proscribing the production and sale of child pornography and by funding law enforcement efforts to combat it. By the time the first federal child pornography law took effect in February, 1978, the production and commercial distribution of child pornography in the United States had been virtually eliminated." (Law Professor Lawrence A. Stanley in the Cardoza Arts and Entertainment Law Review, 1989, pg. 295.)
Commercially child pornography was virtually eliminated by 1978 though the traffic continued on a small scale. Roland Bouldreault and Larry Nelson ran Le Salon Distributors out of San Francisco - a major shipper of child pornography along with All American Studios, also of the Bay Area. Bare Boys was one of Salon's offerings featuring children as young as eight.
Joseph Jesse Espinoza, who owned distributor J-E Enterprises as well as several Los Angeles area adult book stores, was convicted in 1981 (641 F.2d 153) for trafficking in child pornography.
On March 2nd, 1981, the owner of a Manhattan adult bookstore, Paul Ira Ferber, sold two films devoted to young boy masturbating to an undercover police officer. The first film shows a naked boy lying face down on a bed, rubbing against the bed. He then turns on his back and masturbates twice to ejaculation. Next, lying on his side, he places a dildo between his buttocks as if to insert it into his anus. The second film shows other naked boys, some seven and eight years old, masturbating themselves and each other. At the end of the second film, the main child performer dresses slowly, then picks up some money and holds it towards the camera. (NY v Ferber)
Commercial child pornography ceased in Denmark in 1980 when Danish laws against it were passed. The last child pornography magazines out of Holland appeared in 1982. As in the U.S., videos and photos showing boys and girls have been made in Europe in recent years, but not for commercial distribution.
Still, for all intents and purposes, commercial trafficking in child pornography ceased by 1978 and has played virtually no role since in the mainstream adult industry. "Despite this, the child pornography issue continued to be exploited nationwide by law enforcement officials, moral crusaders and the media. What may have begun as a legitimate concern for the well-being of children quickly turned into a "moral panic" which swept the nation. Currently, child pornography slide shows and "teach-ins" continue to be given by law enforcement personnel, religious groups, Women Against Pornography, and other groups professing the danger that child pornography poses to children and society. Thousands of news articles, exposes, editorials, books, and television programs still proliferate at an astonishing rate, warning parents and children about kidnapping or sexual advances from strangers, neighbors, and, occasionally, relatives.
A person seeking child sex through magazines will probably only find a vast network of postal inspectors and police. There are no sexually oriented publications in the U.S. today which contain ads for child porn. There are no toll-free numbers to order child prostitutes. There are no large networks of individuals, other than public authorities, exchanging child pornography.
A world expert on pedophilia and incest, Dr. Ron Langevin, has been researching sex offenders for 20 years. He says the rate of association between consumption of pornography of any type including child pornography and the commission of sex offenses is low.
"I have recently tabulated the frequency of pornography use among sex offenders seen in our clinic... We did so a few years ago and decided to abandon the question because of the low incidence of such behavior, i.e. it seemed unimportant. In light of the current popular debate on the role of pornography in sexual offenses we started to collect the data again. The results are essentially the same... To predict a predisposition to pedophilia or to the commission of child abuse based on the possession of pornography would be a futile effort."
Many of the politicians, law enforcement officials, and anti-pornography groups who have myths about child pornography found the 1986 Attorney General's Commmission on Pornography receptive to their goals of suppressing sexually oriented materials. The Commission said that "The sexual exploitation of children is the basis for the production and distribution of child pornography... The U.S. is the largest consumer of internationally produced child pornography."
