Can a Child Porn Addict Ever Be Cured?

Few things appall the collective conscience like the charge of child pornography. Yet despite the social shame and stigma attached to child pornography and the people who view and produce it, it is no fringe issue. As of 2005, the child pornography world was a $3-billion industry. With each year comes greater Internet access and reach and these numbers only grow—often exponentially.

One of the challenges of treating child pornography addicts is that the addiction is tied to tight legal regulations and consequences. As a result, addicts, when they are discovered, are usually in the process of being charged with a felony. The treatment that is necessary for the rehabilitation and recovery of an addict may be inconsistent at best. Rather than dealing with the illness, the addict is locked up and the problem tends to go unsolved. When these sex offenders are allowed to reemerge in society, the behavior is often repeated; the disease has not been healed, merely deferred.

In the case of an obsessive-compulsive relationship with child porn, the root is not your garden-variety adult sex drive. Consumers and creators of child pornography often suffer from deep emotional wounds, mental illnesses and the trauma of childhood sexual abuse. As in the case of molestation and other forms of sexual abuse, such an experience can be so disorienting for a child that they lose all sense of what is normal, right, safe or appropriate in the realm of sexual relationships. Treatment for the consumer of child pornography is a complicated psychological process.

This does not indicate that creators and consumers of child pornography are beyond help, but that there is no quick, easy fix. Addiction to child pornography is a disease with especially deep roots, made only deeper and more intractable by the length of time the porn has been consumed and the depth of the user’s involvement in the world of child pornography, especially to the exclusion of regular, adult sexual relationships. “Studies indicate that intervention and treatment tends to be most effective among first-time offenders, juveniles and adults who otherwise engage in normal sexual behavior with adult partners,” said Richard Wright, associate professor and chairman of the criminal justice faculty at Bridgewater State University.

There are several basic stages of engagement with child pornography and currently laws and sentencing practices are under review to adjust penalties to meet the crimes. While once the use of a computer for accessing images of children brought stiffer penalties, this is now an obsolete distinction as nearly all pornographic images of children, which are not produced by the user himself, are obtained via the Internet or computer file sharing.

The first level of offense is the viewing and possession of images. This may include file sharing, as these images cannot be passed easily via web. Second is interaction and conversation with other viewers about the images. This practice is seen as a dangerous precursor to increased involvement in the practice and the industry and merits a more stringent punishment. Use over long periods of time or the possession of child pornography that has a sadistic or violent tone or that involves very young children may bring additional penalties. The next level of offense involves the distributions of images. The creation of child porn brings a yet steeper penalty and often leads to the gravest consequence related to this crime—the sexual molestation and assault of children.

While the viewing of child pornography does not always lead to or indicate that the offender is also abusing children, a study referenced in a Slate article on viewers of child pornography, found otherwise: “This idea is at odds with the most influential research on pornography offenders: the Butner Study Redux. Published in 2009, the study involved 155 child pornography convicts. After they received sex-offender treatment in prison, 85 percent confessed to sexually abusing children. The volume of abuse was either incredible or terrifying— an average of 13 victims for each man.”

Due to the unpredictability of child porn addicts and the challenge of effective and complete treatment, the best approach to the sentencing and rehabilitation of those who have been charged with consumption, creation, and/or distribution of child pornography is still an enigma.