Viewing child pornography online 'should become crime'
Thursday December 18 2008
PEOPLE who simply view child pornography on the Internet should be guilty of a criminal offence, the Government's adviser on child protection laws said last night.
Child law expert Geoffrey Shannon, who was appointed by the Government to analyse child protection laws in the wake of the 2006 statutory rape crisis, has also warned that our laws must keep pace with technological advances to tackle child pornography.
Mr Shannon has submitted a report to the Government informing it that people with requisite technical knowledge are using an Internet process known as "caching" to repeatedly view child pornographic web pages without ever having downloaded images of children being abused.
At present, only those who view child pornography on the Internet and download the material or print it can be prosecuted for possession.
"Viewing child pornography is contrary to the common good because by viewing such images, people are creating a demand with the result of increased supply, which relies upon the production of pornography and exploitation of children, both of which are already criminal offences," Mr Shannon said in his report which was laid before both houses of the Oireachtas last night.
When someone views a page on the Internet, the browser software automatically copies the page and stores it onto the hard drive of the computer -- this process is called caching.
The purpose of caching is to enable faster opening of web pages if a viewer returns to a past page and people do not necessarily know that the computer is, in fact, copying and storing web pages they view.
Caching, Mr Shannon claims, allows people to view pornography but evade prosecution because they do not download the images.
Mr Shannon, one of two "rapporteurs" appointed to investigate child protection laws after the Supreme Court struck down Ireland's underage sex laws two years ago, has also recommended that child sexual abuse cases be fast-tracked and supervised by judges to spare children the trauma of excessive delays in getting criminal cases to court.
He has recommended the introduction of a statutory scheme with rules to process child law cases similar to the Commercial Court, the big business division of the High Court which manages multi-million euro cases according to strict rules and deadlines.
"A broader and more holistic approach needs to be taken to reforming child law," said Mr Shannon. "Legislation is obviously the first step . . . and this may require a review of the rules of court."
- Dearbhail McDonald Legal Editor
