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This recent commentary, by Slate.com columnist and journalist writer Emily Bazelon (who earlier this year wrote a New York Times Magazine cover story on the Marsh Law Firm's groundbreaking work on restitution for child pornography victims), is a reaction to the United States Sentencing Commission's recent report to Congress on federal child pornography offenses.

Making child pornography is abuse. What about possessing it? As a group, these offenders—the ones who look but don’t abuse children to create new images—are serving increasingly long prison sentences. In 2004, the average sentence for possessing child pornography was about 4 ½ years. In 2010, it was almost eight years. Child sex offenders may also be kept in prison beyond their release dates through “civil commitment” if the state deems that they’ll have “serious difficulty in refraining from sexually violent conduct or child molestation if released.”

It’s hard to feel concern for people (mostly men) who prowl the Internet for sexually abusive images of children, some of whom are very young. Their crimes aren’t “victimless,” as defense lawyers sometimes argue. These men create the market for new images. They are the demand behind the supply. I’ve written about how hard it is for women who were abused and photographed as girls to know that men are still viewing, and taking pleasure in, the record of their suffering—and about the victims’ efforts to win restitution from these men.

But the main reason Congress has upped the penalties for men who possess child pornography is the deep-seated belief that many of them physically abuse children and that they are highly likely to keep doing so because they can’t stop themselves. Is that true? I’ve heard it so many times it’s hard to think otherwise. Yet that premise is contested in a new 468-page report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission (the body Congress established to advise it about federal sentencing law). The commission did its own research. It says the federal sentencing scheme for child pornography offenses is out of date and argues that this leads to penalties that “are too severe for some offenders and too lenient for other offenders.”

For the rest of Emily's piece, visit Slate.com. The comments are especially instructive.

The Jerry Sandusky criminal trial is over; the civil lawsuits are in active settlement mode. Undoubtedly, the entire country is more tuned into child abuse than it ever was. The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that about 105 bills on the reporting of suspected child abuse and neglect have been introduced in 2012 legislative sessions in 30 states and the District of Columbia. ¹ All of them include a penalty for failing to report suspected child abuse.

Oregon is one of the states which recently enacted child abuse reporting legislation. It added to the list of mandated reporters any employee or volunteer of organization providing child-related services or activities, any employee of a higher education institution, and any coach, assistant coach or trainer of child athlete and individual who provides guidance, instruction or training in youth development activities and youth camps.

Overlooked in the wake of this new awareness is the sad reality of false allegations of child abuse. There is no disputing that child abuse is a serious and pervasive worldwide problem. ² In most situations, abuse allegations are made responsibly, based on actual abuse. Sometimes they are not.

To address this concern, Oregon also passed legislation regarding the false reporting of child abuse. The law ³ reads:

(1) A person commits the offense of making a false report of child abuse if, with the intent to influence a custody, parenting time, visitation or child support decision, the person:

(a) Makes a false report of child abuse to the Department of Human Services or a law enforcement agency, knowing that the report is false; or

(b) With the intent that a public or private official make a report of child abuse to the Department of Human Services or a law enforcement agency, makes a false report of child abuse to the public or private official, knowing that the report is false.

(2) Making a false report of child abuse is a Class A violation.”

In fact, most states ⁴ have similar statutes. For instance, Arkansas ⁵ provides that:

“(a) A person commits the offense of making a false report under this chapter if he or she purposely makes a report containing a false allegation to the Child Abuse Hotline knowing the allegation to be false.

(b) (1) A first offense of making a false report under this chapter is a Class A misdemeanor. (2) A subsequent offense of making a false report under this chapter is a Class D felony.”

Colorado ⁶ provides that “No person … shall knowingly make a false report of abuse or neglect to a county department or local law enforcement agency. Any person who willfully violates the provisions …commits a class 3 misdemeanor and shall be punished … [and] shall be liable for damages proximately caused thereby.”

The repercussions of false abuse allegations are traumatizing and stigmatizing to the child allegedly abused. The child may have to undergo unnecessary psychological and medical examinations. And commonly, rifts between the child and his or her parents and siblings may develop. In the divorce and custody context, an accusation of child abuse may begin in family court, but it can quickly wind up in civil, criminal, and juvenile courts.

