Some, particularly those who have witnessed student activity surrounding such significant social issues as the Vietnam War, civil rights, or apartheid, expressed surprise at such activity. Many observed in dismay the stark contrast between the rowdy protest and the deafening silence on campus for the children who were allegedly sexually assaulted on the hallowed grounds of the athletic facility.

Sadly, however, there are two main reasons that we should not find ourselves surprised by this juxtaposition of silent indifference for the child victims of sexual assault, on the one hand, and massive support for those whose reputations have been sullied by the subsequent allegations, on the other. This disturbing outcry is consistent with how we approach child sexual abuse.

First, this reaction of societal indifference to the reality of child sexual assault is not new. As any child abuse prosecutor will tell you, similar community reaction is par for the course. Often, community support is placed with the alleged perpetrator, a phenomenon whose roots are analogous to those of the Penn State protesters’ support for an allegedly complicit supervisor. Once a child has bravely disclosed sexual abuse by a public figure, the challenge for him or her is often not the trial, but the collateral public fallout; community members often respond hostilely to those who reveal the true nature of a socially integrated sexual offender, one who has gained the community’s trust in order to gain access to and assault children. Prosecutors find themselves preparing families for threats, bullying at school, protests in the media, public rallies in favor of the accused, and courtrooms packed with citizens who vouch for their accused pillar and ignore evidence that supports the accusation. In the face of such a societal reaction, the victim is lost, if not targeted.

Why does this occur? Perhaps it is public denial, fueled by the desire to believe that this could not take place in one’s community, that one could not so egregiously have misjudged the perpetrator. Perhaps it is the scheming of the offenders, who count on this indifference and often select and groom victims who are at-risk, more vulnerable, and unlikely to be believed or valued. It could be fear, incited by the personalization of what before were just numbers: some studies report that 25 percent of girls and 16 percent of boys experience sexual abuse during childhood. It also could be the attempt of ordinary people to distance themselves from the horror and insidiousness of child sexual abuse, modeling the diverting eyes of adults who suspect—or, in this case, witness—and ignore inappropriate contact between adults and children.

The second reason we should not be surprised by the callousness of Penn State’s protesting students may be a new one: they have been raised in a culture that has normalized children’s sexual objectification, defined by the American Psychological Association as “being made into a thing for others’ sexual use.”

This generation has so regularly witnessed the sexualization of children that they have become numb to it. This is not a general complaint on the place of sexuality in media today. This is a more refined concern about the unhealthy messaging portraying children “as commodity” available for the consumption of adults. As a society, we have bombarded them with so many images and messages through the internet and various media platforms that they are not shocked by it. They have developed in a society where the average age at which girls and boys become involved in prostitution is between 11 and 14, and where a multibillion-dollar child pornography industry thrives. They have attended schools where their objectification is omnipresent: recently, the American Association of University Women released a study indicating that 48 percent of 7^th- through 12^th-graders surveyed experienced sexual harassment in the 2010–2011 school year. We subject them to media that label cases of adults sending sexual pictures to children, or asking them to do the same, as “sexting” rather than calling it what it is: solicitation, luring, or grooming. We glorify the concept of adult-child sexual relations by using titles such as “barely legal” or by selling child-size “pimp” and “prostitute” costumes at Halloween.

This disturbing trend has developed despite alarms being sounded by organizations such as the American Psychological Association, which has warned of the many negative consequences of the sexual objectification of girls; the National Coalition to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation, which has issued a National Plan of Prevention calling for an end to the normalization of this behavior; and numerous researchers and authors who have written extensively on the negative effects of our “culture’s” shortening childhood and endorsing the sexual objectification of our children at younger and younger ages.

Having created and perpetuated this cultural climate, are we now surprised that some of the young adults it produced do not understand the true nature and gravity of the sexual abuse of children? Are we now surprised that some of these young adults express indifference to the kind of abuse that increases victims’ risk for short-term and long-term physical and psychological damage? How can we be? Not only have we groomed the victims for these offenders, we have groomed the generation for indifference.

There is much to be learned from the events unfolding at Penn State, regarding not the offense but the response to it. Some of the students at Penn State are missing the real story: that, at its core, this is not a case about personnel decisions or a game; this is a case about rape, about a young, groomed, weak, and vulnerable boy possibly being anally penetrated by a trusted adult against a shower wall; and about an allegedly indifferent community of professionals, lawyers, staff, and other officials, who found it easier to divert their attention from the abuse than to face its ugliness.

