An Intervention Module for Offences Involving Internet Child Pornography

CAUTION. This manual is in process of development and should not be used outside of the research project it is associated with.

AN INTERVENTION MODULE FOR OFFENCES INVOLVING INTERNET CHILD PORNOGRAPHY[1]

Module Introduction

This module consists of 6 Units, and is part of a pilot project that seeks to evaluate the usefulness of developing a discrete set of assessments and interventions for people who have engaged in offences involving Internet child pornography. It is not intended as a replacement for accredited Sex Offender Treatment Programmes, but to supplement existing programmes giving a particular focus to problems that are not unique to this population, but which are exaggerated or intensified by the interaction between the individual and the Internet.

The six Units within this module provide a framework for individual practitioners to focus on Internet related behaviours. The Units are:

1. A model of Internet child pornography related offending behaviour
2. Images ARE children
3. Escalation of fantasy
4. Emotional avoidance
5. The Internet and community
6. Collecting

There is a common structure to all Units:

• Therapist Notes, which include an Introduction to the aims of the Unit, a discussion of the issues, practitioner context and a brief review of the relevant literature, with suggestions for further reading;
• Working with the Client and suggestions for therapeutic exercises.

It is not our aim to specify the duration of each unit, as this clearly is a clinical decision made by the practitioner given the response of the client. It may also be the case that the client provides information that may translate into more effective and relevant therapeutic material than that given in the Unit, and in particular Therapists should feel confident about using their specific client’s experiences to develop intervention strategies. As we proceed with the evaluations of this module we will be soliciting feedback from practitioners about changes that we might make. It is also clear that while there are core units that have relevance to all such offenders (Units 1, 2, 3 and 4) practitioners may, on the basis of their assessment, feel that it is inappropriate, for example, to focus on issues that relate to community where the client has not been in direct contacts with others. Factors that might limit exposure to the unit on collecting and compulsivity might relate to the extent and nature of collecting behaviour shown by the client, and factors related to the unit on emotional avoidance might concern the nature of engagement with the Internet and the role of child pornography in the client’s sexual activities.

Unit 1: A model of Internet child pornography related offending behaviour.

Therapist Notes

Aims of Unit

The aim of this unit is to provide a model of offending behaviour as it relates to child pornography and the Internet that might enable offenders to gain some insight into their behaviour in terms of how they fit (or do not fit) into the model. It is apparent that there is no such individual as the ‘Internet offender’, but that the people who use the Internet in this way are a heterogeneous group who engage in a range of offending behaviours. Such offending behaviours occur in relation to each other (for example, a person is unlikely to trade child pornography without first downloading it from the Internet), but not all offenders engage in all classes of behaviour. One way of conceptualising offences related to child pornography and the Internet is to think of them as a process, rather than a series of discrete behaviours. If we take this approach, the focus is on the offending behaviours, rather than some inherent qualities of the offender; it also implies a dynamic relationship between offending behaviours. This is not to see the offender as a passive vessel, but as a person who makes choices (which may be rational, or at least understandable) about his offending behaviours. What might mediate these choices are classes of verbal behaviours, expressed as self-statements, attitudes, and ways of thinking that increase the likelihood of engagement, sustain the behaviours and allow for movement between behaviours.

Our first therapeutic goal is to enable offenders to identify the types of behaviours that they have been engaging in and to see these behaviours in relation to each other. Many offenders may seek to minimise the seriousness of their offence by seeing it as different to, or less than, the commission of a contact offence. Others will have committed contact offences in relation to, or in addition to, their involvement with the Internet. To present a model of Internet offending as a dynamic process raises issues about where people have come from and where they were potentially moving towards in terms of their offending. It also addresses issues that emphasise factors that interrupted or inhibited movement through the process, as well as those that facilitated or enabled such movement.

The aims of this unit therefore are:

• To use a process model of offending behaviour to identify the types of behaviours the offender had been engaged in
• To look at the pathway to offending, and in what way the offence behaviour had progressed
• To look at the factors that facilitated or inhibited movement through that process

Introduction and Practitioner Context.

In recent years we have seen the emergence and growth of a new category of sexual offender, for whom there may, or may not have been, direct contact with a victim. The offence in question involves the downloading of pornographic pictures of children from the Internet. As yet, there is little research about such people or even whether they share the same characteristics and behaviours as non-Internet contact offenders. It is surprising that given the wide use of the Internet, and the thousands of pornographic images of children available to those who wish to look that its use by sexual offenders has remained largely unexplored. Even very recent reviews of those committing sexual offences against children make no reference to the Internet and the possible relationship between contact offending and child pornography, or indeed pornography in general.

King (1999) has called for basic research about the Internet and human sexuality that might help practitioners. He has argued that it is not the simple availability of pornography online that has created this need, but the fact that people now have access to types of material that were previously available only at great expense and/or personal risk. This, added to the current anarchical nature of Internet communications, means the possibility of increasing social problems as people are faced with conflicts related to self-regulation of their behavior. This clearly goes beyond sexuality and the Internet, and other authors have suggested that what we are seeing is a trend of people spending increasingly more time with technology than with other people.

