{"id":27906,"date":"2016-07-21T00:10:10","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T05:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/?p=27906"},"modified":"2022-09-12T14:17:32","modified_gmt":"2022-09-12T19:17:32","slug":"pornography-and-crime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites-stage.josh.org\/main\/pornography-and-crime\/","title":{"rendered":"Pornography and Crime"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In March of 2011, the Kansas Legislature debated passing a bill requiring police to report any and all pornographic materials found during sexual crime investigations.<\/h3>\n

Testifying in favor of the bill, Psychologist Mary Anne Layden laid out findings, including her own experience in treating sexual trauma victims and perpetrators, as well as her own research and that of colleagues.<\/h4>\n

Overwhelmingly, the research agrees. Porn and sexual crimes are inseparably linked.<\/h4>\n


\nDr. Mary Anne Layden:
\n“Thank you for allowing me to address you today.
\n“I am speaking today in support of the passage of HB 2042, The reporting of pornographic materials during the investigation of sexual crimes. There are many reasons why this is an important bill and why this bill can help solve the kinds of psychological and criminal problems that I deal with everyday.<\/p>\n

“I had been doing this work for more than 10 years before I realized that I had not treated one case of sexual violence that did not include pornography.<\/h4>\n

“The types of cases that I treat are varied and differ in many important ways. Sexual harassment cases are different from rape cases which are different from incest cases. However, they all involved pornography.
\n“Most people understand intuitively or from looking at research or clinical experience that there is a connection between using child pornography and the behavior of child rape. The images in child pornography are Permission-Giving for sexual behavior between adults and children. Child rapists tell me they know that kids like to have sex with adults because they have seen their smiling faces in the child pornography they access on the Internet.<\/p>\n

“The same people who understand this connection may forget that adult pornography is Permission-Giving as well: for adult rape, for combining sex with violence, for the message that when women say no they mean yes, for male sexual entitlement to have sex with whomever they want, whenever they want, however they want, for the message that male sexuality is viciously narcissistic, predatory and out of control and that female sexuality is insatiable and indiscriminant.<\/h4>\n

“Pornography is hate speech against men and women and is mis-education about sexuality.<\/h3>\n

Tweet<\/a>
\n“It is also Permission-Giving for psychological psychopathology and crime.
\n“The crimes that are connected to the Permission-Giving Beliefs which are spread in pornography are not just incest and child rape. They are adult rape, sexual harassment, adult and child prostitution, adult and child sex trafficking and domestic violence combined with sexual assault. All of these connections have been found in both clinical experience and in research.<\/p>\n

“Research also indicates that there are three factors that predict sexual violence. (1) Hostility toward women (2) The belief that sex is a non-intimate, recreational, adversarial behavior (3) The use of pornography.<\/h4>\n

“In fact, all of these factors are connected to the use of pornography.
\n“My own research indicates that the earlier young males are exposed to pornography the more likely they are to engage in non-consensual sex and the more pornography females use the more likely they are to be victims of non-consensual sex. Pornography is an equal opportunity toxin for both males and females.
\n“You can find these research results in the research summary I have provided with a listing of 29 findings<\/a> showing the connection between pornography and crime.Tweet<\/a><\/p>\n

“While today we are focusing on the crimes connected to pornography, the research indicates that the social, psychological, physical, developmental, financial and spiritual consequences of pornography are enormous as well.<\/h4>\n

“Due to the universal availability of pornography on the Internet the world is facing a sexual tsunami unprecedented in history. We know that sexual abuse is the most effective way to produce psychiatric problems in adults and it shows up in the histories of adult patients more than any other factor.<\/h3>\n

“To help stem the tide of this criminal and psychological catastrophe, we need laws, we need enforcement, we need education, we need research, we need treatment. A good first step would be to have police report the presence of pornography connected to crimes. They may find what I have found that there is no case of sexual violence that does not involve pornography.
\n“Knowledge is power, but once you know the truth silence is complicity.
\n“I urge you not to be silent. I urge you to pass this bill.
\n“Thank you.”<\/p>\n

Dr. Layden is the director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the Center for Cognative Therapy, Department of Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania. For 25 years she has specialized in the treatment of sexual violence victims. In the last 8 years she has also worked with sexual violence perpetrators and sex addicts. She has testified before the US Congress on five occasions and has spoken at one Congressional Briefing.<\/h6>\n