child pornography and sexual exploitation of children online

5. Cultural and geographical diversity and the
connection between online exploitation and
other forms of sexual exploitation of children
5.1 Cultural and geographical diversity
The thematic papers from both the First and the Second World Congresses called for the
national and international harmonisation of laws that would enable more effective policing
of the Internet, particularly in relation to abusive images. However, while intuitively this
would seem to make sense it would be wrong to ignore cultural and geographical differences,
both in relation to constructions of childhood and appropriate or acceptable practices. This
is a difficult challenge and one that remains to be addressed. At best, what we might achieve
in this paper is to open the debate. Orchard (2007), in the context of child prostitution
among young Deradasis in rural Karnataka, India, has suggested that, “Dominant models
of child prostitution presented in the media and many academic contexts rely on certain
constructions of what constitutes a ‘child’, such as innocence, purity and dependence,
which are often assumed to be universal features of this life stage. Indeed, the case for the
abhorrence of child prostitution is often founded upon the absence of these characteristics.
The etiological exercise in disassociating young prostitutes from ‘normal’/‘good’ girls is an
essential ingredient in mainstream representations of child prostitution” (p. 2387). Orchard
(2007) goes on to describe how understanding the picture portrayed by these young
women is not straightforward because they do not present themselves to be frightened,
brainwashed victims of parental or systemic violence depicted in most accounts of child
prostitution but instead present themselves as girls who do not always like what they do
or what is demanded of them, but do so out of a sense of filial duty, economic need,
and “because doing dhandha is incorporated into their models of filial duty…” (p. 2388).
Orchard (2007) concluded that this data, obtained from ethnographic interviews with the
girls themselves, mirrors findings from Thailand that identify the role of cultural, economic,
religious, gender or familial factors in the creation of abuse through child prostitution.
These include filial duty, a rite of passage, a desired economic alternative as well as a form
of sexual exploitation.
Why might this research on abuse through child prostitution be of importance to our
discussion of sexual exploitation in the online world? As yet we have little understanding
of the relationship between different forms of sexually exploitative practices. Often the
connection between one form of sexual exploitation with another is not understood or not
taken into account. In the ECPAT (2005) study it was asserted that, “Sometimes a child
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