PAEDOPHILIA AND THE INTERNET: OLD OBSESSIONS AND NEW CRUSADES

Conference organised by the Radical Party and Radio Radicale

Rome, 27 October 1998

Why have we organised this conference?

Olivier Dupuis, Secretary of the Radical Party

There are two requirements, with respect to paedophilia, that society must bear in mind: the first is to prevent the alarm about paedophilia from becoming a pretext to restrict personal liberties, to justify increasingly pervasive forms of social control; the second is to recognise and tackle the problem of child abuse despite the false ways in which it is presented.

In the space of a few years, we could already have gathered together more than enough material to write - if we were capable of it - a "History of Pillory"; all the necessary elements and all the characters already exist; the "invention" - incredible, but increasingly realistic, believable, confirmed and feared - of technological "plague-spreaders", linked via the Internet, who infect the whole of society by means of a sort of "pact with the devil": a society that gives tragic confirmation to all its worst fears, and gives rein to its darkest sentiments in this uncompromising manhunt but, like in the plague described by Alessandro Manzoni, that which everyone imagined to be the cause of the contagion is nothing but an invention; and what is brought into play, in this new emergency policy, even at the cost of violating and turning upside-down the fundamental principles of justice and civil cohabitation, is a danger that is added to, and not an obstacle in the way of, the danger that we claim to be fighting.

When we speak of paedophilia, the "sanest" thing is to avoid calling things by the wrong name, to avoid a series of misunderstandings: it is not necessary to be a linguist to know that paedophilia (however you view it, even as a serious "pathology", as a dark and dangerous obsession) is not in itself equivalent to the abuse or exploitation of minors.

In the same way, we must avoid including every form of sexual relationship with minors under the journalistic term "paedophilia", even in cases where it is not a question of children or infants, but of boys and girls who cannot be considered completely "irresponsible" only in the sexual field (unlike what happens in the field of civil law), and who we can defend, like everyone else, from abuse, but not from their "own" desires and their own sexual tendencies.

On the subject of dangerous temptations, precisely with respect to paedophilia we must avoid considering the extension of the ambit of the application of "penal law" to forms of conduct and convictions that offend a "moral sentiment" as justified, or even necessary: punishing the "evil" as if it were a form of abuse. I realise that simply for saying this I will be placed by some magistrates in the "paedophiles' party", on which to hurl curses; but this is only a further sign, a confirmation, of the barbarism that we must fear, and not encourage.

On the other hand, is the aim of the political and media campaign really to hold back a spreading, almost epidemic phenomenon, or is it to "invent" for other ends a phenomenon which does not exist in this form and with these features? Does the insistence on the use of the Internet by the so-called "paedophile groups" reflect the fear of a spread of abuse, or rather suspicion or prejudice against a modern instrument, therefore "an instrument of the devil", which radically modifies the system of communication? Most of the consumption of pornographic material with minors does not take place on the Internet, nor thanks to the Internet; most of the people who abuse minors do not use and are not familiar with the Internet. In this campaign, the political and media worlds express the phantasms, the deep fears, the most deeply-rooted prejudices of society much more than the reality of the problem. It is no coincidence that a phenomenon born and rooted in the most traditional social institutions (family, school, pari

sh) is shifted to the ultra-modern Internet. This campaign is truly "obscurantist"; because it denies the truth, and because it reflects society's most obscure fears. Why should it be encouraged and justified?

Why, moreover, should we be indulgent and understanding towards a campaign that for many people constitutes the pretext and the justification for the "political" relaunch of an ideal that is not only traditionalist, but also rooted in a sex phobia, that authorises all types of "pornographic" moralism, that leads the way to all types of censure, that allows people to attack "different" sexual preferences (like homosexuality) at another level, apparently more respectable but actually vulgar and surreptitious?

It is well known that we have never liked the journalistic and judicial logic of the "state of emergency"; not only for reasons of principle, for the guarantee of rights, but also for reasons of fact. The state of emergency is always created deliberately to perpetuate the problem that originates and justifies it; the state of emergency is the reduction to pretext of the reason for the emergency. This was true of terrorism; it is true of drugs and of the Mafia; it is obviously true of paedophilia. But the state of emergency also has another fault: it is not a good "policy of law and order".

