International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology (2018): 0306624X18794135.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X18794135
ABSTRACT
This study analyzed the evolution over time of the activity of consumers of child sexual exploitation material (CSEM). To this end, images and metadata were extracted from the hard drives of 40 individuals convicted of possession of child pornography and analyzed. A sample of these images (N = 61,244) was categorized by the age of the subjects depicted and—using the Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe (COPINE) scale—by severity of the acts depicted. Collecting activity was observed to follow four patterns. The most prevalent pattern was a progressive decrease in the age of the person depicted and a progressive increase in the severity of the sexual acts. In light of the results, we propose four explanations of the nature of, and variations in, child-pornography collections.
From the full paper
Studies that have compared adult male CSEM consumers with adult male contact sex offenders have reported the former to be younger, more frequently in a marital relation, more educated, more intelligent, and less likely to be unemployed (Babchishin, Hanson, & Hermann, 2011; Babchishin, Hanson, & VanZuylen, 2015). Furthermore, CSEM consumers present fewer mental health and substance abuse problems. In addition, they reported having had fewer difficulties in childhood and had committed fewer criminal offences. In general, CSEM consumers seem to have more psychological constraints to committing sexual contact offences than hands-on offenders; they tend to have less pronounced antisocial tendencies and more self-control (Babchishin et al., 2015). A better understanding of the characteristics of CSEM collectors is important as they now account for a significant portion of the caseload of professionals working with sex offenders (Middleton, Mandeville-Norden, & Hayes, 2009).
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Degenerating Spiral Pattern
37.5% of the collections exhibited increased severity in terms of both age and COPINE [severity] score: The children depicted became younger, and the acts became more extreme. In 22.5% of cases, the collections exhibited the inverse pattern.
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Sexualized Adolescent Pattern
The Sexualized Adolescent pattern is exemplified by … an increase in the COPINE [severity] score and in the age of the subjects…. This pattern was present in 20%.
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Boy/Girl-Love Pattern
Pattern…represents 20% of the sample…. This may mirror the migration to more softcore pornography typically seen in the collections of pedophiles who advocate “loving” adult-child relationships
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De-Escalation Pattern
22.5% of our sample is in [this] pattern. [Discussion of example followed.] “This individual’s activity was, thus, neither particularly intense nor particularly focused on children.”
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Discussion
The age of the subjects depicted in the images follows a bell curve: a very small number of images of young children, a peak at 10 year olds, and a gradually tailing off to 17 year olds. … the most popular age group was 6 to 12 years. … 61% of the individuals had exclusive age interests, that is, no second choices. … While the majority of the cases in this study were heterosexual, a finding consistent with other reports in this area (Freund & Watson, 1992), it should be noted that a few individuals with a primarily heterosexual orientation had collections in which almost a third of the images were of boys. Finally, the group in which there was an increase in the severity (COPINE and age) of the pictures was the largest group.
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A second explanation that is also related to the sexual interest explanation is that collectors become habituated to low-severity pornography, which is congruent with the patterns 1, 2, and 3 of the current study. It has been suggested that habituation to pornographic content leads to boredom, which in turn impels the pornography consumer to seek out new content that is more severe…. Thus, to maintain their degree of sexual arousal, child-pornography collectors may be driven to explore other age categories and sexual acts.
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During masturbatory activities, CSEM collectors have the possibility of exploring a wider range of sexual interests than offline sexual offenders, who are limited by the availability of victims. Consequently, they may become motivated to search for new illegal content to nourish their sexual fantasies. This explanation is in agreement with Babchishin et al.’s (2015) meta-analysis, which reveals that online offenders have more deviant sexual interests than offline offenders.
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It should be noted that all the child pornography collections included mainstream pornography content.
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[The analysis of the child-pornography collections] First, unlike questionnaires or clinical interviews, the approach is immune to the influences or biases associated with individuals’ attempts to present themselves in the best possible light. Second, the approach does not depend on physiological measures that can be controlled by subjects (e.g., phallometry
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