Images of children: there's no harm in looking

Not only are non-person images defined as child pornography but also non-pornographic images are so defined. The highly respected Max Taylor and Ethel Quayle who published a 10-degree typology of child pornography started with: "Non-erotic and non-sexualised pictures showing children in their underwear, swimming costumes, etc. from either commercial sources or family albums; pictures of children playing in normal settings, in which the context or organisation of pictures by the collector indicates inappropriateness" (Child Pornography: An Internet Crime, 2006). What they're saying here is, the collector is likely a child molester.

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This brings me to the second part of my argument: i.e. there's no harm in looking.

Towards the end of 2015, a South Australian MP was found guilty of one count of accessing pornographic images of little teens.In this case, the prosecutor claimed the accused deliberately looked for pornographic images by typing in a term that "was specific and unambiguously to do with child sex".

I was particularly interested that the matter was concluded some four years after the MP's arrest. It seems a long time for such a relatively minor matter (as will be shown) to be resolved.

The prosecution conceded that the accused spent only "about three minutes" looking at the accessed images but that was "plenty of time to see and realise what was on the screen". The defence countered that the "websites were open only for seconds not minutes". (The evidence supports both sides, thus: the "seconds" of viewing per site aggregated to about three minutes of viewing.)

The accused did not download and save images for future viewing. "There is no physical or reconstructive evidence that any images, videos, documents or files of any description from any of the websites . . . were saved, enlarged, downloaded manually, copied, printed in any other way manipulated."

So what did the accused do that warranted four years of investigation and several trials? According to the evidence given against him, he looked, briefly, at a small number of images.

The irony in this is that concurrently with those trials an enquiry into the institutionalised sexual abuse of children had been hearing evidence about persons who were in a position of trust and authority over children. Of those who were shown to be perpetrators of sex crimes against children in their care, relatively few made images of their victims.

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The crime of child sexual abuse is not in the image, nor is it in the looking; it is in the abusive act itself. The fact is, two classes of people abuse the great majority of children: (1) persons who make it their business to make and sell images of their crimes, (2) family and persons known to the victims, some also make images. Stranger-danger runs a distant third to these groups.

However, no matter how repugnant an image, the distant viewer cannot have had any part in the crime. To argue otherwise, one must demonstrate how those who look at images contribute to the sexual harm done to the subject (or any) children.