Prosecuting Internet Porn Purchases

31 May 2007

Prosecuting Internet Porn Purchases

The Society commends Wellington District Court Judge Stephen Harrop for upholding the law by charging a “prominent Wellington town planner” Robert John Schofield, 49, for importing by post via the internet, DVDs that were classified “objectionable” (Dominion Post 31/05).

The Society believes that all New Zealand Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should be required by law to black list all NZ and overseas websites that promote and support or tend to promote and support objectionable publications, including hard-core porn involving sexual conduct of a degrading, demeaning and dehumanising nature, as well as gratuitous and lewd depictions of sexual violence, incest, paedophilia, bestiality etc.

Harrop’s offences were ones of “strict liability” involved the importing a number of “objectionable publications”. Every person who commits such an offence is liable to a fine not exceeding $10,000. Judge Harrop refused to grant the offender name suppression and refused to grant him a discharge without conviction, based on the defence claim that the consequences of a conviction were out of all proportion to the seriousness of a conviction. He fined him $150 on one charge and $750 on another and ordered him to pay $150 court costs.

The Judge said “people who wanted to hire Schofield’s services as a planner and resource management consultant would be concerned with the quality of his work, but people should also be able to know who they were dealing with in a work environment.” The offender’s name should therefore be made public and the nature of his offending specified.

Under s. 3(2)(d) of the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act (1993) a publication that “promotes or supports, or tends to promote or support… the use of urine … in association with degrading or dehumanising conduct or sexual conduct”, must be deemed “objectionable” by the Classification Office.

The Dominion Post reports that Schofield imported “fetish DVDs” which included “depictions of urophilia, a sexual fetish focused on urination”. Describing such a sexual perversion as a “fetish” (an object whose presence is necessary for sexual satisfaction) overlooks the fact that it inherently involves the degrading and dehumanising of participants in lewd sexual conduct. The law deems such content “objectionable” and affirms that it is “injurious to the public good”.

The text of one of the videos imported detailed non-consensual sex acts with a male “teen”. The publication was deemed “objectionable”.

Defence lawyer, Greg King, argued that because urophilia was considered a sexual fetish associated with urination, and was not illegal, then the depiction of such activities should also not be classified illegal, even though the Classification Act singled out the promotion of such activities as illegal. This defence argument failed.

For over 25 years the Society has sought to “focus [public] attention on the harmful nature and consequences of sexual promiscuity, obscenity, pornography and violence” and “uphold and press for the proper enforcement of applicable law and its amendment where the law is ineffective”. People addicted to hard-core porn who justify such perversions by claiming dependency on sexual fetishes, should seek professional and psychiatric help. ISPs should be required by law to block public access to such content that corrodes and corrupts minds, and destroys relationships.

ENDS

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