Violent pornography is a 'gateway to real-life crime against women'
Celine McGillycuddy
1663 words
10 September 2006
The Sunday Independent (Ireland)
English
(c) 2006 Independent Newspapers Ireland Ltd
ADISTRAUGHT Irish woman called a rape crisis centre recently. She told counsellors that her husband had become obsessed with watching violent porn on the internet. For years, he had been forcing her to perform lewd acts, thereby realising his fantasies. He wanted her to "enjoy" being raped and forced her to have sex with other men while he watched. Married with children, she was in fear for her life when she finally sought refuge.
This is one of the many cases of rape and sexual assault reported in Ireland where the offender has been obsessed with viewing pornography. "Violent pornography can play a significant role in giving the green light to a potential sexual offender, and this is something we need to address urgently in this country," said the executive director of Rape Crisis Network Ireland, Fiona Neary. Commenting on the announcement last week that the British government plans to make possession of violent porn images punishable by three years in prison, she says, "The Irish Government needs to follow this lead. Nobody has been looking at the role of violent pornography, and, worryingly, it has seeped into oursociety unchecked."
The British announcement follows a campaign by Liz Longhurst whose 31-year-old daughter Jane, a Brighton schoolteacher, was killed by Graham Coutts. Mrs Longhurst, a widow in her 70s, began the campaign, which was finally backed by MPs and included a 50,000-signature petition, when she discovered the role that violent internet pornography had played in the brutal rape and murder of her daughter. Jane was strangled with a pair of tights by Mr Coutts, the boyfriend of a close friend. After inviting Jane for a swim, Coutts lured her to his flat, where he satisfied his "bizarre and macabre" lifelong desire to rape, strangle and kill a woman.
From the age of 15, Coutts developed an obsession with the idea of strangling a woman with a ligature. Using the internet, he discovered that he was not the only one to harbour such a fantasy.
"The internet normalised things for him," says Jane's mother, who believes that the internet lent some legitimacy to Coutts's misogyny, sending out a powerful message to him that he was not alone in his perverse impulses.
Jane's sister Sue Barnett said: "These sites led to Jane losing her life."
Viewing vile images of rape and sexual torture will now become a criminal offence in itself for the first time in Britain, and possession of so-called "violent and extreme pornography" will lead to imprisonment.
British Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said the government would bring in new laws as soon as possible to ban possession of porn depicting "scenes of extreme sexual violence" and other obscene material such as bestiality and necrophilia. It would cover violence that is or appears to be life-threatening or is likely to result in "serious and disabling injury".
The ban has sparked furious debate about how one defines violent sexual content. A summary of a consultation on the proposals which took place last year revealed fears by some people that their consensual sexual practices would be targeted.
One BDSM group, representing people who engage in bondage, domination and sado-masochism, wrote: "The theory that people should be punished for viewing an image that simply involves the idea of sexuality with violence shows the proposal being made is to introduce a form of 'thought crime'." In all, 241 respondents said the law should not be changed and 143 said it should.
On her website ifeminist.com, editor Wendy McElroy, author of XXX: A Woman's Right to Pornography, says: "Images and words do not rape; human beings do. Censorship removes avenues for catharsis and drives discussion/freedom of speech into the shadows. The crusader has made society less safe and less free."
The complexity of the role that violent pornography plays in the execution of a sexual crime has long been debated. The question is not whether it should or should not exist, but whether its non-existence would reduce the incidences of sexual crime.
In their studies which involved showing men massive amounts of violent and misogynistic pornography, researchers Edward Donnerstein and Neil Malamuth found that regular viewing of violent sexual content makes men sexually aroused and more aggressive and desensitises them to the effects of violence on victims. In addition, they found that education, not censorship, is the best way to counteract any negative effects of violent pornography on adults. They conclude, "Censorship is not the solution. Education, however, is a viable alternative."
"It is high time this topic is up for national debate," says Rape Crisis Network Ireland chief Fiona Neary. "We have teenagers calling us because their partners are expecting them to behave like porn stars, asking them for anal sex and sex with more than one person. These young girls are confused and we are failing them by not providing the appropriate education."