However, these college students are not the only ones missing the real story. The rest of us are, as well. The other real story is about responsibility and accountability, and not just of the individuals and institutions who considered these children expendable. We must acknowledge our collective responsibility for having created a society filled with negative, unhealthy sexual images that foster the sexual commoditization of children.

There is hope, however. It can be found in the students who held candlelight vigils to support victims of child abuse and in the courage of Penn State’s trustees to take dramatic steps to increase accountability, despite the expected resistance to this countercultural approach. More broadly, it can be seen in the Declaration of Rome, an action plan arising out of the recent international Forum on the Abuse of Children’s Rights, which recommends, among other things, that “citizens in every country be made more . . . aware regarding the abuse and sexual exploitation of children, and that they be urged to report.” Hope also can be found in the revival of long-dormant statutes to penalize adults for failing to report their suspicions of sexual abuse to the authorities.

If these students want a cause to get behind, let me suggest this one: raising awareness of the despicable reality of child sexual abuse. More tangibly, they can focus on the law, which reflects the values of a society. Demand that these mandated reporting statutes, which exist across the country, actually be enforced. Demand that such laws be paired with penalties to deter the indifference. Most importantly, demand to live in a society that reflects the inherent dignity of children and our communal responsibility to protect them.


Mary Graw Leary is an associate professor in the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America.

Receive Public Discourse by email, become a fan of Public Discourse on Facebook, follow Public Discourse on Twitter, and sign up for the Public Discourse RSS feed.

Support the work of Public Discourse by making a secure donation to The Witherspoon Institute.

Copyright 2011 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

Before there can be any intelligent discussion about self-produced child pornography, there must be a common understanding of the images in question. First, images properly considered for prosecution are not “borderline” images, but must meet the definition of child pornography. For many jurisdictions, although not all, there is a fairly candid definition of child pornography referencing depictions of sexually explicit conduct that include graphic depictions of sexual activity or lascivious exhibitions of the genitals or pubic areas. Secondly, self-produced child pornography only references situations in which a minor creates the image with no encouragement or coercion from an adult. When there is such pressure, the child is clearly the victim of exploitation or enticement and any consideration of prosecuting the juvenile is misplaced. Finally we need to stop using the term “sexting.” This word was created by the media to sensationalize a serious, multi-faceted problem. Furthermore, the media has used the term to over-generalize and place under one heading such diverse behaviors as one minor sending one picture to a perceived significant other, a minor taking pictures of more than just himself engaged in sexually explicit conduct and distributing them to others, a minor posting such pictures on a web site, an older teen asking (coercing) his or her girlfriend or boyfriend for such pictures, and an adult possessing such pictures. These are all very different behaviors and calling them all “sexting” brings us no closer to understanding their legal and social significance.

The proposed Vermont legislation, although no doubt well-intended, is particularly problematic and risks a number of long-term consequences. First, this legislation assumes that the children in the images are not harmed. This view ignores what the Supreme Court and the United States Congress have referenced: the unique harm of child pornography is not only the activity captured in the image, but the fact that it is memorialized out of the control of the child subject for eternity. It is the perpetuity of the victimization which is uniquely devastating to these children. One need look no further than the tragic suicide of an Ohio teen after a former boyfriend distributed a picture of her over the Internet to see the manifestation of the harm. Consistent with research in the area of non-self-produced child pornography, these children are likely to experience depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and other effects from the fact that these images will be circulating forever.

Second, this legislation risks creating impediments to law enforcement’s ability to investigate suspected child sexual exploitation. Before the phenomenon of self-produced child pornography, there were many images in which the children appeared to be willing subjects. However, it is not until there is an investigation into the production of a particular image that we can know the actual situation. Circumstances often include sexual assault, grooming, blackmail, bullying, domestic violence, prostitution, etc. If these self-produced images are not considered child pornography, then law enforcement may be unable to investigate them. An officer cannot obtain a search warrant if he or she does not have probable cause to do so. If the image is all the officer has to start an investigation, and this legislation is passed, in Vermont the officer may not have any evidence of a child pornography crime. The officer’s ability to obtain a search warrant may be compromised and society risks missing an opportunity, often the only opportunity, to investigate and rescue the child from continued molestation, blackmailing, or exploitation.

