Child Pornography and Sexual Grooming

Child pornography and sexual grooming provide case study exemplars of problems that society and law have sought to tackle to avoid both actual and potential harm to children. Yet despite the considerable legal, political and societal concern that these critical phenomena attract, they have not, thus far, been subjected to detailed socio-legal and theoretical scrutiny. How do society and law construct the harms of child pornography and grooming? What impact do constructions of the child have upon legal and societal responses to these phenomena? What has been the impetus behind the expanding criminalization of behaviour in these areas? Suzanne Ost addresses these and other important questions, exploring the critical tensions within legal and social discourses which must be tackled to discourage moral panic reactions towards child pornography and grooming, and advocating a new, more rational approach toward combating these forms of exploitation.

Suzanne Ost is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Lancaster University. She is also assistant editor for the Medical Law Review journal and a member of both the Society of Legal Scholars and the Socio-Legal Studies Association.

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Child Pornography and Sexual Grooming Legal and Societal Responses Suzanne Ost

Suzanne Ost

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© Suzanne Ost 2009

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2009

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Ost, Suzanne.
Child pornography and sexual grooming : legal and societal responses / Suzanne Ost.
p. cm. – (Cambridge studies in law and society)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-521-88582-9 (hardback) 1. Child pornography. 2. Child sexual abuse. 3. Child pornography-Law and legislation. I. Title. II. Series.
HQ471.O88 2009
363.497083-dc22  2009006854

ISBN 978-0-521-88582-9 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Wiley-Blackwell Publishing for allowing me to include work that has been developed from my article ‘Children at Risk: Legal and Societal Perceptions of the Potential Threat that the Possession of Child Pornography Poses to Society’ (2002) 29 Journal of Law and Society 436–60. I am also grateful to Taylor and Francis (www.informaworld.com) for granting permission for the same regarding my article ‘Getting to Grips with Sexual Grooming? The New Offence Under the Sexual Offences Act 2003’ (2004) 26 Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 147–59.

The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Lancaster University kindly funded my visit to consult the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association Archives, kept at the University of Essex’s Albert Sloman Library, in April 2008. The School of Law at Lancaster University provided me with much appreciated support and financial assistance as I reached the final stages of the book’s completion.

My sincere thanks go to friends and colleagues at Lancaster University, several of whom I sounded out some of my ideas to, and who provided valuable feedback when I presented an earlier version of part of this work at a staff seminar. I would especially like to thank Hazel Biggs and Sara Fovargue for reading a full draft of this work and providing constructive feedback. Thanks are also due to former colleagues from elsewhere. Neil Duxbury and Charles Erin both provided invaluable counsel when I initially formulated and put into writing my ideas for this book. Susan Fletcher offered me helpful advice regarding defamation, image and reputation. Much appreciated feedback upon the empirical aspects of my research was given by Angela Melville. I am grateful to Margot Brazier for her support throughout this and all other research projects.

Thanks are due to the police officers at Lancashire Constabulary who kindly gave up their time to allow me to interview them for the purposes of this study. I have the utmost respect for the crucial work that they do to combat child pornography and sexual grooming. I am also very grateful to Finola O’Sullivan, Tom O’Reilly and Richard Woodham at Cambridge University Press for their patience, guidance and support. Thanks to my proofreader, Bridget Gevaux, for her efficient and thorough work.

Finally, this book would have remained an abstract idea without the unwavering support and encouragement of my husband. At times, I wondered whether I would ever complete it. Whilst Nick may have had the same thought, he only ever expressed complete confidence that an end product would materialize. Either he has a great deal of faith in me, or he is a very convincing liar. My greatest debt of gratitude is to him and also to my daughter, Lily Jorja, who provided a diversion during the writing of this book at times when I needed it most, in her own very special and indomitable way. This book is dedicated to them both and to Matthew Luke, whose imminent arrival made its completion all the more imperative.

The law as discussed within this work is up-to-date as of September 2008.