The reason why a policy of repression of child abuse is thought to be necessary is the same that forces us to warn against an unjustified and indiscriminate repression of everything that can be suspected of "paedophilia".

What, therefore, beyond its representation in the media, must we consider most serious in this phenomenon? What raises (and it is reasonable that it raises) most alarm? What must we do?

In the seventies, it took a book by a famous American psychologist to make people finally recognise and condemn child abuse (not carnal abuse). Before that, when doctors were consulted about the effects of violence and beatings, they were often tempted to attribute them to natural causes (falls, accidents in the home); we are now faced with a similar problem: most sexual abuse of minors is committed by those people who should protect minors (relatives, figures of authority); the environments in which these episodes occur are therefore those in which it is most difficult and also dangerous to enter with the instruments of penal law; admitting all this already requires us to turn our viewpoint upside-down; to stop talking about "paedophilia" as if the phenomenon of child abuse were the product of a recent, modern corruption of customs, of a moral epidemic that travels through the Internet.

Moreover, can this phenomenon, in its criminal and mass aspects, really be interpreted as the sum of a series of individual deviations, and not as the product of the "business enterprise" of criminal organisations? Among the so-called "passive consumption" sites, we obviously cannot exclude the networks of criminal organisations. But is the "paedophile" who surfs the Internet and who - in the vast majority of cases - observes the spectacle of child abuse without taking part or wanting to take part in it really "decisive" in the strategies of these criminal organisations? Does he take part in some way in the crime, or is he simply ensnared by it? A policy of repression that starts out from the final user is not only unjust, but also mistaken. It never works, in no policy of repression. Why should it work in this case?

I believe, to put it schematically, that the problem of child abuse is a substantial social problem - and not a series of isolated cases - and that the "market" of abuse and exploitation for pornography and prostitution responds to the designs of organised crime, and not to the individual initiative of single "paedophiles". I think that this is a promising basis of policy both for those who want to escape the embarrassing suspicion of collusion with the "paedophiles' party" and for those who want to oppose, as I believe is necessary, the sloppy, dangerous, terroristic and misleading anti-paedophilia campaign.

The Dutroux affair itself is a perfect representation of all the limits, impediments, and cultural and conceptual prejudices that we have to face when we speak of child abuse. In some ways it also constitutes a cross-section of a political-judicial "climate" that conceals the complex criminal reality of the problem behind the image of the inhuman monster.

With the "Affaire Dutroux", the people of Europe came sooner or later to guess and then to realise the existence of a phenomenon that up to then had been underestimated: not the existence of the sexual abuse of children, but the existence of fully-fledged criminal networks through which this "consumption" of children is promoted and organised. It was then discovered that it was not "only" a case of "carnal consumption" but of a phenomenon that is, if possible, even worse: the kidnapping and then the physical elimination of children, behaviours that involve sadism, torture, delusions of omnipotence, and also "high-level" complicity and the certainty of impunity.

Today, two years after the arrest of the sadly famous but, according to the investigators and the press, isolated Dutroux, children still continue to disappear in Belgium. Without any mention of it in the press Not to mention the easy "preys" who abound in Central and Eastern Europe - as has been shown by the Guardian reporter - and who have given rise to a flourishing market consisting of the "importation" of Eastern European children to Western Europe.

Will it finally be possible to tackle this criminal phenomenon, or will we continue to stigmatise only the "corruption of customs"; will we be able to throw light on things that we still can't even glimpse, instead of persecuting the users and providers of the Internet (an environment which is actually more open and accessible)? Or will everything be covered again by a leaden cloud, as seems increasingly clear, and as was demonstrated in a conference held ten days ago in the European Parliament, not only in Belgium, but also in Germany, in Great Britain, in Denmark and in Italy?

Let's hope that this conference will help us answer these questions. Thank you.