Edmonton Journal, Sunday January 30, 2000,
page A10
Child porn must remain taboo
Nothing progressive about equating abuse with freedom of speech
By Lorne Gunter
"A person should be allowed to possess anything, even if it's images of an eight-year-old being raped and
cut up."
Those are the words of Robin Sharpe, the 66-year-old man whose claim of a constitutional right to possess
kiddy porn was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada last week. He spoke them last September 30 at a
forum on freedom of speech held in Vancouver.
It's been a year since a B.C. judge first granted Sharpe the right to collect graphic pictures, drawings
and stories of young boys engaging in sex and being tortured. During that time, a number of commentators
have taken Sharpe's side. Those commentators have all claimed to be outraged by Sharpe's material.
No, no, they reassure, they are not endorsing the sexual abuse of children. It's just that Canada's law
against child pornography is over-broad.
They argue it amounts to the prosecution of "thought crime." And none of us want the police to
control what goes on in our heads, do we?
Donna Laframboise, a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, assured readers of the
National Post that "Mr. Sharpe has not been charged with molesting actual children. Rather, he has
been charged with being in possession of sexually oriented material involving persons under the age of 18.
If no real children were harmed by its production why should it be illegal?"
Jonathan Kay, a member of the Post's editorial board, trivialized the material in Sharpe's
possession, perhaps to convince his readers the law is worse than the crime. "A law that threatens to
put a citizen in jail for sketches and fantasies that he writes in his own diary seems odd." That's all.
Nothing but a couple of pen-and-ink drawings and a few naughty bits in a private journal. We may be
repulsed by their content, but where's the crime?
Laframboise had made a similar point. "Although it's perfectly legal for a 16-year-old girl to have
sex with her 17-year-old boyfriend, if that girl sketches the two them in a sexual embrace, our law says she
has just manufactured child pornography."
Unfortunately for Laframboise, citing the ludicrous extreme in the Sharpe case cannot justify the CCLA's
defence of this detestable man or the material he collects. Nor, in Kay's case, can pretending Sharpe's
material is no more abhorrent than a collection of anatomically correct Beanie Babies change its true nature.
The material seized from Sharpe's home is far more than mere sketches and diaries. I describe them
here to give readers a sense of their truly evil nature, as well as a measure of the man at the centre of this
controversy.
The stories fill several binders. All are violent, describing children (all boys, except for a single
girl in one story) being tortured in horrific and extreme ways. Most depict the children deriving sexual
pleasure from their abuse. Almost none involve boys over 14. Some describe the sodomizing and beating of
little boys of six.
On top of this, Sharpe had in his possession thousands of, not only drawings, but also pictures of naked,
prepubescent boys. There are close-ups of their erect genitals and of their bound genitals. Boys
as young as six or seven appear in some. Others are of boys of about 12 to 14 fellating one another.
Many were taken in Sharpe's home, allegedly by Sharpe himself.
Perhaps, as Laframboise asserts, "no real children were harmed" during Sharpe's production of thousands of
pages of what Kay calls "fantasies that he writes in his own diary." But what about the photos?
I do not much care what consenting adults do in private with other consenting adults. If you want to
possess and distribute pornographic images and stories involving straight or gay sado-masochism, rape or group
sex, provided all the participants are willing and able to give informed consent, I will defend your right to
do so against the state.
Your actions may be a sin, but that is a matter between you and God, not between you and the minister of
justice. Provided you keep your actions private, I would oppose a law that forbade you doing as you
choose.
But children? Have our minds become so polluted, our moral compasses so bent we can no longer draw a
clear, firm line between kiddy porn and freedom of expression?
Taking dirty pictures of children in and of itself constitutes abuse since children are incapable of
understanding the consequences of such actions and thus incapable of giving consent. If Sharpe took such
pictures, he harmed real children, whether he intended to distribute the photos or "merely" use them for his
own sick amusement.
The current law as it applies to 16- and 17-years-old is over-broad, and should be changed, but in
Parliament, not the courts.
However, when if comes to deriving sexual gratification from the abuse of children, have we become so
"progressive" we cannot see the need to maintain this taboo fully in law?
_____________________________
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