Pornography and sexual crimes

(CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK)

While it has been proved that pornography is a manual for potential abusers, it has also been proved that it can also be a tool used by sexual offenders and abusers to subdue their victims during sexual assault.

In many cases, sexual offenders choose to show their victims pornography and then demand that the victim performs the same behaviour or sex act, regardless of the possible injury, pain, or force involved. The victims of sexual violence and abuse are forced to view pornographic material during the act; this often makes the assault more degrading, intimidating and fearful to the victims.

To make matters worse, many victims are forced to have sexual pictures and videos made of them, further reducing the victim into deeper depths of fear and dehumanisation in order to force them to keep quiet and to further make them vulnerable, susceptible and unable to fight against inhuman treatments and sexual act demands on them.

A research by Cramer and McFarlane (1994) found that 40 per cent of 87 battered women who filed charges reported that their male partner used one or more pornographic materials. Use of the pornographic materials was significantly associated with the women being asked or forced to participate in violent sexual acts, including rape.

This further enforces the belief that pornography has a huge role to play in sexual violence and assault. Other findings have revealed that a great percentage of serial killers even when it is not sexual murders have pornography collections and almost all pedophiles used pornography.

Using what is depicted in pornographic materials in real life has played a huge role in sexual victimisation and abuse of women and how early a man is exposed to pornography have a role in how he turns out; a man that gets exposed to pornography at an early age will most likely engage in physically and sexually assaultive behavior and cause a higher degree of humiliation in their victims than those who begin pornography usage as adults.

The relationship between pornography and sexual crimes could best be established in the life of Theodore Robert Bundy popularly called Ted Bundy;  an American serial killer that was executed in 1989 after confessing to 30 homicides which involved rapes and murder of young women and girls in seven states between 1974 and 1978. Before his execution, he stated that:

“My experience with pornography that deals on a violent level with sexuality is that once you become addicted to it and I look at this as a kind of addiction – I would keep looking for more potent, more explicit, more graphic kinds of materials. Until you reach the point where the pornography only goes so far, you reach that jumping-off point where you begin to wonder is maybe actually doing it will give you that which is beyond just reading about it or looking at it.”

Violent pornography use resulted in significantly greater attitudes supporting aggressions and rape than nonviolent pornography, although research has also proved that nonviolent pornography still results in some sexually aggressive behavior.

Those with histories of childhood abuse and/or a family history positive for parental violence and were frequent users of pornography were much more likely to engage in sexual aggression versus those with similar childhood backgrounds but who were not using pornography often; a research by Malamuth, Addison and Koss in 2000 revealed.

The simple truth is that continuous use of pornography and consequent addiction has been proved to be a key element in attitudes that border on psychological, physical and sexual violence and degrading thoughts as well as behaviour.

Before you open that porn site, consider the harm. We should especially be conscious of what children especially teenagers watch on smart phones before it is too late.