pornography15

Child porn must remain taboo

Nothing progressive about equating abuse with freedom of speech By Lorne Gunter
"A person should be allowed to possess anything, even if it's images of an eight-year-old
being raped and cut up."
Those are the words of Robin Sharpe, the 66-year-old man whose claim of a constitutional
right to possess kiddy porn was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada last week. He
spoke them last September 30 at a forum on freedom of speech held in Vancouver.
It's been a year since a B.C. judge first granted Sharpe the right to collect graphic pictures,
drawings and stories of young boys engaging in sex and being tortured. During that time,
a number of commentators have taken Sharpe's side. Those commentators have all
claimed to be outraged by Sharpe's material. No, no, they reassure, they are not
endorsing the sexual abuse of children. It's just that Canada's law against child
pornography is over-broad.
They argue it amounts to the prosecution of "thought crime." And none of us want the
police to control what goes on in our heads, do we?
Donna Laframboise, a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, assured readers
of the National Post that "Mr. Sharpe has not been charged with molesting actual children.
Rather, he has been charged with being in possession of sexually oriented material
involving persons under the age of 18. If no real children were harmed by its production
why should it be illegal?"
Jonathan Kay, a member of the Post's editorial board, trivialized the material in Sharpe's
possession, perhaps to convince his readers the law is worse than the crime. "A law that
threatens to put a citizen in jail for sketches and fantasies that he writes in his own diary
seems odd." That's all. Nothing but a couple of pen-and-ink drawings and a few naughty
bits in a private journal. We may be repulsed by their content, but where's the crime?
Laframboise had made a similar point. "Although it's perfectly legal for a 16-year-old girl to
have sex with her 17-year-old boyfriend, if that girl sketches the two them in a sexual
embrace, our law says she has just manufactured child pornography."
Unfortunately for Laframboise, citing the ludicrous extreme in the Sharpe case cannot
justify the CCLA's defence of this detestable man or the material he collects. Nor, in Kay's
case, can pretending Sharpe's material is no more abhorrent than a collection of
anatomically correct Beanie Babies change its true nature.
The material seized from Sharpe's home is far more than mere sketches and diaries. I
describe them here to give readers a sense of their truly evil nature, as well as a measure
of the man at the centre of this controversy.
The stories fill several binders. All are violent, describing children (all boys, except for a
single girl in one story) being tortured in horrific and extreme ways. Most depict the
children deriving sexual pleasure from their abuse. Almost none involve boys over 14.
Some describe the sodomizing and beating of little boys of six.
On top of this, Sharpe had in his possession thousands of, not only drawings, but also
pictures of naked, prepubescent boys. There are close-ups of their erect genitals and of
their bound genitals. Boys as young as six or seven appear in some. Others are of boys
of about 12 to 14 fellating one another. Many were taken in Sharpe's home, allegedly by
Sharpe himself.
Perhaps, as Laframboise asserts, "no real children were harmed" during Sharpe's
production of thousands of pages of what Kay calls "fantasies that he writes in his own
diary." But what about the photos?
I do not much care what consenting adults do in private with other consenting adults. If you
want to possess and distribute pornographic images and stories involving straight or gay
sado-masochism, rape or group sex, provided all the participants are willing and able to
give informed consent, I will defend your right to do so against the state.
Your actions may be a sin, but that is a matter between you and God, not between you and
the minister of justice. Provided you keep your actions private, I would oppose a law that
forbade you doing as you choose.
But children? Have our minds become so polluted, our moral compasses so bent we can
no longer draw a clear, firm line between kiddy porn and freedom of expression?
Taking dirty pictures of children in and of itself constitutes abuse since children are
incapable of understanding the consequences of such actions and thus incapable of giving
consent. If Sharpe took such pictures, he harmed real children, whether he intended to
distribute the photos or "merely" use them for his own sick amusement.