When they first discovered what my uncle did, I went to therapy and thought I was getting over this. I was very wrong. My full understanding of what happened to me has only gotten clearer as I have gotten older. My life and my feelings are worse now because the crime has never really stopped and will never really stop.
It is hard to describe what it feels like to know that at any moment, anywhere, someone is looking at pictures of me as a little girl being abused by my uncle and is getting some kind of sick enjoyment from it. It’s like I am being abused over and over and over again.
I find myself unable to do the simple things that other teenagers handle easily. I do not have a driver’s license. Every time I say I am going to do it, I don’t. I can’t plan well. My mind skips out on me when I think about moving forward with my life. I have been trying to get a job, but I just keep avoiding things. Forgetting is the thing I do best since I was forced as a little girl to live a double life and ‘forget’ what was happening to me. Before I realize it, I miss interviews or other things that will help me get a job.
Sometimes things remind me of the abuse and I don’t even realize it until it is too late. For example, I failed anatomy in high school. I simply could not think about the body because of what happened to me. The same thing happened in college. I went to a psychology class where we watched a video about child abuse. Without even realizing why, I just stopped going to class. I failed my freshman year of college and moved back home.
It’s easy for me to block out my feelings and avoid things that make me uncomfortable. I don’t know when I will be ready to go back to college because I have huge problems with avoiding anything that makes me uncomfortable or reminds me of my abuse.
I am always scared that people can look at me and tell that I am a victim of sex abuse because my abuse is a public fact. I am worried that when my friends are on the Internet they are going to come across my pictures and it fills me with shame and embarrassment.
I am humiliated and ashamed that there are pictures of me doing horrible things with my uncle. Everywhere I go I feel judged. Am I the kind of person who does this? Is there something wrong with me? Is there something sickening and disgusting about who I am?
I am embarrassed to tell anyone what happened to me because I’m afraid they will judge me and blame me for it. I live in a small town and I think that if one person knows then everyone will know. I am just living in fear of the day someone sees those awful pictures of me and then ‘the secret’ about me will be out. It’s like my life is on hold for that day and I am frozen in time waiting. I know those disgusting pictures of me are stuck in time and are there forever for everyone to see.
I had terrible nightmares for a long long time. I would wake up sweating and crying and go to my parents for comfort. Now I still get flashbacks sometimes. There are thoughts in my head that are memories of the things that my uncle did to me. My heart will start racing and I will feel sweaty and then a stronger picture will pop up in my head and I have to leave the situation I am in. I have heard the voice of my uncle in my mind still talking to me saying, “don’t tell, don’t tell, don’t tell.” Thinking and knowing that the pictures of all this are still out there just makes it worse. It’s like I can’t escape from the abuse, now or ever.
Because I’ve had so many bad dreams, I find it hard to sleep when it’s dark. I like to keep the lights on thinking that will protect me from bad dreams. I hate scary movies and sometimes have nightmares for days.
Sometimes I have unreasonable fears that prevent me from doing the normal things that other kids do. My friend once asked me to go with her and her uncle to an amusement park. I could not get it out of my head that I would be abused. In the end I just couldn’t go. I kept wondering if my friend’s uncle had seen my pictures. Did he know me? Did he know what I did? Is that why he invited me to the amusement park?
Trust is a very hard thing for me and often people just make me uncomfortable. I had to quit a job I had as a waitress because there was a guy who I thought was always staring at me. I couldn’t stop thinking, did he recognize me? Did he see my pictures somewhere? I was simply too uncomfortable to keep working there.
I have trouble saying ‘no’ to people since I learned at a young age that I really don’t have control over what’s happening to me. I am trying to learn to get better at this because I know that not saying ‘no’ makes it easier for someone to hurt me again.
Because of the way my uncle bribed me to perform sex acts on camera, I have trouble taking gifts from anyone. I always feel that people will expect something from me if they give me a present. This makes it difficult in my relationship with friends.
I want to have children someday, but it frightens me terribly to think about how I could keep them safe. Who could I possibly trust? Their teacher? Their coach? I don’t know if I could ever trust anyone with my children. And what if my children and their friends see my pictures on the Internet? How could I ever explain to them what happened to me?
I am very confused about what love is. My uncle said he loved me and I wanted that love. But I know now that what he did to me is not love. But how will I be able to tell in the future if it is real love or just another person trying to exploit and use me?
The truth is, I am being exploited and used every day and every night somewhere in the world by someone. How can I ever get over this when the crime that is happening to me will never end? How can I get over this when the shameful abuse I suffered is out there forever and being enjoyed by sick people?
I am horrified by the thought that other children will probably be abused because of my pictures. Will someone show my pictures to other kids, like my uncle did to me, then tell them what to do? Will they see me and think it’s okay for them to do the same thing? Will some sick person see my picture and then get the idea to do the same thing to another little girl? These thoughts make me sad and scared. I blame myself a lot for what happened. I know I was so little, but why didn’t I know better? Why didn’t I stop my uncle? Maybe if I had stopped it there wouldn’t be so many pictures out there that I can never take back or erase. I feel like now I have to live with it forever and that it’s all my fault.
