Images of children: there's no harm in looking

One argument for criminalising proscribed images is that while ever there is a demand for child pornography, children will be sexually abused in the making and distribution of images. However, linking the one to the other in that way is misleading. Despite the many thousands worldwide who have been found guilty of looking at proscribed images, there is no substantive evidence that child sexual abuse has been proportionately reduced. To the contrary, The Guardian (UK) of April 09 2015 reported that: "child sexual abuse has risen by 60% in last four years". This rise includes only those cases reported to police.

Among several other reasons given for making looking at proscribed images a criminal offence, it is claimed: (a) the child is harmed by the viewer simply by the act of looking and (b) a contact offence may occur against a child at some point in the near, or distant, future (vide Encyclopedia of Forensic Science, 2013).

As to (a)-this is fatuous; it simply doesn't make sense. Let's take as an example some images of a young girl who lives in an Eastern European country (apparently many illegal images are produced in that part of the world). A man in Australia looks, lustfully, at the images. For the looking-is-harmful argument to hold, we are required to believe that the subject girl knows he is looking at her images lustfully: not judicially, as do judge and jury, nor forensically, as do the computer experts who unearth child images.

Then what are we to make of (b)? Imagine the same man looking at all the young beauties on the beach and fantasises about having sex with them. Let's say he takes some photos and adds them to his collection. But he does not act out his fantasies, even though "at some point in the near, or distant, future" he might succumb to the temptation. (A research paper published in 2006 called viewers "offenders-in-waiting".)

Psychologist Christiane Sanderson (2005) suggests that paedophiles look at innocent pictures of children and imagine gratifying their sexual desires. She writes: "In their mind they are just building up a collection and there is nothing illegal in that". Sanderson separates looking at images from acting out the fantasies.

Broadly speaking, looking at children and their images as sexual objects offends against the Christian belief that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully commits adultery in his heart (see Matthew 5:27-28). Furthermore, as Janet Marstine observes (Wiley, 2008): "In some traditions [indigenes of North America and Australia among them], photography is thought to capture the subject's soul".

It is not drawing too long a bow, I think, to suggest that those two concepts form the basis of anti-child pornography law in respect of looking at images.

I do not challenge laws that protect real children from real harm. But I am at one with Criminologist Tony Krone (2005) who questions whether thinking makes it so. He writes: "However, while the sexualisation [of children] by the viewer may be objectionable and repugnant to many, caution should be exercised before criminalising the possession of such images based on simply what the viewer thinks."

So! Exactly why is viewing and possessing freely available but proscribed images of children a criminal offence?