Testimony in Minneapolis: Offenders Use Porn to Convince Children that Child Sex is Normal and Pleasurable

Minneapolis city officials heard testimony about peoples’ encounters with porn, those
who consume porn and those who produce it at a hearing of the Minneapolis Government Operations Committee on
December 13, 1983. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.176-178).

Testimony of Sherry Arndt

…I am a moderator and trainer with the Illusion Theater here in Minnepolis. The Illusion Theater…has, since 1977, had a child sexual abuse prevention program a part of its theater…

[I]n a recently published major study of child sexual abuse by David Finkelhor, who is a major researcher…one of the reasons that children gave for why they did not report that they had been sexually abused was that they were confused by the offender’s insistence that the sexual behavior was normal and that other people liked the activity.

One of the most common ways that offenders do convince children…that the sex is normal and pleasurable, or should be pleasurable, is through showing them pornographic pictures of other children engaged in sex acts, looking as though they enjoy it. This is also one of the main ways that offenders coerce children into posing for pornographic photographs, is by showing them other pictures of children and saying, “Well, everybody else likes it. There must be something wrong with you if you don’t find this pleasant,” and “Gee, you know you liked it the last time we were together.” Offenders are very seductive with children.

In all of our work–and as I said, we travel extensively–we see over and over again a confusion that exists between what is okay and what is not okay in the whole area of sex, between what is sexuality and what is violence. This confusion is brought about in large part by pornography as well as other images in our culture that confuse us about what we are supposed to be like, and what other people are like, and how we are supposed to act. In fact, this is so pervasive that I think the influence of pornography has seeped into other written material that most of us don’t consider pornography.

I brought with me a couple of examples of that: the December issue of Harper’s Bazaar, which shows an eight-year-old girl in a perfume ad. She is dressed seductively. The photograph has made sure that her nipples are exposed. Part of the copy in this article is “Jasmine and Gardenia for seduction, with just a hint of innocence. Dreams of far away places synonymous with elegance, the height of confident femininity.” I think it is not difficult for any of us to see the influence of pornography in this magazine article. I also have another article from the December issue of Vogue, which shows a photograph of a woman elegantly dressed in evening wear, fondling a naked, about fourteen-year-old boy. The caption on this is, “Age makes no difference.” Neither magazine would probably be identified by most of us as pornographic…

When healthy sexual attitudes are prohibited by society, they begin to be defined as unnormal and unnatural. Sexuality and violence are used in our culture to the point that they are not separated in our minds, nor are they separated in our behaviors.

See also:

Exposure to Pornography as a Cause of Child Sexual Victimization
Child pornographer: “They couldn’t show fear or doubt in the pictures. They had to show happiness or love… To get that look, I’d give them something, from tricycles to stereos. It depended on what they wanted. You have to be able to express [evoke] excitement in the pictures…”

A Review of Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families