My husband and I have been living outside Canada for just over three years now, while he works on an expatriate assignment for the Nortel corporation, and so we are sometimes a bit behind on hearing the latest news from our homeland. And we all, of course, know Quebec has wanted to separate from Canada for a very long time now. But would someone please tell me when British Columbia (and maybe Canada, now, for that matter) decided to secede from planet Earth?
I’m referring to a recent British Columbia judge’s decision regarding child pornography. Child pornography is one of the many ways adults abuse children. This B.C. judge ruled that the law prohibiting the possession of child pornography is a “profound invasion” of a person’s right to freedom of expression and privacy guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This is a prime example of the rights of one person conflicting with the rights of another. When two rights conflict, we must weigh the importance of each one and look at the impact of elevating one right above the other. Obviously, the judge felt that an adult’s right to freedom of expression and privacy is more important than a child’s right to privacy, dignity, and emotional health.
This ruling flies in the face of the 1959 United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child, which says children should be helped “to develop in a healthy and normal manner, in freedom and dignity,” and the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says that the “state shall protect children from physical or mental harm … including sexual abuse or exploitation.”
Those in favour of such a ruling would argue that it cannot be proven that possession of child pornography will cause someone to go out and sexually abuse a child. Causal relationships are always very difficult, if not impossible, to scientifically prove. But our inability to prove it doesn’t mean that the relationship is not there.
Given that we don’t know, shouldn’t we err on the side of protecting the child? We might find out in the future that possession of pornography really does incite a person to abuse a child. I remember reading somewhere that it took many, many years to prove a causal link between smoking and lung cancer. People knew by common sense that smoking contributed to lung cancer, but there was no proof, only anecdotal evidence. Many studies later, it was determined that smoking does indeed cause lung cancer.
Even if we grant that possession by itself will not lead the owner of such material to commit sexual abuse, so what? The fact that the person has the pornography is in itself degrading to children. And studies have shown that societal attitudes affect what people think about themselve and others.
In many cases, child pornography depicts real children, children who are being abused and then photographed. When there is a market for such stuff, then it will be produced. In this way, the act of possession contributes to children being abused in the first place.
When I read about the B.C. ruling, I could not help but think of another story my brother told me a number of years ago when he worked as a parole officer in Toronto – a story that still brings tears to my eyes when I think about it. One of his clients was a teenage girl who, as a young child, along with her little brother, had been victims of a pornography ring. They were forced to perform acts of bestiality on videotape. And who were some of the customers of these pornographic tapes? Lawyers and judges!
