A British child protection charity has suggested that those caught with Internet and other child porn could be offered amnesty by turning over all materials they possess and volunteer for counseling. And the leader of Norfolk's largest-ever child porn probe denounced the idea, calling images on child porn sites crime scenes.
"We haven't had amnesties for people who have indecently assaulted children in the past," said Detective Inspector Paul Cunningham, who led Operation Atlas that arrested 77 people, about the Lucy Faithfull Foundation's proposals, to EDP24. "Images of child abuse on a computer are crime scenes because they are images of children who have been horrifically abused at a very precious time in their life."
The Faithfull Foundation proposes that those who participate in the amnesty plan be assessed by a psychiatrist and, if judged not a threat to children, receive formal caution and spared a court date, though their names would still be listed on the British sex offenders' register. West Midlands, in fact, is experimenting with a pilot project along the lines of the Faithfull proposal, EDP24 said, but they cautioned that they're not taking a position on any hard drive amnesty or its viability "at this time."
Cunningham told the news site, however, that none arrested in the Operation Atlas sweep volunteered to come forward or tried to erase the images in question from their computers. "I don't see the benefit to the victim or to society as a whole and we always try to identify the victims to prevent any further abuse," he told the site.
Another children's charity, the NSPCC, thinks the Faithfull proposal might send the wrong message. "What message does an amnesty send to the children who have been sexually abused and whose images are already on the Internet and can be viewed for ever more?" said the group's Internet safety expert, Chris Atkinson. "Yes, sex abusers do need treatment, but they must also be brought to justice."
And the Phoenix Survivors said they were sickened because no one spoke to them about the Faithfull proposals. "We have worked so hard to get the authorities and the public to see," said spokeswoman Shy Keenan to EDP24, "that behind every single one of those terribly sad photographs, is a living breathing human being, who needs your help, just as much as the offenders do."
The Phoenix Survivors earlier this year publicly defended Peter Townshend, when the Who's guitarist/composer got snared in a child porn sweep, after he'd used his credit card to surf child porn Websites while researching material for a book he planned to write discussing childhood sexual abuse. Townshend was cleared of any actual child porn wrongdoing but still compelled to be listed on the British sex offenders' registry because of the site access.
The police in the U.K are restricted by manpower issues just as they are in the U.S. ( except that the U.K. police have to prepare the burden of collecting proof, i.e. forensically checking all hard drive and viewing all images for the court files, too.) The pragmatic solution of a hard drive amnesty with psychiatric assessment and sex offenders registering is at least positive move. In an ideal world one would like those who use indecent images of children for sexual pleasure to be dealt with by the criminal justice system and then rehabilitated.
