Rape Porn: Let's take action

It is true that you can find anything on the Internet, from the best to the worst. And when it comes to the worst, the very bottom of the pile must be pornography involving non-consenting minors. Take for example rape pornography, where scenes of abducted and abused girls are available at the click of a button. And it is perfectly legal.

Rape Crisis South London has launched a petition at change.org to raise public awareness about the appearance and proliferation of rape pornography online, where scenes abound of girls who have apparently been seized from their homes and subjected to horrific sexual experiences. There is nothing to guarantee that such scenes are "video nasties", films made of real people in real situations of stress, and not actors and actresses.

Rape Crisis South London launched a research campaign recently into rape pornography. They found a great number of websites actually condoning, endorsing and promoting criminal acts such as the kidnapping of children and the perpetration of physical violence and/or child sexual abuse.

Furthermore, the websites containing the most graphic depictions of terrified young girls screaming as they are sodomised, raped and beaten encourage their viewers to believe that the scenes are real and that they are witnessing a real rape in real life.

The research was conducted using a search engine and typing in key words associated with the theme. What is more shocking is that in many countries, it is not illegal, because the uploading process was performed overseas, given that digital imaging identifies the persons concerned as being over 18 years of age - the age of consent.

Rape Crisis South London (RPSL) suggests closing the legal loophole by writing into legislation the banning as a criminal offence of possessing images of "rape or other non-consensual penetrative sexual activity" whereupon the Internet Watch Foundation could block access to sites containing such contents.

Let us take this one stage further: let us help this initiative by making it go viral, contributing in this way to ban illegal sexual activity, the abuse of minors and abuse of human rights from the Internet. I would propose an addition to the suggestion of RPSL: "non-consensual apparent violation of the person" which would cover a far larger scope.

Surely Humankind cannot just sit back in silence as monsters make money out of the misfortune of others, as innocent girls and women are snatched from their homes and tortured to death, while Internet viewers sit around masturbating or else trading "pics". It must be made illegal and our lawmakers have to find a way.

Hold your lawmakers responsible, ask them what they are doing and follow up on progress.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru