Fight over child porn making advances

Major progress has been made in the past year against a new method of trading pictures and movies of children being sexually abused, the Department of Internal Affairs says.

Action against this method will continue, said Keith Manch, director of the department's Gaming and Censorship Regulation Group.

Mr Manch said offenders internationally had been increasingly using what were called "peer-to-peer applications" because they falsely believed they could avoid being detected.

"They can and are being detected. In 2003 we set an important precedent. We showed that New Zealand censorship law does cover this new technology and, for the first time, a New Zealander was convicted for using it to distribute child sex abuse images."

In 2003, two out of 26 convictions involved the use of peer-to-peer applications.

"Last year the number of convictions rose to eight out of 24.

"In the last few months 19 of the 25 new cases we referred to Crown Law for prosecution involved peer-to-peer applications. In addition, we are investigating more peer-to-peer cases," he said.

"Offenders will not get a break. If they continue to distribute or collect child sex abuse images, using whatever technology, then they will eventually be caught."

Peer-to-peer applications allow a person to set up their computer to share selected files. Other people with the same software can search for those sorts of files and can download them to their own computer.

The department's position is that if a person sets up a computer to share files that are child sex abuse images, then they are responsible for the trading that eventually occurs from that computer.

Mr Manch said the internet had made it much easier for offenders to collect and distribute child sex abuse images.

Offenders can sit at their computers, search the world for one another and share electronic files. They have misused bulletin boards, websites, internet relay chat channels and now peer-to-peer applications.

The department set up its specialist Censorship Compliance Unit in 1996. Until 2002, its cases resulted in about 16 convictions a year, of which only five resulted in jail terms. In 2003 there were 26 convictions with eight offenders being jailed. Last year 24 were convicted and seven jail terms imposed.

Mr Manch said the increase in jail terms was probably the courts' response to increasingly extreme images and to public disgust, as understanding of the true nature of this offending spreads.

"While the statistics we have do not show that more New Zealanders are offending, the evidence we gather shows a tragic change in the images.

"The victims are becoming younger and the levels of violence and the kinds of abuse inflicted are becoming worse," he said.

"The images are of real children and are an appalling record of what has been done to them. No one seeing the images could have mistaken them for legal, restricted, adult pornography."

Offenders encourage more abuse by demanding more extreme images and by reinforcing the false view that sex with children is acceptable.

The department has found offenders sharing information about how to meet children and in some cases offenders who had access to children offered them up for abuse.

Although few of the images found over the years have been of New Zealand children, research has shown a statistical correlation between offenders who collect and distribute child sex abuse images and other offending against children.

"Possessing child sex abuse images is a warning about an offender's sexual attitudes to children," Mr Manch said.

"Our actions are not about pictures on a computer. They are part of New Zealand's commitment to help prevent the abuse of children."

The Government has introduced to Parliament proposed amendments to the Films, Videos and Publications Classification Act that would increase the maximum penalty for distributing child sex abuse images to up to 10 years' jail, and up to two years in jail for possession.

- NZPA