Third, this legislation provides a built-in defense for the ultimate consumer of these images: the pedophile. Once these images are on the Internet they make their way to the newsgroups, peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, and email of those who use these images to validate their own sexual proclivities for children. When caught with such an image, a defendant will claim (indeed, such a defense has already been suggested) that it was “voluntarily produced” and, therefore, does not meet the definition of child pornography. For how can something not be child pornography with the first possessor, but become child pornography five consumers down the distribution chain? Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition has been read to hold that virtual child pornography is protected speech because it does not harm children in production. The logical extension of that argument is that self-produced images are not child pornography because the children within are not “harmed in production.” While such an assertion is, in my view, incorrect this defense claim is arguably strengthened by this proposed Vermont legislation when it excludes self-produced images from the crime of child pornography. Therefore, an adult possessor of such a self-produced image could be able to argue that he or she indeed possesses protected “speech.”

This leads to recognition of an important collateral effect of such a position. There was a time in our nation when society refused to acknowledge the sexual abuse and exploitation of children and women. Even after we recognized this victimization, there was a view that some children and women who appeared less virtuous, were worthy of less protection. Thankfully, we are moving away from this kind of “she’s a bad kid” or “she deserved it for the way she behaves” mentality. Indeed, our child abuse and pornography laws reflect a basic understanding that children cannot consent to sexual abuse and exploitation and that they all deserve protection. All children in pornographic images are victimized when these images are viewed throughout the Internet. This kind of legislation which labels some child pornography as illegal, and others not, risks a return to an era where the law will protect some children (i.e. those who are perceived to be virtuous) but not those who we think “asked for it.” This is wrong. All children have an inherent dignity and when they are sexually exploited, we should continue to treat the further exploitation as wrong. While concerns about unwise prosecution need to be addressed, this legislation’s costs to the future protection of these same children is too high.

Fourth, the Vermont legislation ignores the fact that this activity floods the marketplace with exponentially more images of child sexual exploitation. The need to shut down the marketplace for child pornography was paramount to the Supreme Court in both Osborne v. Ohio and New York v. Ferber. This legislation further ignores what we know from research: these images are used to validate offenders’ activities, groom children, desensitize children, and fuel offender fantasies and crimes against children. Equally insidious, this flooding of the market desensitizes us all to the ongoing commodification of children as sexual objects for the benefit of adult sexual arousal. The effect of such a flooding is to regard children as merely means to adult ends, rather than individuals with inherent dignity.

The problem of child self-exploitation is indeed a complex one. It is tempting to label it a parenting issue and remove it from a concern of the government or society as a whole. The solution is for society and its institutions (educational, social service, religious, law enforcement, legal, civic), to come together and form a considered strategy that encourages prevention and a smart response when prevention fails. If we want to prevent child pornography, we must examine the normalization of the sexual exploitation of children in the mainstream media and in our lives. No solution can ignore that the society in which we have asked out children to live is saturated with the message that their value is inherently tied to their sexualization.

What is the proper response if child pornography prevention fails? Surely it rests not with any one social institution, including the prosecutor’s office. We should embrace all the tools at society’s disposal, not eliminate one. While we should be careful to avoid registration of such juveniles as sexual offenders and prevent inappropriate prosecutions, the proper solution is to develop prosecutorial policy and wisely employ prosecutorial discretion. Public prosecutors should develop considered policies that establish protocols for the narrow circumstances when juvenile adjudication may be appropriate, and should exercise their discretion to do so only when necessary. However, decriminalizing such actions is dangerous and irresponsible.. Effectively legalizing a form of child exploitation will imperil the advancements we have made in our fight against child exploitation and the very safety of the children we must protect.

¹ http://www.legislate.vt.us/docs/2010bills/senate/S-125.pdf. These statutes include Use of Child in a Sexual Performance; Promoting a Recording of Sexual Conduct; Possession of Child Pornography.


Mary Graw Leary is an associate professor in the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America. She is the author of Self-Produced Child Pornography: The Appropriate Societal Response to Juvenile Self Exploitation, Virginia Journal of Social Policy and the Law, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2008.

