Republican Congressman\nJoe Pitts (R-PA) \nWASHINGTON - Family groups and at least one federal lawmaker are said to be complaining that the Clinton Administration is keeping roadblocks in front of obscenity prosecutions, despite the porn industry being assessed as a near-$8 billion business, an eighth of which involves online commerce.
It's not that the Clinton Administration has suddenly become a beacon of privacy or First Amendment rights, nor that anyone is saying there's anything like cause and effect going on. But critics say the administration is either looking away entirely or concentrating only on child porn while allowing adult porn to run around, comparatively, without danger.
The watchdog group Morality in Media, for one, says prosecutions of individuals or businesses went from 42 (with 25 convictions) under federal obscenity statutes to six (with six convictions) in 1997 - each of those dealing with selling child porn.
The group also tells Conservative News Service the rate of obscenity cases that U.S. attorneys decline to prosecute has also risen, from 78 percent in 1992 to 83 percent in 1997.
CNS's Web site says it has a June 10, 1998 memo from Assistant Attorney General Eric Holder to federal prosecutors, reminding them that "priority [in pornography cases] should be given to cases involving large-scale distributors who realize substantial income from multi-state operations and cases where there is evidence of organized crime involvement." However, CNS says, Holder added that "prosecution of cases involving relatively small distributors can have a deterrent affect [sic]."
Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Joe Pitts (R-PA), a leader of the congressional Family Caucus, tells CNS the Clinton administration's record on prosecution for obscenity is very poor. "The administration has really disbanded the efforts that had been set up under the Reagan/Bush administration and have failed to prosecute a lot of the pornography cases, especially in the area of child pornography," says.
He wants congressional oversight hearings on the issue, saying, "we'd probably need a new administration before the situation [on pornography prosecutions] changes."
Justice Department spokesman John Russell tells CNS "most of the cases we've followed have been child abuse and exploitation cases, rather than cases involving consenting adults... that's been our focus." CNS says its requests for specific numbers of child pornography prosecutions in the last five years were not answered.
But Pitts tells CNS other types of pornography distributors should be prosecuted, including large-scale distributors with ties to organized crime and companies that try to hide their size under the guise of several small companies. "I think the focus of the Justice Department should include all types of distributors," he tells the conservative wire. "Anytime you have any kind of system set up for pornography distribution and utilization, you have an increase in violence against women and children. . . . If you don't go to the source, many times you'll just close one operation and it will pop up somewhere else."
Other porn critics say claiming First Amendment protection is misleading.
Phil Burress, coordinator of the National Victims of Pornography Campaign with his wife, Vicky, tells CNS the industry "loves to say that what people do in their own homes is their own business," but that only means tying together selling and using pornography. "Those are two separate issues," Burress tells CNS, "and there is no constitutional problem" with banning sale and distribution of porn.
But he also says the fall in convictions is more a cause of prosecutors not upholding existing laws than of Constitutional problems.
And Vicky Burress tells CNS calling porn a victimless crime is a fallacy. "I've met with the victims," she says. "I've heard their stories, I've cried with them. . .This affects so many people who can't have a normal relationship because of these images. That's why we're begging the Justice Department to prosecute these crimes."
