Porn and Sex Crimes in Other Countries: The Historical Experience

One way to get a sense of the impact of porn in today’s America is to review the historical experience in other countries. ProtectKids.com (PDF) again weighs in with interesting things to say…

One area where porn advocates are happy to talk about correlational studies is in relation to Denmark, where the government lifted pornography restrictions in 1969. Studies in the early 1970s by Berl Kutchinsky of the University of Copenhagen suggested that the easy availability of pornography had caused sex crimes to decrease by acting as a “”safety-valve”” for potential offenders.

Although this study is still quoted today, subsequent reviewers identified serious flaws in the conclusions. In particular, two factors distorted the results: (1) at the same time that pornography was legalized, a number of other sex crimes were decriminalized, including voyeurism (peeping), “”indecency towards women”,” and certain categories of incest; and (2)
Kutchinsky grouped rape along with other lesser categories of sex crime. The study thus obscured the fact that the more serious types of sex crimes such as rape actually increased in number and rate following the legalization of pornography in Denmark.[34]

Porn advocates are usually quieter about the results of studies of Sweden, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia, where “”as the constraints on the availability of pornography were lifted…the rates of rape in those countries increased.””[35] For example, “in two Australian states between 1964 and 1977, when South Australia liberalized it’s laws on pornography and Queensland maintained its conservative policy…over the thirteen-year period, the number of rapes in Queensland remained at the same low level while South Australia’s’ showed a sixfold increase.”[36]

Mary Whitehouse provides a further rebuttal of Dr. Kutchinsky’s arguments in “Some myths about Denmark”.