CWA Deplores Justice Department's Failure to Combat Porn Industry
The nation’s largest public policy women’s organization denounced the Justice Department’s failure to take legal action against the “adult” pornography industry.
In a report released Monday, the Concerned Women for America (CWA) claimed the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the FBI failed to enforce federal laws opposing Internet porn.
Many individuals are concerned over the impact that wide accessibility to pornographic images has on children and teens. Pornographers are “banking” on children to become the next generation of addicts, said Jan LaRue, Chief Counsel for CWA and author of the report.
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Federal offices, however, have held off on enforcing any legislation or instating programs which target adult, pornographic websites as immoral or highly inappropriate.
“The responses we received from various FBI field offices across the country and the DOJ stats we’ve seen indicate to us that these agencies aren’t taking seriously the directives of President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales to enforce federal obscenity laws. And somebody needs to explain why the section at DOJ primarily responsible for prosecuting obscenity refers citizens who want to file a complaint to a private organization,” said LaRue in a statement released Monday.
According to a recent study highlighted by the Associated Press, more children and teens are being exposed to online pornography with nearly fifty percent of Internet users aged 10 to 17 having seen online pornography in a recent 12-month span. Researchers found that most of these exposures were accidentally viewed through sexually explicit Web sites while surfing the Internet.
The 2005 figure, up from 25 percent in a similar survey conducted in 1999 and 2000, showed that 34 percent of the 1,500 internet teen users surveyed had unwanted exposure to online pornography.
LaRue maintained that compromises to international affairs such as the war on terror are not necessary in order to enforce laws which limit the availability of Internet obscenity to children.
“Anyone who keeps track of obscenity prosecutions knows the stats show that it’s not the ‘priority’ we’ve been told it is. And we also know that, contrary to what we’ve been told, not everybody in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) or FBI is tracking terrorists or child predators. Nor do we want those who are to stop and just chase pornographers,” affirmed LaRue in the press statement.
Phil Burres, a former pornography addict and current president of a community values organization, expressed support for LaRue’s report in the CWA statement.
“The article describes in detail, failing to enforce federal obscenity laws allows the harms of pornography to proliferate and destroy lives,” he stated. “The responsibility for that lays squarely at the feet of the Administration for not vigorously pursuing enforcement. I urge everyone, especially national policy leaders, to study this document and demand action.”