I feel like I am unworthy of anything and a failure. What have I been good for except to be used by others over and over again. That’s one of the reasons I haven’t been able to get a job or stay in school. I’m tired of disappointing myself. I’ve already had enough disappointment for a lifetime and just don’t want any more failure. To me this brings back all the terrible feelings and shame of abuse and exploitation.
Sometimes I deal with my feelings by trying to forget everything by drinking too much. I know this isn’t good, but my humiliation and angry feelings are there with me all the time and sometimes I just need a way to make them go away for awhile.
I feel like I have always had to live a double life. First I had to lie about what my uncle was doing to me. Then I had to act like it didn’t happen because it was too embarrassing. Now I always know that there is another ‘little me’ being seen on the Internet by other abusers. I don’t want to be there, but I am. I wish I could go back in time and stop my uncle from taking those pictures, but I can’t.
Even though I am scared that I will be abused or hurt again because I am making this victim impact statement, I want the court and judge to know about me and what I have suffered and what my life is like. What happened to me hasn’t gone away. It will never go away. I am a real victim of child pornography and it effects me every day and everywhere I go.
Please think about me and think about my life when you sentence this person to prison. Why should this person, who is continuing my abuse, be free when I am not free?
PART FOUR
Pornography and the State
“I could make our home environment porn free, but as soon as we stepped outside into a shopping centre, past a bus stop, or to get petrol, there was a reminder. While my husband was trying to leave this part of his life behind, and we were
trying to strengthen our marriage, we could not avoid it.” – Cate
“I have struggled with pornography for a long time and I hate it. I hate what it does to my mind and my perception of women. I hate how it can consume my thoughts. I hate the fact that I constantly fight to keep my mind free and I will have to fight for the rest of my life.” – Oliver
“I fear for future generations when ‘intelligent’ men are slaves to the need for ever increasing degrees of excitement rather than deepening intimate connection.” – Ginger
“I don’t want to view, read or encounter pornographic materials. Why is this so hard for so many people to understand … Why are the sexual desires of those who wish to use porn more important than those who don’t? Why should I have to change so many aspects of my life in order to avoid feeling violated, to protect my mind, to protect my child?” – Nicole
Anne Mayne
The Power of Pornography – A South African Case Study1
There is verbal evidence from survivors of incest and childhood sexual abuse that pornography circulated in the dark, dank corridors of underground networks under apartheid in South Africa. When Diana Russell conducted a study on incest in South Africa in the 1990s, she found that as far back as 40 years ago, pornography was used to groom and intimidate children into lives of abuse. Survivors remembered being forced to watch movies and look at magazines, then forced to act out the sexual scenes (Russell, 1997). In those days anyone found in possession of pornography faced criminal charges and serious penalties.
With the end of apartheid and the release of Mandela in 1990, South Africa began to reassemble itself into a constitutional democracy under the African National Congress (ANC) government. While the Interim Constitution was being drafted in 1996, Frene Ginwala, a well-known leader in the liberation struggle, was asked to find an expert to draft a policy on pornography for the ANC. Ginwala invited Diana Russell, the internationally renowned feminist sociologist, activist and author of books on pornography and violence against women and girls, to undertake this task. Russell drafted a paper in which she cited evidence of the severe harm done to females who are victimised in the production of pornography, as well as those who are sexually abused by males acting out sex acts that they had been exposed to in pornography (Russell, 1998a). Ginwala’s response to Russell’s paper was total silence.
In August 1994, the then Minister of Home Affairs, Dr M. Buthelezi, appointed a Task Group to draft a new act to replace the existing Publications Act of 1974, the scope of which included the production and dissemination of pornography (van Rooyen, 1996, p. 172). This group began by researching and consulting internationally, and concluded that a mere amendment of the Act would not remedy the situation, and that the current approach to pornographic material needed to reflect that there was a clear movement away from morality to whether it could cause harm (van Rooyen, 1996, p. 172).
At the same time that van Rooyen was conducting his research, a nationally circulated petition against the legalisation of pornography, drawn up by Pat and Horace van Rensburg’s organisation STOP Pornography, which drew 250,000 signatures, was presented to the then Minister of Home Affairs and later 1800 submissions were presented at the Portfolio Committee Hearings, 95% of which called for the government not to legalise pornography (pers. comm. retired MP Horace van Rensburg). These appeals from the public appear to have been ignored.
It took a mere 6 weeks for this research to be completed and the new Act to be drafted. The research of internationally recognised anti-pornography feminists, sociologists, legal experts and psychologists – plus a large sector of the South African public – was totally ignored in favour of the opinion of international patriarchal ‘legal experts’. Russell’s published revision of the recommendations she had previously sent to Ginwala was once again not responded to. (This legislation was passed in 1995 and enacted in 1996; pers. comm. Pat van Rensburg, February, 2011.)
The fact that the vast majority of the South African population was in a state of crisis – impoverished; denied adequate education; their communities destroyed by the slave-like migrant labour system, forced removals and a devastating HIV/AIDS pandemic – did not appear to concern those drafting this legislation which eventually allowed pornography to be sold in South Africa. It did not seem to occur to them that the proliferation of extremely misogynistic pornographic material would be harmful to masses of already vulnerable women barely surviving in an oppressive, male-dominated society.
