Anti-porn activists held a press conference in Minneapolis on July 25, 1984. This statement is published in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.264).
Statement of Peggy
Starting at age 4, old Mr. Edwards up the street used pornography to entice me into taking baths so he could watch, had me wearing his wife[‘]s clothes and eventually having oral sex and being penetrated by him. This went on for five years. He used the pornography to show me how to be–and what to do–until I didn’t see anything wrong–with anything he did to me–or had me do to him. I became addicted to sex as a way of getting through life. I also drank a lot. My first marriage was purely sexual. I put up with more pornography because I thought–it would secure my marriage–but it destroyed it. The man I lived with last used pornography books to sexually arouse my son so he could molest him–and my son and his friends used pornography to molest my daughter–to experiment on her sexually–using the pornographic books as teaching guides…
I never realized the whole pattern until the last two years. I have never been able to complete an education, or hold a steady job, I’ve had two children out of wedlock, and spent most of my life until recently on AFDC and in bars…
You talk about cost–
I’d like to know how much it has cost the state to support myself and children, the county to prosecute the man who assaulted my children, and for all these years of therapy for all of us, to try to undo what the pornography did.
See also:
Victor Cline: “Pornography’s Effects on Adults and Children”
In an in-house study conducted by the Los Angeles Police Department’s Administrative Vice division, in 60 percent of the child molestation cases referred to them over a 10-year period, adult or child pornography was used to lower the inhibitions of the children molested or to excite or sexually arouse the perpetrator of the abuse. In another study of 43 pedophiles, child pornography was found used in every one of the cases investigated. The officers reported the abusers repeatedly saying the same thing: “I used this stuff to stimulate the child, to break down his inhibitions.”
Some Porn Hard to Distinguish from Training for Pedophiles (explicit language)
The woman in that scene was clearly an adult, but the intent was the sexualization of an adult-child relationship. This strategy was the basis for the video Cherry Poppers Vol. 10. Four of the five scenes were sex between different women who appeared to be in their 20s and “Max”, who appeared to be in his 40s… The fifth scene used a different man who looked to be in his 30s. Each of the women dressed in a child’s uniform: some combination of bows in the hair, pigtails, either short socks or knee socks, saddle shoes, frilly dresses, or school uniforms. These women also had smaller breasts and were more slightly built than is typical in pornography. The scenarios had Max providing the woman/girl with her first sexual experience. A detailed description of one of the vignettes shows how this video not only depicted child-adult sex, but offered realistic, detailed instructions on how to initiate a child into sex, a manual for how to perpetrate a sexual assault on a child.