Child pornography and the Internet: Perpetuating a cycle of abuse

13 men convicted of downloading child pornography were interviewed with a view to understanding how these men talked about the photographs and the function such talk played in their accounts. The interviews were informed by earlier work with defended subjects and were analysed within a discursive framework. Quotations are used from the interviews to illustrate the analysis. Six principal discourses emerged within these accounts in relation to child pornography: sexual arousal; as collectibles; facilitating social relationships; as a way of avoiding real life; as therapy and in relation to the Internet. These are discussed in the context of previous research. The analysis illustrates the important role that the Internet plays in increasing sexual arousal to child pornography and highlights individual differences in whether this serves as a substitute or as a blue print for contact offences. It also draws our attention to the important role that community plays in the Internet and how collecting facilitates the objectification of children, and increases the likelihood that in the quest for new images, children continue to be sexually abused. Discourses focussing on both therapy and addiction serve to distance the respondent from personal agency, and allow for continued engagement with child pornography. Introduction This paper presents an analysis of semi-structured interviews with 13 men convicted of downloading pornography from the Internet. The purpose of the analysis was to examine the ways in which these respondents talked about child pornography and the function this played in their accounts. Central to the analysis is recognition of the significance of the subjective meanings given to child pornography by the respondents, as opposed to the actual content of the pictures themselves. Four of the respondents had also been convicted of assault on children, three had been involved in assaults prior to accessing pornography on the Internet and two had produced pornographic pictures of children, but had not traded these on the Internet.