Jillian van Turnhout (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 5:

In page 20, after line 21, to insert the following:

“PART 5

MISCELLANEOUS

Amendment of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998

28. The Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 is amended by substituting the words “child sexual abuse material” for “child pornography” in each place those words appear.”.

I am disappointed amendment No. 4 was ruled out of order. On Report and Final Stages of the Gender Recognition Bill on Wednesday, 15 July 2015, the Minister for State at the Department of Social Protection, Deputy Kevin Humphreys, said he would be happy for the Minister, Deputy James Reilly, to lead on the issue of gender recognition with children because he is the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs and his Department has a wider remit than that of the Department of Social Protection on this issue. Will the Minister consider inserting in future legislation a provision to amend the gender recognition legislation, so the exemption process for 16 to 18 year olds is depathologised in a manner similar to the application process for adults and to include the creation of a process for interim gender recognition certificate for those under 16 so that their rights are fully realised in that process?

I thank Fergus Ryan, Department of Law, Maynooth University, and Tanya Ní Mhuirthile, the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, for helping me draft these amendments. Returning to amendment No. 5, child pornography is defined under section 2 of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998. The definition includes any visual representation that shows a child engaged in, or being a witness to, explicit sexual activity and, where the dominant characteristic of a visual representation is the depiction for a sexual purpose of the genital or anal region of a child.

The majority of law enforcement agencies working in this area, most notably Interpol and Europol, believe it is time to stop the use of the misleading term “child pornography” when describing images of the sexual abuse of children. According to Interpol, the world’s largest policing organisation:

A sexual image of a child is “abuse” or “exploitation” and should never be described as “pornography”. Pornography is a term used for adults engaging in consensual sexual acts distributed (mostly) legally to the general public for their sexual pleasure. Child abuse images are not. They involve children who cannot and would not consent and who are victims of a crime. The child abuse images are documented evidence of a crime in progress - a child being sexually abused.

I have been saying this since I first tabled a motion on blocking child abuse material on the Internet in February 2012. Child sexual abuse material is far more than child pornography. The image or depiction is a culmination of at best one, and more than likely a series, of the most serious criminal offences known to our Statute Book, including rape, incest, assault, sadism and bestiality. For each child sexual abuse image produced, it can be expected that numerous offences are committed, as the online distribution of child abuse images exponentially multiplies the number of offences against the sexual integrity of the child.

A child sexual abuse image is a crime scene, a digital record of sexual abuse being perpetrated against a real child in the real world. I will be seeking to have the term “child pornography” in this Bill and across our Statute Book amended to “child sexual abuse material” to better reflect the seriousness of the offence.I welcome the publication of the sexual offences Bill. The matter may be better placed within that Bill. I would ask for the Minister's support, that we name it for what it is. It is child sexual abuse material, not pornography. There is no consent. This is a crime scene.