Porn and Sex Offenders

On August 15, Northampton residents David and Wendy Newton wrote to Robert J. Greeley, leasing agent for 135 King Street, to express their concerns about the impact of the proposed porn shop on local registered sex offenders.

Subject: Capital Video/135 King Street

To all concerned parties:

The Department of Justice National Registry of Convicted Sex Offenders lists 12 registered Northampton residents. The National Alert Registry lists 19.

80% of them live or work within walking distance of 135 King Street. Two of them live or work in the 200 block of King Street itself.

All have been convicted of various Level 3 offenses, including rape, assault on minors, lascivious behavior, attempted rape and assault on minors, and dissemination of material harmful to minors.

Our two grandchildren–one 13, one 10, visit us often from Connecticut. They bring their friends. They love our home and our town. Their favorite treat is to walk from our house on North Street to the Dunkin’ Donuts on King Street. Must I employ bodyguards for them now, or deny them the walk and drive them? Must I accompany them?

We moved to Northampton and chose this North Street area for its obvious community effort. By all indications, the residential neighborhood we invested in showed healthy signs of resurgence and growth.

This is a part of town with a particularly vulnerable population: Within easy walking distance are a busy mental health therapeutic community, two schools, a children’s welfare office. and a dance class complex immediately adjacent to 135 King Street. And innumerable families with young and impressionable adolescent children.

There are all very solid reasons why the vast majority of “adult” stores locate well outside the periphery of predominantly residential neighborhoods. Besides, it has historically been bad for business.

If the premises at 135 King Street are occupied by purveyors of “adult” graphic material, you can expect visible resentment and activist protest. Of this you can be sure, given the nature of the neighborhood at large.

The community will be in their face. The neighborhood will surely do all it can can to draw public attention to what has been slipped in–under the radar–to degrade this friendly and densely-populated residential area. There will be a predictable local and regional backlash.

We trust you will help this questionable and unsavory enterprise to find a more appropriate location.

In good faith,

David & Wendy Newton

As noted by the Newtons, 80% of the registered sex offenders in Northampton live or work in close proximity to 135 King Street. These individuals are struggling to overcome sexual addictions and compulsions, and to live quiet law-abiding lives. NoPornNorthampton has found several studies that show a causal connection between pornography and deviant sexual behavior, suggesting that porn can be the catalyst for troubled individuals to translate their fantasies into action. These studies include:

Paper presented at American Psychological Society conference (PDF, 2004; emphasis added)
“…individuals with certain personality characteristics are attracted to certain types of media content, and…these individuals are affected by that content differently than are other people…. It appears that, rather than serving a cathartic function, pornography may activate or escalate the deviant sexual behavior of sub-clinical psychopaths.“

ContentWatch
“As part of my experience working with incarcerated sex offenders, I listened to countless disclosures of inmates describing their heinous sexual assaults on victims. During these therapy sessions, it is not uncommon to hear an inmate indicate that part of the reason for their sexual deviance was due to consumption of pornography which influenced the way they behaved….

“One research study analyzed the various arguments and data presented by other studies that contended the lack of reliable connections between pornography and aggressive sexual behavior. The study concluded that, in fact, there was existence of reliable associations between frequent pornography use and sexually aggressive behaviors, particularly for violent pornography and/or for men at high risk for sexual aggression (Malamuth, Neil et. al., 2000)….

“Consider the fraudulent message pornography teaches about healthy human intimacy. It portrays both women and men as objects with insatiable sexual appetites. Sexual relations with multiple partners are presented as normal and healthy, while monogamous relationships are depicted as cumbersome and undesirable…. Other aspects of sexual intimacy, such as communication and tender affection, are usually omitted from pornography while consequences of promiscuous sexual behavior such as STDs and unwanted pregnancies are minimized. Surely, these ideas cannot be considered healthy. And yet, that is what many producers of pornography would have us believe….

“I risk criticism from those who will argue that healthy sexual intimacy in itself is a subjective matter and that I should not impose my opinions about healthy intimacy on them. I wish these same individuals could sit in my chair as I listen to some of their spouses cry bitter tears of resentment about the various sex acts they have been subjected to in the name of their spouse’s definition of healthy intimacy.”

Violence Against Women Network
“…the public testimony of women (MacKinnon & Dworkin, 1997), my interviews with pornography users and sex offenders, and various other researchers’ work, have led me to conclude that pornography can: (1) be an important factor in shaping a male-dominant view of sexuality; (2) be used to initiate victims and break down their resistance to unwanted sexual activity; (3) contribute to a user’s difficulty in separating sexual fantasy and reality; and (4) provide a training manual for abusers (Dines & Jensen, 2004).”