By Kotie Geldenhuys
Legal input in consultation with Brig Dirk Lambrechts
“Look into the eyes of a child who has been sexually abused and you’ll see pain, a pain that endures long after the bruises have healed. This pain is compounded by child molesters who create images of the sexual abuse and share them with other child molesters. They trade them in chat rooms and post them on thousands of websites. These people are making money from the pain of children” (Royal Newfoundland Constabulary Association, 2007).
Child pornography is a sensitive issue which elicits discomfort in most people. While the term child pornography is still widely used, it is more accurate to call it what it is namely “evidence of child sexual abuse”. Even when one uses this description, most people still do not comprehend what “child pornography” or child sexual abuse material (CSAM) entails. Each piece of CSAM is evidence of the sexual abuse of a child. There is no “porno-graphy” in “child pornography”. It is rather the sexual assault, rape, torture, maiming, brutalisation and even murder of young children. The child is often unaware of the fact that he or she is being photographed and how the photos and/or videos will be used. Due to the development of technology, there is a significant increase of CSAM which are produced and distributed across the world via the Internet and more specifically the dark web. Child pornography is a borderless crime and collectors of CSAM stimulate this multi-billion dollar industry in which thousands of children are abused and tortured to meet the demand for such images. The sad reality is that the collection of these monsters is never complete and that they always want to add more images or videos to it.
What is child pornography?
In the South African context, the word definition “child pornography” is referred to in section 1 of the Films and Publications Act 65 of 1996. This latter section then states that the word definition of “child pornography” as it appears in section 1 of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act 32 of 2007, likewise applies to Act 65 of 1996.
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[This is only an extract of an article that is published in Servamus: October 2023. This article is available for purchase.]