When just looking is a crime

EXCUSES are lies we tell ourselves to avoid dealing with unpalatable truths. They may be good excuses, or bad. Some are certainly more convincing than others.

One of the most outlandish excuses for looking at child porn has to be: "I'm doing research". A close second is: "I want to make sense of the abuse I suffered as a child."

While comedy actor Chris Langham admitted downloading child pornography, he pleaded not guilty in order to emphasise that he was not a paedophile. Who wouldn't deny being a paedophile? Paedophiles are the lowest of the low, the scum of the earth.

Yet we need to be quite clear that people who look at pornographic images of children are paedophiles, not just middle-aged men who fancy recouping their lost youth by ogling young flesh.

Most child sex offenders are not the monsters we like to make them out to be. The fact that someone lusts after children is monstrous all right, but paedophiles don't have two heads and a tail.

We may not like the fact but adults who are sexually attracted to children often appear to the world as nice people - real pillars of the community, churchgoers, priests, sons, lovers, brothers and husbands. Not monsters. Their very respectability is sometimes what makes them so difficult to catch. And, believe me, most paedophiles are never caught.

Among their number I categorically include those who do nothing other than look. I emphasise this because there always seems to be some doubt over the seriousness of their activities.

What do you do with a voyeur, a peeping Tom or Chris? What do you do with a man who says, "I haven't done anything other than look at pictures, m'lud. I'm not a paedophile", who maintains his is a victimless crime?

Like hell it is. Voyeurs get their kicks from looking at unspeakable acts against children which have been captured on film. So, the victim is right there in front of them. The voyeur is doing much more than peeping. He is aiding and abetting the criminals who produce the material and, if he is using a credit card, he is actually funding their activities as well. Men like Chris Langham do not care that the child in the pornographic picture has been humiliated, exploited and sexually abused.

The comic, who, with any luck, will never appear on our TV screens again, was caught when police raided his home in November 2005 as part of Operation Ore, the FBI investigation of child pornography sites. Forensic experts seized three computers from his house and found files, video clips entitled "Kiddy 11-year-old", "13-year-old preteen underage", "Lolita" "incest" "rape" and "hussy". They found films of children being abused by adults, including "level five" images, depicting torture; the ones which so upset a female juror the judge had to request a temporary halt to the proceedings.

The one thing child-oglers have in common is an ability to deny that what they do is wrong.

In fact, they will go to extraordinary lengths to deny they have caused any harm to children, or, sorry, teenage girls. I prefer to call such girls children. It avoids any misunderstandings, especially among people for whom the language of denial is second nature.

It is a crime to download child pornography from the internet and those who do it will often claim they stumbled on a site by accident. Now, that's odd. I surf the internet and I do not -never have - stumble across pictures of naked children being tortured.

The very fact of downloading pornographic images indicates the incident is more than just a fleeting encounter. Equally, if it's an accident, why are they always alone when it happens?

The advent of the internet and the wholly uncontrolled, uncensored material which finds its way into cyberspace means the dirty mac brigade have plumbed new depths. Of course, nobody can say that someone who looks at pornography will, one day, commit an offence against a child, but, surely, such activity ranks as an excellent training ground.

For peeping Tom or Chris, the next logical step is holding conversations with kids in chat rooms. Then meeting them.

The number of child pornography sites and the number of victims is sky-rocketing, because the internet allows perverts to build massive support networks and distribute child pornography worldwide at the touch of a key.

We need to take action on several counts. We have over-indulged children, showered them with designer gear and mobile phones when they are as young as three, sexualised them as young as eight. So many children lose out on their childhood, on what was once a time of unparalleled innocence.

They are mini-adults before they've even left primary school. Remember the case of the murdered American child, JonBenet Ramsay, a primary schoolchild trashed up to look older, and, perhaps, sexier. Shame on parents who perpetrate such a theft of their children's lives.

We need to listen to children. They cannot protect themselves against an abusive adult. Fear ensures their silence and, if they do tell, they are often disbelieved anyway. Sexual abuse depends for its continued survival on denial, yet children rarely lie about it. Child molesters lie about it all the time.

Finally, men like Chris Langham need treatment; harsh lessons learned through confrontation with victims, cyber or otherwise. They must be forced to see how much children suffer - even sometimes die - for the sake of men who only like to watch.