She criticised the Government: "Sexual violence is not a priority for this Government. They like to look like they're involved, but we are struggling to make ends meet financially in supporting the victims of sexual crime, not to mention trying to tackle the issue of pornography and the highly sexualised world young people are living in."
A teacher said: "A boy in my class had a video clip on his mobile phone of a girl having sex with an animal - all the boys were laughing about it."
He added that although he took the appropriate disciplinary action, he was concerned that under the ban, such a boy could be charged with a criminal offence.
"It was a
ing clip and a terrible thing to see a group of boys laughing about, but at the same time it shows how we need to educate and not legislate. Those boys didn't really understand the sinister side of viewing such a video." He went on to say that the boy also had a video of Paris Hilton having sex.
"Unfortunately, pornography is a part of young people's lives and we can't sweep itall under the carpet through censorship," he added.
This October, the Greenhills Hotel in Limerick will host an International Conference on Pornography organised by the Limerick Rape Crisis Centre. The keynote speaker will be Dr Diana EH Russell. Her theory is that porn, not specifically violent porn, causes rape. She writes: "Many people share an opinion that men who consume porn but who have never raped a woman disprove the theory that porn can cause rape. This is comparable toarguing that because some cigarette smokers don't dieof lung cancer, there cannot be a causal relationshipbetween smoking and lung cancer."
IN the Seventies, Robin Morgan stated, "Porn is the theory: rape is the practice," and Russell insists in Against Pornography: the Evidence of Harm that porn causes rape and the sex industry brutalises women working within it.
Meanwhile, the debate for the protection and proliferation of the porn and sex industry continues and is significantly led by women. The Playboy empire is run by Christie Hefner, Hugh Hefner's daughter, and a recent report in Britain revealed that the number of women downloading internet porn has soared by 30 per cent in the last year. Wendy McElroy, editor of ifeminist.com, goes so far as to say that pornography can benefit women.
, Liz Longhurst, who has spent the last three years campaigning against violent pornography, says, "I don't know if I necessarily want all pornography banned. A beautiful naked woman, I don't see any harm in that; but an end to pornography that incites people to rape, maim or kill, yes. I think that is quite a reasonable thing to want."
While Vera O'Leary, director of the Kerry Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre, believes the debate about the role pornography plays in cases of sexual assault is important, she says, "Ireland is nowhere near tackling that issue - even the rape crisis centres of Ireland are in a crisis themselves."
Recently Vera had to send a young woman, who reported being raped in Tralee, on an eight-hour journey to Waterford because there was no forensic examiner available at the South Infirmary/Victoria in Cork, where Kerry assault victims are usually treated. The sexual assault treatment unit at Kerry General Hospital closed three years ago due to lack of funding.
"I am so upset and angry that we have let down this girl. She was brave enough to report the crime but we couldn't offer her the support she desperately needed." O'Leary is now planning a public demonstration: "The people of Kerry won't tolerate this. We are battling for the basics right now and the only reaction we can give is a 'fire brigade' one: just putting out the fire while it burns."
It's clear that when it comes to sexual violence in Ireland, resources are severely curtailed. "We are operating with a 50 per cent deficit since 2003. I think that shows the utter absence of the prioritisation of [dealing with] sexual violence in Ireland. Next year, with such a lack of funding, we will be in serious trouble," warns Fiona Neary (RCNI).
In Britain, steps have been taken to address the issue of violent pornography. It has taken the heinous rape and murder of a young woman and her mother's determination to change the circumstances that led to her daughter's death to put the issue in the spotlight.
Speaking about violent pornography, Jane's mother said, "It won't just disappear, I know that. I'm no fool. But if we can just alter the climate of opinion, if we can save some other lovely woman, well, that would be good."
Meanwhile in Ireland, we are struggling with the fundamentals, the appropriate care of victims of sexual crime in our country.
Celine McGillycuddy
1685958
Document FSII000020060910e29a00021
More Like This
Related Factiva Intelligent Indexing™+