This week PervScan received an email from F.H. It included a link to a site that, on the surface, claims to help people with past sexual abuse. However, F.H. claims that there is more to it than meets the eye.

I’ve about given up that anyone cares about this site. It’s a meeting-place for men who sodomize little boys. Click on the discussion url then on the stories section. Run it back thru the archives and read those stories. The stories you’ll read are masturbatory scenarios of child rape posted by middle aged men from the U.S, Canada and England. During the 1990s I was a moderator at the site for a few days till I couldn’t take it anymore. Check out the higher-ups who put together and run the site. If that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, nothing will.

(PervScan is withholding the link and the name of the site. Why drive traffic to it if there are questions about it?)

This email raises some very important and also difficult questions. In the first place, “masturbatory scenarios of child rape posted by middle-aged men” may well be a form of free expression protected by the First Amendment here in the United States. It’s not usually illegal to fantasize about something illegal. You can daydream about crack cocaine all you want, you just can’t smoke it or sell it. And the same logic — so far as PervScan understands the matter — applies to pedophilia. You can fantasize about it, you just can’t act on it. (The Columbia Law Review published an interesting article on the relations between child pornography and the First Amendment called The Perverse Law of Child Pornography.)

However, in the second place, it is possible that some written fantasies could cross the line between free speech and criminal behavior. For example, if you were to write a letter to a child describing a sexual act you wanted to perform on him, you would be committing a crime (harrassment, endangering the welfare of a child). To a lesser degree, the same logic would hold true if you were to post your pedophiliac fantasies in a place frequented by minors. It could be construed as harrassment or endangerment.

In the third place, if a site is being used for as a forum for pedophiles, its legality is a tricky question. Clearly it is illegal to post child pornography, and yet it is not yet clear legally whether the owner of a site is responsible for the actions of the users who post to it. If the owner posts kiddie porn, he is liable. If a user posts kiddie porn, the owner may not be — as has been the case with Yahoo, which has been exempted from liability when its users exchange child pornography on it.

Another case would involve a site that does not enable the exchange of imagery but merely of stories, fantasies, or possibly tips. Such a site may not be illegal. However, if law enforcement gets any sense that the site is a meeting place for practicing pedophiles, then the site may be shut down or infiltrated by agents enacting a sting.

In conclusion, if you feel that a site promotes the sexual exploitation of children or distributes child pornography in any way, for God’s sake don’t send it to PervScan. PervScan will not look at it and may even forward your email to legal authorities. Because that is the proper thing to do with sites promoting child abuse: report them.

In the United States, you should do this via the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline site. The FBI also recommends speaking to the Crimes Against Children Coordinator at your local FBI field office. In addition, you might find these resources helpful: the Virtual Global Taskforce, ObscenityCrimes.org, ReportChildPorn.com, and CPHotline.org.

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