From 1996, a number of anti-pornography groups began to be established. STOP Pornography inspired another effective and long-lasting campaigning group Standing Together to Oppose Pornography (S.T.O.P). By various means this group has achieved great success over the past 15 years – initially by getting pornography removed from convenience stores, gaining co-operation from local school principals and backing up the African Christian Action group who had succeeded in removing pornography nation-wide from supermarket shelves. They organised marches to raise public awareness, poster demonstrations at Council meetings, a community meeting and a widely attended conference. From worldwide sources they collected and edited information which was then printed and handed to the chairperson of the newly created Film and Publications Board (FPB). S.T.O.P initiated workshops for the police and presentations at schools and continue to deliver them today. Importantly, their actions have resulted in credibility with Government. They now also run support groups for growing numbers of men addicted to pornography – increasingly younger in age – who are trying to break free. Throughout the years, their letters have been published in the main daily newspapers and S.T.O.P is frequently featured in the media (pers. comm. Doreen Meissner, Michele and Clive Human of S.T.O.P, 25 January, 2011).
The liberalisation of the previous legislation coincided with the emergence of a multifaceted sex industry which had not existed in the country before 1994. Sex shops, strip/lap-dancing clubs, escort agencies, massage parlors, brothels and visible evidence of mostly black women being prostituted on the streets appeared in cities all over the country. The normalisation of images of women and girls being sexually exploited in pornography – which led to the prevalence of images of women being sexually exploited in advertising – appears to have been the impetus for the sudden explosion of the local sex industry. This new women-selling industry now exploits a large number of poverty-stricken South African women and girls. In so doing, it has created yet another industry new to the country: sex trafficking. Those who drafted the legislation ignored the fact that the pornography industry, dependent on the commercial sexual exploitation of young and vulnerable members of society, is extremely lucrative for those who manufacture and control it.
Paradoxically, prostitution and associated activities, such as brothel keeping, lap dancing, selling of ‘indecent acts’, living off the proceeds of prostitution and procuring, has remained criminalised and, in fact, was strengthened by the criminalisation of the buyer in the Sexual Offences Amendment Act 2007. However, the policing of the sex industry appears to be a low priority with the South African Police Service.
Sheila Jeffreys (2009, p. 62) states that according to research by Ward and Day, the percentage of men prostituting women doubled in 10 years in the UK when hardcore pornography became mainstream in the early 1980s. Though the prevalence of prostitution in South Africa after the passage of this law is not known, a study by the Institute for Child and Family Development at the University of the Western Cape shows its devastating effects (Barnes-September et al., 2000). The findings of this research were that all the respondents, i.e. the prostituted girls, came from poor, abusive, dysfunctional backgrounds and some had been trafficked from rural areas, believing that they were going into domestic work. One told of being videoed while having sex, clearly for pornography. She was an illiterate rural girl, and could not understand why they were videoing her.
Pornography has been visibly present in South Africa for 17 years and we are now a country that has one of the highest police-repor
ted rape statistics in the world. Diana Russell noted in 1998 that “some people have argued that because the rape rate in South Africa is so high, and because pornography has only recently become much easier to obtain … this proves how insignificant pornography is as a cause of rape.” Her response was that “it proves no such thing … It merely means that the rape rate will become even higher” (Russell, 1998b). Her prediction, unfortunately, has come true: current rape rates in South Africa are exceedingly high.
The following illustrates how invasive the pornography business is. As soon as the news filtered out of South Africa that Mandela was going to be released and the ANC unbanned, the big pornography-producing companies in the US moved in to set up their offices in Johannesburg. Hustler was the first to establish itself in 1993 and Penthouse set up its office in Johannesburg in 1994 (Krouse, 2010). Penthouse had secured the right to publish a South African edition, with the explicit pornography left out, in 1991. The first South African edition of Playboy, along the same lines as Penthouse, came out in 1993 (see Russell, 1994). The new Film and Publication Bill (FPB) had not yet been drafted, they knew that the country was in a state of flux, and clearly the pornographers wanted to capture their market as soon as possible. As the US-funded industry was establishing itself, an Australian, Arthur Calamaris, moved in with the capital and stock to set up the Adult World chain of sex shops, which have now become established in all the major cities along with the sex shops of the chain Private that came later. Many smaller shops now sell pornography and even street sellers illegally display their usually pirated wares on the pavements at bus and taxi terminuses.
In the beginning, when pornographic magazines flooded into supermarkets and convenience stores, one heard distressed and angry women calling in to radio talk shows complaining that they and their children were being traumatized by sexual images in the magazines displayed in check-out areas and that pornographic publications were sometimes being placed adjacent to children’s magazines. Angry women called in saying that their husbands/partners were buying these magazines and leaving them around the house, and that they were disgusted and sexually turned off because their men wanted them to act the same way as the women in the magazines. These have been removed now as a result of pressure brought to bear by S.T.O.P.
Big Porn Inc: Exposing the Harms of the Global Pornography Industry Page 34