The National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction

Some researchers suggest that viewing child pornography desensitizes the viewer and mayreduce inhibitions, increasing the risk that the child pornography offender might engage in acontact offense against a minor.The facts in U.S. v. Curry 25 illustrate a situation in which viewing child pornography cancause an offender to desire to commit contact offenses and, in fact, prepare to commitcontact offenses.c. Child pornography offenses often are linked to contact offenses.A number of studies indicate a strong correlation between child pornography offenses andcontact sex offenses against children. The National Juvenile Online Victimization (NJOV) studyrevealed contact offenses in one of every six cases that began as a child pornographyinvestigation with no prior knowledge by law enforcement of possible contact offenses by thetarget. 26 While no study can quantify the risk that any given child pornography offender posesfor future contactoffenses against In the words of one prosecutor:children, thesignificant “Imagine an offender who spends several hours every night on the Internetcorrelation ‘enjoying’ and fantasizing to images of children being sexually abused, andbetween child congregating with like-minded people in these trading communities, where theyvalidate and normalize each other’s behavior and desires. Assume that he doespornographythis several times a week, for several months, maybe even years —which is notoffenses andat all unusual. Common sense tells you that his 5-year-old daughter, sleeping incontact offenses the bedroom next door, is at great risk— particularly if the images he collectssignals that the involves girls in that age bracket. Can we say for certain that he will act out hisrisk is present. fantasies on the little girl? No, we can’t. But there’s real cause to fear for hersafety.”In 2009, TheDepartment’s Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.ChildExploitation andObscenity Section (CEOS) helped organize an international symposium through the Group ofEight (G8) titled “Global Symposium for Examining the Relationship Between Online andOffline Offenses and Preventing the Sexual Exploitation of Children”. The symposium was heldApril 5-8, 2009, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and broughttogether researchers and other experts from around the world who have worked with childpornography offenders and victims. The symposium was designed for these experts to sharetheir research and individual findings, and develop consensus on the risks to children and societyposed by child pornography offenders and also to identify gaps in research and knowledge.Among the most notable points of consensus developed include a finding that there is sufficientevidence of a relationship between possession of child pornography and the commission ofcontact offenses against children to make it a cause of acute concern, and that the greateravailability of child sexual exploitation materials has stimulated the demand and production ofeven more extreme, sadistic, and violent images of children and infants. The findings and gaps25See Appendix B, U.S. v Curry.26See Appendix C, U.S. v. Wolak, et al.19