When child abuse allegations are true, CPS must do everything possible to protect the child. When false accusations are made, the accused individual's morally upright reputation can be permanently damaged. CPS workers know that abuse allegations are difficult to prove. Learning to decipher false allegations from real ones is a demanding and perpetual challenge. In either case, they can lead to protracted and difficult legal battles.

1 http://www.ncsl.org/issues-research/human-services/2012-child-abuse-mandatory-reporting-bills.aspx

2 See e.g. Lalor, K. & McElvaney, R. (2010). Child sexual abuse, links to later sexual exploitation/high risk sexual behavior and prevention/treatment programmes. Trauma, Violence and Abuse, (11), 159-177.

3 ORS 419B.016.

4 AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, FL, GA, HI, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MA, MI, MN, MO, MT, NE, NY, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VI, WA, WY. A summary of state laws regarding penalties for the failure to report and false reporting of child abuse, written by the Child Welfare Information Gateway, is available at https://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/laws_policies/statutes/report.cfm.

5 Title 12, Subtitle 2, Chapter 18, Subchapter 2, § 12-18-203.

6 CRS Title 19, Article 3, Part 3, § 19-3-304.

Daniel Pollack is a professor at Yeshiva University’s School of Social Work in New York City and a frequent expert witness in child welfare cases. He can be reached at dpollack@yu.edu. This article originally appeared in Policy & Practice, 71(1), 30 (2013).

This report is the result of a multi-year process in which the United States Sentencing Commission (“the Commission”) examined cases of offenders sentenced under the federal sentencing guidelines and corresponding penal statutes concerning child pornography offenses.

The purpose of this report is to contribute to the ongoing assessment by Congress and the various stakeholders in the federal criminal justice system regarding how federal child pornography offenders are prosecuted, sentenced, incarcerated, and supervised following their reentry into the community.

This report complements and expands upon the Commission’s 2009 report, History of the Child Pornography Guidelines. The 2009 report chronicled the federal non-production child pornography guidelines from their inception through 2009. In particular, it tracked all substantive amendments made to those guidelines, several of which resulted from congressional directives to the Commission or other legislation.

The most significant amendments to the guidelines resulted from the PROTECT Act of 2003, which also created new statutory mandatory minimum statutory penalties for most child pornography offenses.

Federal Child Pornography Offenses by Marsh Law Firm PLLC

The newspaper's cover story provided an account of the FBI's recent dismantling of "Lost Boy," an international, members-only online bulletin board operated by about three dozen child pornographers. The federal crackdown represented, at the time (in 2009), the largest disruption of a child exploitation enterprise since that federal statute was signed into law in 2006.

The FBI built its case in Los Angeles before spreading across the country and world, spinning off into several related FBI investigations -- including the one in Missouri, where authorities arrested a man producing material later discovered on the Lost Boy bulletin board. A District judge recently sentenced him to 100 years in prison.

The story begins:

Tucked like a thumbprint inside a bend in the Meramec River, Miramiguoa Park is a remarkably secluded piece of real estate. Surrounded on three sides by the river, the sparsely populated — 127 residents at last count — 200-acre village guards its landward flank with the entirety of Meramec State Park, whose woodlands and bluffs stretch south and west through the Franklin County Ozarks. Only about 50 miles from downtown St. Louis as the crow flies, Miramiguoa is half again more distant to reach by car. To get there one must stay on Interstate 44 all the way to Sullivan, then exit and double back through five miles of state forestland. At winter's dusk, the leafless trees on the hilltops cast jagged silhouettes against the pale sky, and you might catch a smoky whiff of recently chopped timber.

Read the entire story here. It is an eyeopening case study of how child pornography networks operate across the globe.

From a special edition of Centerpiece, the official newsletter of the National Child Protection Training Center:

The recent child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State University, in which multiple, well-educated professionals declined to report clear evidence of maltreatment, is not an isolated instance. Twenty years of research documents what every child protection professional in America already knows—that most people most of the time won’t report even clear evidence of maltreatment or otherwise intervene to save a child.

Although less clear, the Penn State scandal also draws attention to an equally disturbing problem—that even when reports of abuse are made, these reports are often handled ineffectually if not incompetently. According to media reports of the Penn State scandal, investigators and prosecutors did review a 1998 report of inappropriate intimate contact with a boy.

