{"id":318177,"date":"2010-02-12T18:53:28","date_gmt":"2010-02-12T23:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2011060093_childprostitutionandpornography.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2010-02-12T18:53:28","modified_gmt":"2010-02-12T23:53:28","slug":"child-prostitution-and-pornography","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/318177","title":{"rendered":"Child prostitution and pornography"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boys and young men targets too<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Times\u2019 article about teen prostitution fails to include the fact that boys and young men are a very large portion of the sex trade [\u201cGifts save program to help teens escape prostitution,\u201d page one, Feb. 11].<\/p>\n

This gender distinction communicates that the lives and struggles of males in the sex trade are less deserving of help. It also insinuates that girls and young women are helpless in the face of their circumstances and need intervention by those who presumably know better.<\/p>\n

This issue is more complex than helpless girls spirited away from their families at gunpoint by violent pimps and forced into the sex trade. Young people are homeless and destitute for primarily two reasons: They are fleeing violence and exploitation at home or they are \u201caging out\u201d of foster care. Faced with survival by any means, sex trading is part of the economic landscape that all these young people must navigate.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that young people willingly choose to have sex for money. It means that given the poverty and zero options they face, prostitution is the lesser of evils for them.<\/p>\n

Addressing the housing, economic and recovery options for all homeless and impoverished youth is a major part of the puzzle. Lack of evidence that homeless youth work is the reason communities have not invested in these programs, not indifference. Most communities understand that violence and exploitation await some young people who are left without shelter, treatment or economic alternatives.<\/p>\n

\u2014 John Bruels, Bellevue<\/em><\/p>\n

Stop child porn armed with the facts<\/strong><\/p>\n

On Feb. 10, The Times published an op-ed piece by prosecutors Mark Roe and Lisa Johnson calling for tougher state child-pornography laws [\u201cGive law enforcement the tools to prosecute child-porn viewing,\u201d Opinion]. In stressing the importance of proposed legislation, Roe and Johnson claimed that \u201cscientific studies demonstrate that 85 percent of those convicted of possessing child pornography admit sexually abusing minors.\u201d This claim is, in a word, misleading.<\/p>\n

The viewing of child pornography is a serious matter and cause for law-enforcement concern. Whether there is a connection between viewing child pornography and contact, sexual offenses with minors is a topic of great interest in the scientific-research community. Research is ongoing but studies to date show that the risk of hands-on offenses is as low as 1 to 3 percent and no study has concluded a risk remotely close to the 85-percent figure used by Roe and Johnson.<\/p>\n

The \u201cscientific\u201d study referenced by Roe and Johnson was not a scientific study. It was a report prepared by employees of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The original report was so flawed that the Bureau of Prisons itself refused to publish it. Recently, a federal judge panned the report, noting that it had never been published or peer reviewed, involved \u201chighly coercive\u201d research techniques and that the subjects in the study had \u201can incentive to lie.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a citizen and a parent of two daughters, I support appropriate prosecutions and sentences for child pornographers. I simultaneously support the proposition that American justice requires sentences and laws based on empirical research and study, not on fear mongering and misinformation.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Thomas Hillier, Bainbridge Island<\/em><\/p>\n

Pass House Bill 2424<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am the mother of a 4-year-old son and the thought of him being a victim of child pornography terrifies me. I support House Bill 2424 because I think it will make great strides in protecting children.<\/p>\n

This bill is trying to not only redefine the felony crime of possession of depictions of child pornography \u2014 to include deliberately viewing images of child sexual abuse on the Internet \u2014 but also to reset the unit of prosecution in child pornography cases back to the nationally recognized per-image standard.<\/p>\n

Boys and girls of all ages suffer negative effects when exploited through pornography. Child exploitation is a global problem, a multibillion-dollar industry and one of the fastest-growing online businesses. Child pornography is a permanent record of a child\u2019s sexual abuse and the distribution of the images victimizes that sexually abused child again each time the image is viewed.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Kimberly Burns, University Place<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boys and young men targets too The Times\u2019 article about teen prostitution fails to include the fact that boys and young men are a very large portion of the sex trade [\u201cGifts save program to help teens escape prostitution,\u201d page one, Feb. 11]. This gender distinction communicates that the lives and struggles of males in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-318177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}