IGNORING THE LAWS ON CHILD PORNOGRAPHY An article in the Sunday Times of 7 November 2010 Whats sex without a cellphone

e reported that a group of girls at the Collegiate High School in Port Elizabeth were caught boozing and watching a pornographic video on a cellphone.....Apparently the so-called porn video clip featured one of the schoolgirls having sex with her boyfriend. According to the article, the school did its best to keep it hushed up, with the only official indication of the drama being a ban on all liquids being brought onto the school grounds, a move that was repealed a day later. In response to a Sunday Times article in March 2009, I wrote an article1 pointing out that the handling of the Northmead Secondary School case2 by the police, the parents of the teenage victim and the teachers, as well as those who had knowledge of the distribution of the explicit pictures in question, reveals a disturbing ignorance not only of anti-child pornography laws in South Africa but also of the traumatic consequences of sexting. The handling of the case of the boozing and watching a pornographic video on a cellphone by a group of girls at the Collegiate High School in Port Elizabeth is another example of such ignorance, which really frustrates the national and global fight against the sexual abuse and exploitation of children. A video of a schoolgirl having sex with her boyfriend - assuming that the schoolgirl is under the age of 18 years is not just a pornographic video: it is, in fact, child pornography. Simply put, child pornography, in terms of both the Films and Publications Act, No 65 of 1996 (FPAct) and the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act, No 32 of 2007 (SOAct), includes any image, regardless of the manner of its creation, of a person under the age of 18 years engaged or involved in any act or conduct of a sexual nature, whether such image is intended to stimulate erotic or aesthetic feelings. The creation, production, distribution and possession of child pornography are serious offences in terms of both the FPAct and the SOAct see section 24B (1) of the FPAct and sections 10 and 19 of the SOAct. The person who produced and distributed the video clip is clearly guilty of sections 24B(1)(b) and (d) of the FPAct, while all those who received and downloaded that video clip onto their cellphones should be charged under sections 24B (1) (a) and (b) for being in possession of child pornography video clip, which they created by downloading the clip onto their cellphones.3
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Sexting of revealing images of children is the distribution of child pornography, Iyavar Chetty 2 Gang-rape teen tells of her ordeal, Sunday Times Extra, 22 March 2009 3 Courts in the UK and USA have concluded that the act of downloading an image onto a computer (or a cellphone) amounts to the creation of that image since, prior to using technology to download the image, the image was nothing more than a batch of zeroes and ones. See R v Jonathan Bowden, reported in The Times of 19 November 1999 and R v Jayson [CA (2002) EWCA Crim 683 and the opinion of the Michigan Appeals Court in the

In addition, the person responsible for displaying or exposing that video clip to others should be charged under section 10 of the SOAct, if the others are over the age of 18 years, or section 19 of the SOAct if the others are under the age of 18 years. The acting headmistress, once she was informed of the incident involving the video clip, had knowledge of the commission of one or more of the offences set out in section 23B(1) of the FPAct. The acting headmistress should, therefore, have acted under section 24B(2) of the FPAct and reported that knowledge to a police official of the South African Police Service. Failure to report knowledge, or even suspicion, of the commission of any offence under section 24B(1) of the FPAct is an offence under section 24B(2) of the FPAct. The rise of the Internet has sparked a massive increase in the trading of child pornography by people from all walks of life. The figures are staggering and the images are truly shocking and unbelievably shocking. Even as we are reading this paper, in towns and cities across the length and breadth of almost every country, including South Africa, paedophiles and child predators are sitting in the comfort of their homes, downloading and swapping images of children, including toddlers of a just a few months, being raped and tortured to satisfy the perversions of the depraved. In one of the most graphic photographs ever detected, an attempt is made to orally rape a newborn baby still attached to its mother by the umbilical cord. In one recent International case involving the use of the Internet by an organised criminal network of paedophiles, 1 000 000 still images, 67 gigabytes, 624 CD-ROMs, 38 computers and 3,227 floppy disks, all containing child pornography, were seized by law enforcement agencies operating across 15 different countries.4 The case of the w0nderland club is another example that illustrates the global nature of child pornography. On 2 September 1998, 12 countries took part in an internationally coordinated operation to arrest known members of the w0nderland club, a paedophile syndicate that was set up to facilitate the exchange of child pornography. The club was protected by powerful encryption codes the o in wonderland, for instance, was replaced by the numeric 0. The club transmitted child pornography world-wide and also provided facilities that allowed abusers to film real-time abuse taking place and transmit this to other members. To gain entry to the club, a candidate member would have to post 10 000 original images of child abuse. The police were able to identify 1 263 different children, seize over 750 000 images of children being sexually abused and tortured and over 1 800 hours of digitised videos of child sex
vase of Michigan v Brian Hill, reported in Downloading http//courtofappeals.mijud.net/documents/OPINION/FINAL/COA 4 http://www.stop-childpornog.at/pa_maur.html porn is making it,

abuse. The men who were caught were, in the main, well educated, employed and in a wide range of professions, but with a preponderance of men who worked a lot with computers or the Internet. An alien visiting earth would come to one conclusion that human beings hate children. Child pornography is not a victimless offence and it is not only the child who has to suffer the trauma of victimization: the family and friends of the abused child are also victims. All children, as well as society itself, are degraded by images of child pornography. Given the nature of information and communication technology, Governments, especially with limited human and financial resources, require the cooperation of civil society to fight this heinous crime against children. Failure to respect and comply with laws that require the reporting of knowledge or suspicion of the commission of any child pornography offence to the police only serves the interests of child predators, paedophiles and perverts. Where it concerns the safety and wellbeing of children, silence is a gross betrayal of all children. Iyavar Chetty November 2010