The alleged perpetrator, Jerry Sandusky, even admitted to two university detectives that he hugged the boy while both were naked and stated, “I was wrong. I wish I could get forgiveness. I know I won’t get if from you. I wish I were dead.”

Although this recorded admission of Sandusky’s is an incriminating if not out-right confession of indecent contact with a boy, no charges or additional actions were taken.

The inability, even failure of criminal justice authorities to take meaningful action to protect a child is also not an isolated anecdote. Indeed, a large body of research and the universal experience of the nation’s child protection professionals confirm inadequate training at the undergraduate and graduate level—a woeful lack of preparation that increases the chances children will fail to be protected or that false accusations will be made.

In the past eight years, the United States Department of Justice has begun to address both of these issues through the rapid development and dissemination of model undergraduate and graduate curricula that will better prepare mandated reporters to fulfill their responsibilities to children and that will also better prepare criminal justice, social work, mental and medical health professionals to respond appropriately to instances of maltreatment.

These related reforms will reduce, if not rid the country of “on the job training” as the primary means of educating both mandated reporters and the child protection professionals who investigate or otherwise respond to reports.

This paper details these reforms and calls for an expansion of these initiatives.

Apparently the adoption industry learned nothing from the international uproar surrounding Masha Allen's adoption by a child molester six years ago. Masha's tragic adoption still reverberates as Russia continues to grapple with US-Russia adoptions.

Now, in Ohio, a disturbing new case involving the alleged rape of three boys by their adoptive father, who also allegedly prostituted one of the boys to two other men, recently was exposed and occurred “despite safeguards designed for adoption agencies and prospective parents.”

Thanks to Marley at The Daily Bastardette for bringing this story to light.

Here are the highlights:

• Kenneth Brandt, the children's adoptive father, is the former president of the local Foster Parent Association.
• Brandt has a history of bringing children from Texas to Ohio as foster children.
• Brandt had three boys ages 12, 10, and 9, and a girl, 9, under his care.
• Brandt is charged with raping his three adopted sons and prostituting one of them to two men.
• All four children were from Texas and one adoption was not yet finalized.
• The children—who are not all birth siblings—were adopted in 2011 from Texas via Adopting Children Today Information Option Network (ACTION).
• Brandt was home-schooling some of the children.
• Authorities were able to track down Brandt and fellow suspects Patrick Rieder and Jason M. Zwick as a result of an Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force investigation involving criminal activity on Craigslist. An undercover detective responded to an ad and made contact with Zwick, who eventually introduced the detective to Rieder and Brandt.
• One of the boys in Brandt’s home said Brandt allowed two men, Rieder and Zwick, to have sex with him.
• During police questioning, Brandt admitted having sex with the 10-year-old about 10 times. He also told police that Zwick had sex with the boy, but denied Rieder’s involvement.
• Brandt was on the board of the local basketball league.
• One boy said Brandt had sex with him two to three times a week since he arrived at the home. The two other boys also told police that Brandt had sex with them.
• The 9-year-old boy said the sex abuse started about two weeks after he arrived from Texas.
• All the men are described as “average everyday Joe.”
• Zwick is from an upper-middle class family with strong ties to the community, local politicians and office-holders.

University of Dayton political science professor Tony Talbott, whose research interests include human rights, said the Troy case is one example of a widespread problem. His quote sums it up best:

“I’m looking at the news coverage, and the residents of Troy are shocked and appalled, which they should be, but they really shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “This is something occurring throughout the state of Ohio, throughout the United States and internationally.”

No word on what became of the children in this case. Hopefully they will not face Masha Allen's tragic fate, but given their age and vulnerability, anything is possible.

The Dayton Daily News has provided extensive coverage of the case:

Man accused of child rape

FBI to pursue charges against 3 men in child sex case

Accused rapist in process of adopting 4th child in alleged rape, prostitution case

Man used private Dayton adoption agency in alleged child rape, prostitution case

Child-rape case shows safeguards failed

3 child rape suspects
 'blended' into society

Two of three child-rape suspects indicted

Trial dates set in Troy child rape case