Children Raped To Make Child Pornography

Evidence given in the Christchurch District Court showed that what a man minimised to his partner as “kiddy porn” involved children being raped.

“That is a shocking thing to say,” said the General Manager of the Department of Internal Affairs Gaming and Censorship Compliance Unit, Keith Manch. “However, it is important that people understand what child pornography is and why it is illegal.

”Even the term ‘kiddy porn’ is part of the problem of lack of understanding. It is soft sounding nonsense that people who take pleasure from sexual violence being inflicted on children use to attempt to justify what they do. It downplays the extreme abuse they have suffered.”

The man was today sentenced to nine months imprisonment on 16 charges of trading and possession of Internet child pornography.

The images he was collecting and trading included those of babies as young as one-year old being sexually abused by adults. One of the most disturbing was a movie. It included a sound track of a girl aged between four and seven pleading with adult men to stop the abuse they were inflicting on her.

“The tragedy of child pornography is that the victims are real babies and children,” Mr Manch said. “It is not just this case involving this man's offending, serious abuse is at the source of all child pornography.

“Children suffer appalling abuse to feed an international market. They are then haunted for the rest of their lives with the knowledge that some people can take ‘pleasure’ from what they suffered. Pictures, movies and stories of that abuse are copied, traded and collected on the Internet, and it is unlikely that all copies could ever be found and destroyed.

“People who collect and trade child pornography seldom do it for profit. They do it to expand their collections and to get increasingly extreme images. Their demands incite more abuse to occur and their actions on the Internet perpetuate victims’ suffering.

“New Zealand action against child pornography is not about people looking at pictures. It is part of international action against the sexual abuse and exploitation of children.”

Background
The Films Videos and Publications Classification Act 1993 prohibits objectionable material, including child pornography. Penalties include fines of up to $20,000 or up to one year in jail per trading offence, and fines of up to $2,000 per possession charge.

In March this year the Government announced that it intended to increase the maximum penalty for trading child pornography to 10 years jail and that for possession to two years.

Media contact:
Keith Manch Telephone 04 495-9449 Cellular 027 445-6420
General Manager Gaming and Censorship Regulation
Vincent Cholewa Telephone 04 495 9350 Cellular 025 272 4270
Communications Advisor