Sarah Nelson Speech October 2004

BANK OF SCOTLAND CAMPAIGN LAUNCH 30/9/04 *Sarah Nelson Writer and researcher on sexual abuse, research fellow Edinburgh University (currently senior research officer at Health in Mind, Edinburgh).* I am honoured to be asked to talk at this launch today. I have spoken over the past 20 years with many survivors of childhood sexual abuse and three things have become inescapably apparent to me over that time. The first is that being forced, even as young children, to look at sick and degrading images was for many people a routine accompaniment to the abuse and assaults they suffered – more than that, it was an inherent part, just as humiliating as the contact abuse. Showing them pornography was designed to set the scene each time for their move into that parallel universe where all boundaries of safety and human dignity were suspended. The second inescapable fact was that many people even as young children were regularly forced into taking part in pornographic scenarios and this was not usually for some high-powered film company, it was often for a widespread “cottage industry” – still a lucrative industry, but usually close to home where law enforcement agencies often forgot to look . It was fathers or uncles or grandfathers or brothers or all four, and their circle of friends or neighbours, filming the degradation and selling it for their own pleasure and sometimes to loftier circles of abusers. For many people this was so absolutely and shockingly routine that when I asked one survivor about whether particular incidents had happened during a phase of her childhood she replied “no nothing much happened then – oh of course except the prostitution and pornography.” This had been so routine she had hardly noticed it as worthy of comment and yet it was happening several times a week. While survivors will often speak of their lifelong fear or abusive photos turning up decades later ( this has been highlighted by the great growth in Internet pornography) the deepest wounds have often resulted not from the fear of a visual image reappearing, but simply from the deep harm to the psyche and the sense of personal worth which comes from being publicly degraded purely for the pleasure and gratification of others. And from their overpowering sense of falseness and unreality at the fact that their images always showed forced smiles and faked enjoyment, in contrast to their own experience of pain, disgust and even horror. The third part of this common pattern which I have observed is that so many young people female and male who were sexually abused end up working , at least for a spell in their lives, in the sex industry and often in the making of adult pornography. Likewise so many adults working in pornography were sexually abused as children. Catherine (Harper) has mentioned a research figure of 60 pc today and I have heard even higher figures than that. It is very nice, reassuring , convenient and conscience-salving to assume that there is some clear cutoff and dividing line between child and adult pornography, and that those working in the industry who are on the other side of 16 are really exercising a delightful freedom of choice and right to self determination and the career they have dreamed of for years. As with prostitution, the routes in are often a lot more squalid and desperate and without choice than that , unless you count the choices people make when they have lost all sense of self worth. Believe me if we had a lot less child sexual abuse in society we would have a l ot fewer recruits for these industries. I have reached over the years what may seem a cynical conclusion but which I believe is based simply on observation, which is that the hugely lucrative adult pornography and indeed prostitution industries, nationally and internationally, require a constantly replenished pool of degraded and shop soiled , stigmatised children and young people who have been put beyond the pale of society and have actually to be created to ensure a steady enough supply. While CSA is found in all classes of society, how often have we seen revealed a pattern of sexual exploitation where the wealthy, powerful and highly respectable are exploiting young people who are either already at the bottom of the social pile or who have been driven down towards it. The clearest example is young people from the care system and from children’s homes. Now we are seeing a host of new and vulnerable displaced people from places like eastern Europe being exploited in an international sex trade. I always want to say to people who make a habit of viewing pornography and who talk about freedom of expression etc: fine, look at this stuff if you want , but please don’t try to pretend to yourself that this whole edifice is founded on consent and genuine freedom of choice, because so many of those actors and models you are getting pleasure from looking at have been groomed for this fine career by years of childhood sexual abuse, sometimes before they were even 3 years old. Finally I would like to remind people of some of the things we have learned more recently from increased knowledge about internet pornography. It is now technologically possible to ascertain as a fact – and not simply be dismissed as puritans making wildly overzealous claims - that so-called “adult” pornography which as Catherine Harper has already noted, often has titillating titles which relate to very young girls - is an industry worth billions internationally. It is I understand the most popular and lucrative type of topic site of all . At the same time we have over the past two years learned a great deal more about Internet child pornography, information which reinforces the point that this is not something indulged in by some quite separate sleazy groups of pederasts, whose sole interest is in children and who are unconnected with those who may use other forms of pornography. but that its use is widespread internationally among apparently normal men (some women but statistically it is overwhelmingly men) most of whom appear to be in adult heterosexual relationships. For example the major police operation codenamed Ore in this country originated from Operation Landslide in the States, which found that one single access website in Texas had more than 250,000 subscribers in 60 countries. Details of 7000 subscribers were sent to British police and to date, more than three quarters of those convicted have held respectable professional jobs, most appear to have been married while 95 pc were not previously known to law enforcement agencies. We have to stop kidding ourselves that people who do these kinds of things are somehow a race apart because if so, apart from anything else we will be looking in the wrong places and will not be catching people who are dangerous to children. The other thing, the very sad and distressing thing which the police have learned from capturing much of this pornographic material from ore and other operations, is that the kinds of assaults and perverse activities which some people will pay to watch are much more serious than even many experienced police had imagined. Many people working in the pornography business have therefore had to suffer some extreme brutality as well as extreme degradation. Now defenders of pornography will argue, why concentrate on the more extreme end when we are just surely talking about a few erotic pictures here? Not only have we all noticed in the last few years that “mild” porn which you see on sale in many newsagents is getting less mild and more frequent, it seems to be back everywhere again. But also, the reality is that the extreme end is part and parcel of the pornography trade, indeed it is increasingly its routine face. Perhaps nothing brings this home to us more than the fact that any of the children of the people who are here today, any children who can use the Internet can access some of these extremes in less than a minute - with a few clicks of the computer mouse. *Scottish Women Against Pornography wish to extend our thanks to Sarah Nelson for speaking today at the Bank of Scotland Campaign launch.* Sarah's recent study on the needs of female survivors is called Beyond Trauma: Mental Health Care Needs of Women who Survived Childhood Sexual Abuse EAMH Edinburgh 2001 *Available from health in Mind 0131 225 8508.*

