It is impossible not to feel profound sympathy for Liz Longhurst, whose daughter Jane was killed in 2003 by a man said to be obsessed with violent internet pornography.
Even so, it would be profoundly misguided to support the bill to criminalise the viewing of such material announced last week by the British Government. This bill, inspired by the anti-porn campaign launched by Mrs Longhurst after her daughter’s death, aims to make the viewing of extreme internet porn punishable by three years’ imprisonment and placement on the sex offenders’ register.
The bill would outlaw images of pornographic, explicit and real or apparently real acts of serious violence, necrophilia and bestiality — ‘serious violence’ being defined here as that which ‘appears to be life-threatening or likely to result in serious, disabling injury’. It seeks to do this despite every stage of the process which produced these proposals being flawed, from the verdict in the original trial of Jane Longhurst’s killer to the dubious weighting given to special interest groups in the later public consultation…
Click here to read the complete article
Comments