To date, there has been little therapeutic research that has focused on either the assessment or treatment of people who download child pornography from the Internet, or who use the Internet in other ways to express sexual interest in children. Earlier research (Quayle and Taylor, 2002) has identified difficulties experienced by professionals who work in this area both in understanding the nature of the offence and accommodating this as part of existing sex offender programs. Related to this, Marshall et al (1998) and Abracen & Looman (2001) have asked us to consider in what ways do we need to modify our programs in order to educate ourselves to effectively treat different types of sex offenders.

Within the last few years one way of conceptualizing problematic Internet use has emerged in the concept of ‘Internet Addiction’ (Griffiths, 1998). This is seen as a kind of technological addiction, falling within a subset of behavioral addictions, and involves excessive human-machine interaction, which can be either passive (such as television) or active (such as computer games). Such interaction is thought to "usually contain inducing and reinforcing features which may contribute to the promotion of addictive tendencies". A recent confirmatory factor analysis study (Pratarelli et al, 2002) suggested that Internet addiction may involve an addictive performance profile which in turn leads to excessive behaviors that involve the use of the Internet for sexual purposes, and its functional usefulness for a variety of professional and personal goals.

The label of addiction has been seen as problematic and diagnostic tools such as DSM-IV use instead the term dependence, while others have talked of pathological use. More recently, in the context of excessive downloading of pornography and entering sexually explicit chat rooms, Stein et al (2001) advocated the use of the label ‘Hypersexual disorder’. Experience suggests that with regard to many of the people who download child pornography, none of these labels appear satisfactory, as they seem to suggest both a model of Internet use as an illness, and also relegate it to an extreme end of a continuum of behavior. In the context of the model proposed here, it would seem more helpful to think of the downloading of child pornography as 'problematic', both in terms of content, the amount of time spent online, and the role of pornography as a precursor to contact offending.

Further research by Davis (2001) has presented a specific cognitive-behavioral model of Pathological Internet Use (PIU), which focused on associated maladaptive cognitions. Davis suggested that PIU resulted from problematic cognitions and behaviors that either maintained or intensified maladaptive responses. The model he presented distinguished between specific PIU and generalized PIU. Specific PIU referred to a condition in which an individual pathologically used the Internet for a particular purpose, such as online sex or gambling, while generalized PIU referred to general 'time wasting' activities on the Internet, such as repeatedly checking e-mails and surfing through different web sites. Specific PIU usage was purposive and tended to be content specific, and as such is particularly relevant to the problems associated with downloading child pornography. Generalized PIU in contrast related to multidimensional overuse, resulting in dysfunctional behaviors across a broad spectrum.

Davis in identifying the etiology of Pathological Internet Use, suggested that it resulted from problematic cognitions that either intensified or maintained the maladaptive response. He presented a model emphasizing cognitions (or thoughts) as the main source of problem behavior. Distal contributory causes identified in this model were the diathesis element in the diathesis-stress model, and were described as underlying psychopathology (such as depression, social anxiety and substance dependence); these were seen as a distal and necessary cause of Pathological Internet Use. The stressor was identified as the introduction of the Internet or some new technology related to the Internet. The model suggested that proximal contributory causes were the presence of specific maladaptive cognitions, either about the self or about the world. Davis gave very general examples of such cognitions, but it is not clear where these were drawn from.

This model gave a useful starting point to develop thinking about adult sexual interest in children and problematic Internet use. Although it might be argued that in this case the presumed cognitions are highly adaptive in that they enable the individual to gain access to, and use in some way, preferred material, such cognitions are however, problematic in the sense that they support behavior that ultimately is exploitative of others who are more vulnerable. The further development of such a model enables us to take a more discriminating view with regard to the offender, and focuses on the behaviors that the offender engages in and the cognitions that support or justify activities. It moves away from thinking about typologies of offenders derived from innate characteristics to thinking about how the offender constructs his world discursively and the impact that this has on behavior.

Samples of Internet offenders to date are too small and too recent to allow us to develop meaningful causal relationships within a quantitative framework, between downloading pornography and the commission of a contact offence. The model proposed in this paper draws on an ongoing qualitative analysis of offender interviews (see Quayle and Taylor (2002) for a detailed account of the methodology) and facilitates the examination of cognitions related to offender behavior and problematic Internet use outside of a pathological framework. In the proposed model, such cognitions support accessing illegal material, sustain engagement with the Internet and may lead to the commission of further offences. These cognitive distortions are characteristic of a set of attitudes and values that support the legitimacy of sexual interest in relation to children, and in particular the use of the Internet as a means of meeting this.