Copyright 2009 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

The crisis for our youth at this time in our history threatens a generation of internet-savvy minors. Reported instances of suspected online child sexual exploitation continue every year, surpassing 500,000 such events in 2007. Child pornography is a multi-billion-dollar industry, appearing in many media, including on computers and cellular phones, items to which a significant portion of youth have access. Sex trafficking, meanwhile, has been labeled the largest subcategory of modern day slavery by the State Department. How we as a government and as a society respond to the increased risk of sexual exploitation of children will no doubt have effects long outlasting any one administration.

There is good news. Late last year, the federal government enacted the PROTECT (Providing Resources, Officers, and Technology to Eradicate Cyber Threat to) Our Children Act of 2008. This bipartisan legislation provided numerous measures to combat child sexual exploitation. The bill calls for the establishment of a “National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction.” The Act envisions a comprehensive and long-range strategy that seeks to reduce child exploitation through preventative and interdictive approaches. Because of the national strategy’s influence on resource allocation and prioritizing programs, the impact of this strategy will be profound. The goals outlined for the strategy are ambitious, but commensurate with the national treasure to be protected: our nation’s children.

The legislation allows the Attorney General one year to submit the initial strategy to Congress (which will be resubmitted every two years). It requires the strategy to include comprehensive long-range goals for child sexual exploitation reduction as well as measurable objectives designed to meet the aforementioned goals. The Department of Justice must review past policies and work as well as plan future programs relating to child exploitation. These include its inter-jurisdictional coordination with international, federal, state, local and private sector entities on both prevention and interdiction. The Act notably includes directives on prevention, the collection of comprehensive data on the current crisis, and consideration of future trends and challenges. The Attorney General is tasked not only with executing this broad vision, but selecting a senior official responsible for coordinating and developing the National Strategy. The Act also allots one year for the National Institute of Justice to prepare and submit a report to Congress identifying investigative factors that reliably indicate the level of risk of potential offenders.

The importance of developing this strategy and report makes 2009 a critical year for our children. It is not novel for presidents or cabinet officials to possess authority of broad magnitude, potentially affecting the lives of numerous citizens. Indeed, the Secretary of Defense has the lives of our service members in his hands and the Secretary of Health and Human Services develops policies directly affecting the well being of millions of vulnerable people. However, the implications of this strategy potentially exceed even these precedents. To develop a flawed strategy is to risk losing a generation. Consequently, by focusing on prevention and cross-jurisdictional coordination, the Act allows the Attorney General not just to respond to the problem of child sexual exploitation with penological solutions, but to address the broader atmosphere surrounding such exploitation.

Child sexual exploitation is a complex problem occurring in many forms. While it is criminal to exploit a child sexually, the temptation to focus narrowly on reactive criminal penalties must be resisted. The problem is more than an issue of criminality and penological response. Children are not victimized in a vacuum. Certain societal realities exist that permit the conceptualization of children as sexual objects to be consumed for adult arousal. Any comprehensive review of both the problem and its solution is of little value if it fails to assess the climate in which we live.

Many social influences contribute to child sexual exploitation. I focus on the realities of increasing sexualization of children and objectification of persons manifested through both popular culture media and pornography. These forces can legitimize treating others as commodities—as means to an end—permitting society to be desensitized to the sexual objectification even of young children. These confusing cultural messages can also weaken children’s abilities to deflect such exploitation and influence their self-conceptualization as such objects.

While the “adult sex industry” asserts that the expansion of pornography and its increasing social acceptance has only positive effects on society, a growing body of analysis suggests that today’s pornography increasingly depicts violent sex acts involving men dominating women. While there is no unanimity in studies of the effects of pornography, recent meta-analysis has found “substantial data showing pornography correlates with various negative outcomes,” including increased risk for sexual deviancy, difficulty in intimate relationships, and damage to family life. Additionally, the blurring of the line between legal adult pornography and child pornography is apparent in the explicit marketing of pornography with youthful-looking models in settings with youth-based themes.

