New Study Strongly Links Child Porn Use and Child AbuseLifeSiteNews: “A recent study performed by psychologists among inmates of the Bureau of Prisons suggests a strong link between the use of child pornography and child abuse. The study, conducted between 2002-2005 and chronicled in an article by Tori DeAngelis in this month’s edition of the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Pyschology, studied men who had already been convicted of child pornography crimes to see if they had also molested children.” Tori DeAngelis, Porn use and child abuse: The link may be greater than we think, a controversial study suggests, APA Monitor on Psychology, Volume 40, No. 11 December 2009: ”The study, published in the April Journal of Family Violence (Vol. 24, No. 3), analyzed data on 155 men convicted of possessing, receiving or distributing Internet-based child pornography, who took part in an 18-month treatment program.” Michael L. Bourke and Andres E. Hernandez, The ‘Butner Study’ Redux: A Report of the Incidence of Hands-on Child Victimization by Child Pornography Offenders, Journal of Family Violence (Vol. 24, No. 3, April 2009) _______________________ The ‘Butner Study’ Redux: A Report of the Incidence of Hands-on Child Victimization by Child Pornography Offenders Michael L. Bourke1 and Andres E. Hernandez2 (1) US Marshals Service, 241 18th Street/CS-4, Suite 1200, Washington, DC 20530, USA Abstract: This study compared two groups of child pornography offenders participating in a voluntary treatment program: men whose known sexual offense history at the time of judicial sentencing involved the possession, receipt, or distribution of child abuse images, but did not include any “hands-on” sexual abuse; and men convicted of similar offenses who had documented histories of hands-on sexual offending against at least one child victim. The goal was to determine whether the former group of offenders were “merely” collectors of child pornography at little risk for engaging in hands-on sexual offenses, or if they were contact sex offenders whose criminal sexual behavior involving children, with the exception of Internet crimes, went undetected. Our findings show that the Internet offenders in our sample were significantly more likely than not to have sexually abused a child via a hands-on act. They also indicate that the offenders who abused children were likely to have offended against multiple victims, and that the incidence of “crossover” by gender and age is high. Keywords Child pornography – Internet offender – Online offender – Butner Study – Hands-on abuse Opinions expressed in this article on those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the US Marshals Service, or the US Department of Justice.
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