BANK OF SCOTLAND CAMPAIGN LAUNCH 30/9/04

Sarah Nelson Writer and researcher on sexual abuse, research fellow Edinburgh University (currently senior research officer at Health in Mind, Edinburgh).

I am honoured to be asked to talk at this launch today. I have spoken over the past 20 years with many survivors of childhood sexual abuse and three things have become inescapably apparent to me over that time.

The first is that being forced, even as young children, to look at sick and degrading images was for many people a routine accompaniment to the abuse and assaults they suffered – more than that, it was an inherent part, just as humiliating as the contact abuse. Showing them pornography was designed to set the scene each time for their move into that parallel universe where all boundaries of safety and human dignity were suspended.

The second inescapable fact was that many people even as young children were regularly forced into taking part in pornographic scenarios and this was not usually for some high-powered film company, it was often for a widespread “cottage industry” – still a lucrative industry, but usually close to home where law enforcement agencies often forgot to look . It was fathers or uncles or grandfathers or brothers or all four, and their circle of friends or neighbours, filming the degradation and selling it for their own pleasure and sometimes to loftier circles of abusers. For many people this was so absolutely and shockingly routine that when I asked one survivor about whether particular incidents had happened during a phase of her childhood she replied “no nothing much happened then – oh of course except the prostitution and pornography.” This had been so routine she had hardly noticed it as worthy of comment and yet it was happening several times a week.

While survivors will often speak of their lifelong fear or abusive photos turning up decades later ( this has been highlighted by the great growth in Internet pornography) the deepest wounds have often resulted not from the fear of a visual image reappearing, but simply from the deep harm to the psyche and the sense of personal worth which comes from being publicly degraded purely for the pleasure and gratification of others. And from their overpowering sense of falseness and unreality at the fact that their images always showed forced smiles and faked enjoyment, in contrast to their own experience of pain, disgust and even horror.

The third part of this common pattern which I have observed is that so many young people female and male who were sexually abused end up working , at least for a spell in their lives, in the sex industry and often in the making of adult pornography. Likewise so many adults working in pornography were sexually abused as children. Catherine (Harper) has mentioned a research figure of 60 pc today and I have heard even higher figures than that.

