[Note: Friends of Justice is a personal blog. I speak only for myself.]
The article was published in the New York Times Magazine on January, 27th, 2013.
NCRJ President Michael R. Snedeker responds:
Dear New York Times Magazine Editor:
In “The Price of a Stolen Childhood” (NYT Mag, 1/24/2013), Emily Bazelon wrote about the appalling sexual abuse of two young girls and its use in widely distributed child pornography. The primary question raised by the article is whether people who downloaded this pornography should pay restitution to the now-adult victims. The National Center for Reason and Justice (www.ncrj.org) frequently hears from young men caught with child porn they downloaded from the Internet. Many claim to have done so inadvertently along with adult porn. Yes, they broke the law. But most have no money, have no previous criminal record, and have never molested a child. They will serve years in prison and will be labeled sex offenders forevermore.
Bazelon should have been more critical of the suggestion that deep-pocket defendants get shorter prison terms in exchange for paying restitution to child porn victims. It would be unfair to lock up poor men longer than richer men because they could not afford “restitution.” A better solution would be to do real research into the damage these crimes actually work on victims—victims not yet on the merry-go-round of questionable therapy and big-bucks restitution—and then adjust the punishment accordingly and equitably. As Bazelon points out, that research does not yet exist.
What we do know is that obsessive attention paid to victims can paradoxically make their feelings of trauma worse, or even cause them in the first place. Joyanna Silberg, the therapist of one young woman in the story, is notorious for advocating the debunked myth of satanic ritual child abuse and promoting the idea that many victims didn’t remember the crimes because they “dissociated” while being abused. Let us not give such pseudoscientific, dangerous therapists another gravy train.
Yours,
Mike Snedeker
President
National Center for Reason and Justice
My question is how child-pornography is defined. Are we discussing a young child being abused, or a 17 year old that sent “questionable” images that a DA may decide are “obscene” to a boyfriend who later posts them on-line? The comercial media doesn’t see a distinction. If we open this can of worms, nearly every one will be a sex offender, and a large group of women will be allowed restitution. Not to mention that no sex offender will be able to pay it since they are denigned jobs for viewing the provocative images of the 17 year old.
Bravo to Mike Snedeker for his willingness to pose important but often unasked questions. This is why I support NCRJ, the only organization I know to consistently challenge some of the shibboleths regarding ‘vulnerable children’ and predatory molesters.
I wonder why Joyanna hasn’t coaxed Daniel Pearl’s parents into seeking compensation from all the weirdos who watched the video of their sons head being cut off, which is surely worse than the worst of child porn.
Or, if her concern is children, you’d think she’d be busy trying to get new laws drafted targeting those that watched the smoking baby on YouTube.
After all, aren’t people who watch that video doing the equivalent of giving a baby cancer every time they watch the video? Isn’t Joyanna concerned that that those who watch the video are exponentially more likely to be giving cigarettes to babies in real life?
But let’s be honest: These laws aren’t about arresting people for anything they did; they’re about arresting people for who they are.
And so goes the logic of the neoliberal prison state.