A growing body of research comments on the potential negative effects of the proliferation of pornography on juveniles. “Evidence indicates that pornography and related sexual media can influence sexual violence, sexual attitudes, moral values, and sexual activity of children and youth.” The existence of the Internet means that children, previously unexposed to such material, are now surrounded by it. Today’s youth have access to the Internet and with that access, if unrestricted, comes unlimited access (wanted or not) to countless pornographic websites. Because pornography patterns are established during adolescence and rapidly develop in early adulthood, experts argue that accessing pictures and text with degrading or exploitive sexual content may adversely impact the sexual and emotional development of children, or function as a catalyst causing them to act in sexually problematic ways.

It is not only the substance of contemporary pornography that is problematic, but the direction of its migration into mainstream society. What is happening to our society has been referred to as “pornification” or “pornographication.” As Pamela Paul documents in her examination of pornography in contemporary American culture, Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships and Our Families, pornography has evolved into the “norm,” no longer residing on the fringes of social acceptability. Indeed, a recent study concluded that pornography’s acceptance among young adults has reached unprecedented levels. This is true notwithstanding its increase in violence and depictions of male domination over women. Pornography has reached “near mainstream status in American culture.” Consider children’s pimp and prostitute Halloween costumes, the glorification of the words “pimp” and “pimping” as acceptable in award-winning music titles, prime-time television programming and films, media featuring college-age women and teens’ drunken debauchery, and internet web sites counting down the minutes until teen idols obtain the age of eighteen. (For more on pornification, see Pamela Paul’s recent paper delivered at the Witherspoon Institute conference “The Social Costs of Pornography.”)

The logical inference from these anecdotal realities is supported by growing research and analysis. The American Psychological Association (APA) has documented the deleterious effects of media its Report on the Sexualization of Girls. The APA cautions that the content of mainstream media is potentially damaging to girls. The potential cognitive effect of this material is a self-objectification in which chronic attention is given to physical appearance, thus leaving fewer cognitive resources for other mental or physical activities. The mental effects can include eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression. Finally, far from leading to a healthy sexual development, the APA reports that sexual objectification leads to a diminished sexual understanding.

These are just a few of the factors affecting the sexual objectification and exploitation of children. Such effects influence both the demand and supply aspects of exploitation. A challenge for the national strategy is to respond comprehensively. To do this, it must assess the societal climate allowing the sexual objectification of children. The strategy need not debate the value of this material to adults, but must acknowledge the direct and indirect effects on our children and explore constitutional ways to protect them.

To include these realities in a national strategy will require fortitude. First, to comment on the role of mainstream media and increasingly mainstream pornography is to invoke certain wrath from some absolutist free speech advocates. Indeed, the constitutional questions must be examined. However, the Constitution should not be used as a reason to forbid even examining these difficult questions. Rather, it should be used with other tools to inform a thoughtful and considered analysis of these contemporary challenges.

Second, to do so will mean to come into direct conflict with the powerful adult entertainment industry’s bottom line. This is a highly profitable industry whose own trade association, the Free Speech Coalition, has a mission to “protect and support the growth and well-being of the adult entertainment community.” The “Vision Statement” of the Free Speech Coalition includes unabashedly becoming “a national association that helps limit the legal risks of being an adult business [and] increases the profitability of its members.” With such goals, the trade association boasts “the adult Internet is the fastest expanding segment of the U.S. adult entertainment market, having grown from a $1 billion dollar industry in 2002 to a $2.5 billion industry today. . .The number of adult entertainment Websites . . . was more than 17 times greater in 2004 than it was just four years earlier, surging from approximately 88,000 in 2000 to nearly 1.6 million sites in 2004.” An industry with such a financial stake will be a formidable opponent to any strategy that seeks at least to acknowledge the presence of such material as having deleterious effects on society and on children.

The risks of sexual exploitation appear to be on the rise, making our moment unparalleled in its importance to our culture and children. One year has been allotted to develop an initial strategy that will direct government action and affect our societal and cultural responses to a critical problem documented by researchers, scholars, authors, and professional associations of all disciplines. The person selected to coordinate this effort must be sensitive to the limits of government’s ability to solve all social ills, but at the same time bold and courageous enough to outline all the direct and indirect contributors to child sexual exploitation. President Obama stated in his weekly radio address the day after assuming office that 2009 commences “in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action.” At the end of January he called for “bold” action for the economy. The same must also be true for our children.

Mary Graw Leary is an associate professor in the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America.

Copyright 2009 the Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.