I know it’s overwhelmingly under researched, but if there is infact any information on it, please show it.
1 Like
If you peruse the forum, you’ll find some articles myself and others have linked.
I should also point out that Prostasia has a Zotero research library where research, and links to it, are retained publicly.
I have these two that I can just paste since they’re in my clipboard.
Child pornography, pedophilia, and contact offending: the empirical research
-There is no scientific basis for the prohibition of private possession of ‘virtual’
child pornography such as drawings.-There is evidence of a correlation between the levels of availability of
pornography and rates of contact offending, and the correlation is negative:
i.e. an increase in availability of material has been found to lead to a decline in
contact offenses, especially against children.-There is some self-report evidence that suggested pornography may be used to
facilitate contact offending, but this evidence has been questioned by other
evidence that demonstrates that those most likely to do so exhibit
psychopathology whereas possession only CPOs do not.
Identifying the Coping Strategies of Nonoffending Pedophilic and Hebephilic Individuals From Their Online Forum Posts
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1079063220965953
I’ll add more here when I have the time, but like you said, there isn’t much in this field.
The closest thing we have are studies on adult pornography and sexual aggression, population studies and statistics, and correlational studies involving actual child pornography consumption and subsequent acts of sexual aggression or child sex abuse, most of which is done using forensic samples of convicts.
Interestingly, the majority empirical consensus on child pornography consumption and pedophilia is that it’s not likely to cause people to commit acts of hands-on CSA, much like other forms of pornography. We know that child pornography offenders (CPOs), child sex abuse offenders (CSAOs) and mixed offenders (MOs) are distinct groups, with the majority of CPOs being “low risk” of committing a hands-on offense, as they lack the primary risk factors that CSAOS have (psychopathology, callousness, impulsivity, social impairments) associated with hands-on offending, and MOs being the minority, observing a merely coincidental association that researchers have yet to broadly agree or conclude as statistically significant or if an effect is present, and what that effect is if there is one.
Of course, the sexual exploitation of real children to create actual CP is why it’s rightfully illegal.
Essentially, the settled consensus is that pornography consumption of any kind, on its own, is harmless in that it isn’t likely to incite subsequent sexual aggression or abuse.
The focus seems to have shifted towards how pornography may affect those who are of higher risk of committing a sexual offense, with some scholars believing that pornography may increase risk, some arguing it decreases risk, and others still undecided since there’s no much inconsistency between studies, data, and methodology.
@terminus didn’t someone post the English translated study commissioned by Denmark that found no causal link between pedophilic fiction and real-life child abuse? It’s hard for me to find because the original report is in Danish.
1 Like
It’s here: Looking for Research, but it doesn’t find that there’s no causal link, it finds that there is no research as to whether there’s a causal link or not.
1 Like