It is very nice, reassuring , convenient and conscience-salving to assume that there is some clear cutoff and dividing line between child and adult pornography, and that those working in the industry who are on the other side of 16 are really exercising a delightful freedom of choice and right to self determination and the career they have dreamed of for years. As with prostitution, the routes in are often a lot more squalid and desperate and without choice than that , unless you count the choices people make when they have lost all sense of self worth.

Believe me if we had a lot less child sexual abuse in society we would have a l ot fewer recruits for these industries. I have reached over the years what may seem a cynical conclusion but which I believe is based simply on observation, which is that the hugely lucrative adult pornography and indeed prostitution industries, nationally and internationally, require a constantly replenished pool of degraded and shop soiled , stigmatised children and young people who have been put beyond the pale of society and have actually to be created to ensure a steady enough supply. While CSA is found in all classes of society, how often have we seen revealed a pattern of sexual exploitation where the wealthy, powerful and highly respectable are exploiting young people who are either already at the bottom of the social pile or who have been driven down towards it. The clearest example is young people from the care system and from children’s homes. Now we are seeing a host of new and vulnerable displaced people from places like eastern Europe being exploited in an international sex trade.

I always want to say to people who make a habit of viewing pornography and who talk about freedom of expression etc: fine, look at this stuff if you want , but please don’t try to pretend to yourself that this whole edifice is founded on consent and genuine freedom of choice, because so many of those actors and models you are getting pleasure from looking at have been groomed for this fine career by years of childhood sexual abuse, sometimes before they were even 3 years old.

Finally I would like to remind people of some of the things we have learned more recently from increased knowledge about internet pornography. It is now technologically possible to ascertain as a fact – and not simply be dismissed as puritans making wildly overzealous claims - that so-called “adult” pornography which as Catherine Harper has already noted, often has titillating titles which relate to very young girls - is an industry worth billions internationally. It is I understand the most popular and lucrative type of topic site of all . At the same time we have over the past two years learned a great deal more about Internet child pornography, information which reinforces the point that this is not something indulged in by some quite separate sleazy groups of pederasts, whose sole interest is in children and who are unconnected with those who may use other forms of pornography. but that its use is widespread internationally among apparently normal men (some women but statistically it is overwhelmingly men) most of whom appear to be in adult heterosexual relationships.

For example the major police operation codenamed Ore in this country originated from Operation Landslide in the States, which found that one single access website in Texas had more than 250,000 subscribers in 60 countries. Details of 7000 subscribers were sent to British police and to date, more than three quarters of those convicted have held respectable professional jobs, most appear to have been married while 95 pc were not previously known to law enforcement agencies. We have to stop kidding ourselves that people who do these kinds of things are somehow a race apart because if so, apart from anything else we will be looking in the wrong places and will not be catching people who are dangerous to children.

The other thing, the very sad and distressing thing which the police have learned from capturing much of this pornographic material from ore and other operations, is that the kinds of assaults and perverse activities which some people will pay to watch are much more serious than even many experienced police had imagined. Many people working in the pornography business have therefore had to suffer some extreme brutality as well as extreme degradation.

Now defenders of pornography will argue, why concentrate on the more extreme end when we are just surely talking about a few erotic pictures here? Not only have we all noticed in the last few years that “mild” porn which you see on sale in many newsagents is getting less mild and more frequent, it seems to be back everywhere again. But also, the reality is that the extreme end is part and parcel of the pornography trade, indeed it is increasingly its routine face. Perhaps nothing brings this home to us more than the fact that any of the children of the people who are here today, any children who can use the Internet can access some of these extremes in less than a minute - with a few clicks of the computer mouse.

Scottish Women Against Pornography wish to extend our thanks to Sarah Nelson for speaking today at the Bank of Scotland Campaign launch.

Sarah's recent study on the needs of female survivors is called
Beyond Trauma: Mental Health Care Needs of Women who Survived Childhood Sexual Abuse
EAMH Edinburgh 2001
Available from health in Mind 0131 225 8508.