Child Pornography - Home | National Rapporteur on Trafficking in ...

38
<strong>Child</strong> PornograPhy First report oF the Dutch NatioNal rapporteur
and international network of amateur producers and distributors remained: a ‘sophisticated global
cottage industry’ 37 emerged, in which individuals from the amateur circuit made use of new forms of
technology in order to produce and distribute material themselves, and due to increasing globalisation
also travelled to meet other perpetrators and victims. This, in turn, continued to fuel trafficking in human
beings, child sex tourism, child prostitution and abuse even further. 38
Research into the nature and extent of child abuse material from this period is largely absent and
consequently there is little insight into the production of material in the Netherlands. 39 However,
the fact that it was no longer visible to the wider public did not mean that the phenomenon had
disappeared from the Netherlands. The material found amongst the aforementioned material that
was seized in Amsterdam was primarily old, and had been produced in other countries. 40 It was also
said that a ‘substantial’ part of this material appeared to have come from the Netherlands itself. The
material that was seized (still) consisted, at that time, of photographs, video recordings and 8 mm
film copied onto video format. According to the <strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong> and <strong>Child</strong> Prostitution Working
Group, care organisations were not alert to the potential victimisation element of child pornography,
which meant that there were no records of this either. 41 The period also heralded an age in which the
production, distribution and possession of child abuse images and films became visible once again.
In 1992, the investigative journalist Tate cited the case of a woman that had been a victim of child pornography
at the end of the 1950s: “Paedophiles […] will always find new ways to obtain, abuse and manipulate
children. They are always looking for new victims and new methods of getting them”. Tate already anticipated in
37 O’Donnell & Milner (2007, p.20) wrote: “as a result of expanding access to these increasingly inexpensive technologies,
child pornography quickly mutated into a ‘sophisticated global cottage industry […] where material was produced in
domestic settings and exchanged or bartered for personal rather than profit motives”.
38 O’Donnell & Milner, 2007, p.21. For example, travel guides were published with names such as
‘Mankoff’s Lusty Europe’ and ‘Where the Young Ones Are’, which described where child prostitutes
could be found. Part of the international amateur network existed in the Netherlands. Tate (1990,
p.140) dubbed this the ‘Dutch connection’ and claimed that (wanted) sex offenders moved to the Netherlands,
which they regarded as a safe haven. That was certainly the case with the ‘Björn tapes’, behind
which lay a British-Dutch paedophile network. In this case, material was produced and distributed in
the Netherlands and the purchasers of the tapes were spread across the whole of Europe. A Paedophile
Ring in Amsterdam, The Guardian, March 1997, available at: www.nickdavies.net/1997/03/01/a-paedophile-ring-in-amsterdam/
(viewed 30 August 2011).
39 <strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong> and <strong>Child</strong> Prostitution in the Netherlands Working Group, 1998, p.28. Material
was no longer compiled and openly offered for sale. It was no longer possible to obtain figures of the
victims from child pornography magazines, as had been done in research into child abuse material
from the 1970s and the early 1980s (see for example Rossen & Schuijer, 1992).
40 The study concerned an inventory drawn up by the Amsterdam/Amstelland regional police on the basis
of investigations in the period ’94-’96 and may shed some light on the material that was in circulation
in the period 1985-1994. For example, the study did not mention computer files containing child abuse
material (<strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong> and <strong>Child</strong> Prostitution Working Group in the Netherlands, 1998, pp.29-
30). The working group also noted that it is difficult to distinguish between new and old material, and
material produced in the Netherlands and that produced in other countries.
41 <strong>Child</strong> <strong>Pornography</strong> and <strong>Child</strong> Prostitution Working Group in the Netherlands, 1998, p.28.