References and further suggested reading

Abracen, J. and J. Looman (2001). "Issues in the treatment of sexual offenders; Recent developments and directions for future research." Aggression and Violent BehaviorIn Press, Uncorrected Proof.

Davis, R. A. (2001). "A cognitive-behavioral model of pathological Internet use."

Griffiths, M. (1998) Internet addiction: does it really exist. In Gackenbach, J. Psychology and the Internet: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal implications. New York: Academic Press.

King, S. (1999). "Internet gambling and pornography: Illustrative examples of the psychological consequences of communication anarchy." CyberPsychology & Behaviour2: 175-193.

Marshall, F., Fernandez, Y.M., Hudson, S.M. & Ward, T . (1998). Conclusions and future directions. In W.L. Marshall, Y.M. Fernandez, S.M. Hudson & T. Ward (Eds.). “Sourcebook of treatment programs for sexual offenders.”(pp 477-478). New York. Plenum.

Marshall, W. L. and Y. M. Fernandez (2000). "Phallometric testing with sexual offenders; Limits to its value." Clinical Psychology Review20(7): 807-822.

Pratarelli, M. E. and B. L. Browne (2002). "Confirmatory factor analysis of internet use and addiction." CyberPsychology & Behavior: the Impact of the Internet, Multimedia and Virtual Reality on Behavior and Society5(1): 53-64.

Computers in Human Behavior17(2): 187-195.

Quayle, E. & Taylor, M. (2002). Child pornography and the Internet: Perpetuating a cycle of abuse Deviant Behavior. Vol 23(4), pp. 331-362.

Working with the Client

Diagram 1 (see Appendix 1) illustrates in diagrammatic form a model of Internet Child Pornography related to offending behaviour. It emphasises five classes of Internet-child-pornography related offending behaviours:

1. Downloading child pornography
2. Trading child pornography
3. Distribution and production of child pornography
4. Engagement with Internet seduction of children
5. Contact offences

The classes are not discrete and each requires particular conditions for expression. For example, the production of child pornography necessarily involves the commission of a contact offence, but the latter does not automatically imply the former.

This model does not imply that the person who engages in the downloading of child pornography will automatically go on to commit a contact offence against a child. But there is evidence to support the view that where there are facilitating factors (environmental, such as access to children, as well as those pertaining to the individual, in terms of past history, etc.), these increase the likelihood of it being the case. There is clearly considerable evidence to support the suggestion that there is a relationship between pornography and sexual aggression, but as yet it is unclear as to what that relationship might be (for example, see a recent review by Marshall, 2000).

A critical issue is for the therapist to identify with the client his or her route to offending, and to help the client understand some of the processes associated with the Internet that can facilitate increased involvement with problematic Internet behaviour. (For a detailed account of this see Quayle and Taylor 2002, 2002a).

The following are activities that should help the client to gain increased awareness of his or her behaviour. It is important to note, however, that in discussing and working with a client, he or she may present with case material that can be used in developing individual exercises.

Exercises

1. As with any CBT approach, the goal initially is to identify the relationships between mood, cognition and behaviour.

• Give a copy of (or display on a board/flipchart) the model of offending behaviour (Appendix 1) to the client and discuss it with him or her. Ask the client to identify their offending behaviour, using the model.
• Each offender should be asked to explore each step in the process that resulted in the offences committed, and to be able to give a detailed written description of the same.

1. Use the history recording form to get the client to identify what they see as important issues in relation to their offending behaviour (see Appendix 1).
2. Examine with each client the cognitions that justified each stage in the offending process and the environmental factors that facilitated this.

Materials

1. Diagram of offending and Internet child pornography (Appendix 1)
2. History of offending form (Appendix 1)

Completion criteria

By the end of this unit the client should have:

1. Used the model of Internet related offending to identify their offending behaviour and given a written description of the same. The description should accord with that provided by the police or forensic report.
2. Given a written account of each of the steps taken which moved him/her further down the offence process.
3. Described any distant factors that enabled a context for offending.
4. Identified problematic self-statements that facilitated the offending.
5. Described what environmental factors, if any, supported the offence behaviour.

Unit 2: Images ARE children

Therapist Notes

Aims of the unit

Photographs or video sequences are in one sense disembodied representations and not real people; the viewer is distanced from the event. For many offenders, traditional empathy work is difficult because they cannot identify with any one child. The aim of this unit is to confront the client with the knowledge that the images they have been downloading and collecting are those of real children. It builds on existing empathy work to look at what lies behind the photograph, to challenge the notion of ‘the smiling child’, and to consider the impact on the child of being a victim of child pornography. It is likely that at least some offenders see their offences as essentially a ‘victimless crime’, or at least the downloading and trading aspects as being such. It is also possible for offenders to confuse or blur the nature of the material, saying that the pictures were not really sexual ones, or that they did not realise that they were illegal. A further possibility is that offenders equate adult pornography with abusive images of children, and because of that minimise or dismiss the non-consensual nature of the material.