Bridging Political Divides by Correcting the Basic Morality Bias

Efforts to bridge political divides often focus on navigating complex and divisive issues. However, nine studies suggest that we should also focus on a more basic moral divide: the erroneous belief that political opponents lack a fundamental sense of right and wrong. This “basic morality bias” is tied to political dehumanization and is revealed by multiple methods, including natural language analyses from a large Twitter corpus, and a representative survey of Americans with incentives for accuracy. In the US, both Democrats and Republicans substantially overestimate the number of political outgroup members who approve of blatant wrongs (e.g., child pornography, embezzlement). Importantly, the basic morality bias can be corrected with a brief, scalable intervention. Providing information that just one political opponent condemns blatant wrongs increases willingness to work with political opponents and substantially decreases political dehumanization.

Public Perceptions of Child Pornography and Child Pornography Consumers

Understanding the public’s perceptions of child pornography helps identify gaps in awareness and knowledge, impacts legislative decision making, quantifies stigmatization, and provides a baseline for identifying differences between lay and offender populations for clinical purposes. This research provides a comprehensive public survey assessing these issues. An Internet-based sample of 524 adults (mean age = 47 years, 51% female) within the USA were asked about their understanding and beliefs related to child pornography and individuals who view child pornography. The questions covered three topic areas—general perceptions of child pornography, endorsement of child pornography beliefs, and opinions related to the legality of various forms of child pornography as well as the decision making related to sentencing and sex offender registration for child pornography consumers. The research found that the public viewed these offenses as more severe than most other crimes and that there was an overestimation by the public of risks related to recidivism and contact offending. Additionally, the research found that there was support for most of the current sentencing guidelines in the USA, including sex offender registration, and that there was limited support for treatment over incarceration.

Qualification of child sexting, sextorsion and online grooming

Some characteristics of actus reus of Art. 3011 and of Art. 1561 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine are analyzed. The characteristics of sexting and sextorsion, the subject matter of which is child pornography, and online grooming are revealed. If the participant in the child sexting is an adult who received from the child through a means of communication its image in a sexually explicit manner, his actions must be assessed as the production of child pornography (part 3 of Art. 3011 of the Criminal Code) and its storage (part 1 or 2 of Art. 3011 of the Criminal Code depending on the absence or presence of the purpose of selling or distribution). In this case, the adult participant in the sexting uses a child who photographs or shoots himself in a sexually explicit manner as a «tool» for the production of child pornography. If the participant in the child sexting is a minor (who has reached the age of 16), the responsibility for such acts arises only if he has the purpose of selling or distribution child pornography. If an adult participant in sexting has the purpose to obtain an image of a child in a sexually explicit manner and then threatens to sell or distribute it in order to obtain new such images, then there is a sextorsion that should be qualified as the production of child pornography (part 3 of Art. 3011 of the Criminal Code), the storage of child pornography with the purpose of selling or distribution (part 2 of Art. 3011 of the Criminal Code) and forcing a minor under-18s or under-14s to participate in the creation of child pornography (part 3 or 4 of Art. 3011 of the Criminal Code). If the purpose of the sextorsion is to meet with the child online or in real life to commit any sexual or lewd acts with him or to involve the child in the production of child pornography, such sextorsion should be qualified as the production of child pornography (part 3 of Art. 3011 of the Criminal Code), the storage of child pornography with the purpose of selling or distribution (part 2 of Art. 3011 of the Criminal Code) and depending on the stage of the sextorsion: or as preparation for harassment of a child for sexual purposes, or as an attempt to commit a criminal offense, or as a completed harassment (Art. 1561 of the Criminal Code). Building a trusting relationship by adult with a child on the Internet for a future meeting with the purpose to committing any sexual or lewd acts against him or involving him in the production of child pornography constitutes online grooming and should qualify as preparation for harassment of a child for sexual purposes. Key words: child pornography, sexting, sextorsion, online grooming.

Self Perceptions and Cognitions of Child Sexual Exploitation Material Offenders

Identifying the self-perceptions of child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) consumers compared to a reference population of non-consumers is critical in establishing distorted cognitions that may not be elucidated when comparison is made with groups who have committed other offenses. This exploratory work utilizes a quantitative approach toward identifying how individuals previously convicted of child pornography offenses view CSEM and CSEM offending, using a group of non-offenders as a baseline. The target group was selected based on their inclusion in two sex offender registries for child pornography offenses ( n = 78). A reference group of non-offenders ( n = 254) was gender-matched from a subset of a prior study evaluating the public perceptions of CSEM. Both groups were adults located within the United States and were asked questions using an online survey about their general perceptions of CSEM, their endorsement of CSEM beliefs, and their opinions related to the legality of various forms of CSEM and associated laws and sentencing guidelines. The study found that CSEM consumers more accurately assessed risks associated with CSEM offending, but that they exhibited potential minimization-based cognitive distortions related to severity and victimization and more strongly endorsed child erotica and virtual child pornography being legal. Additionally, they endorsed treatment over prison, and were strongly opposed to sex offender registration for child pornography offenses. The results provide potential treatment targets, including behavioral areas that may be pathways to CSEM offending.

Acceptance of Sexual Interest in Minors in Self-Referred Individuals Under Treatment – An Exploratory Pilot Study

Some therapists/scientists argue that “acceptance” of sexual interest in minors (SIM), i.e., the integration of the sexual preference into the individual self-concept, is a prerequisite for dealing with SIM in a responsible way. However, if one assumes that – even in some persons – SIM might change over time, “acceptance” could also run counter to therapeutic targets because the motivation to change as well as the specific self-efficacy for modifying SIM might be reduced. This exploratory pilot study analyzes the relationship between acceptance of SIM and (1) dynamic risk for contact sexual reoffending, (2) SIM and frequency of the use of child/adolescent (sexual abuse) imagery, (3) frequency of sexual desire/behavior toward children/adolescents, and (4) the change of the level of acceptance of SIM during the course of treatment. The majority of the participants (N = 79) was not exclusively interested in children (85%) and used child pornography but did not commit child sexual abuse (54%). Acceptance of SIM, frequency of the use of child/adolescent (sexual abuse) imagery and frequency of sexual desire/behavior toward children/adolescents are assessed via self-report questionnaires, dynamic risk for contact sexual reoffending is measured by STABLE-2007. Pretreatment data are analyzed via Spearman’s correlation (N = 79). Intragroup analysis compares acceptance of SIM from pre- and posttreatment (n = 35). There was no correlation between acceptance of SIM and dynamic risk for contact sexual reoffending. However, there was a medium, positive correlation between acceptance of SIM and the frequency of the use of legal imagery of children, a positive correlation between the item “My inclination is an integral part of my personality” and the frequency of the use of legal imagery of children, and a positive correlation between acceptance of SIM and the frequency of sexual activities with minors. Acceptance of SIM did not change during the course of treatment. The results suggest that “acceptance” of SIM has to be discussed in a differentiated way, i.e., as possibly being associated with positive and negative outcomes as well.

Online Child Safety

This chapter looks at the history and development of online child safety and how industry and regulatory responses have evolved. It shows how the agenda broadened from an initial focus largely on child abuse images (child pornography) and paedophile behaviour through to wider concerns such as age-inappropriate content, including legal pornography and violent or extremist materials. There is also a discussion of how technologies are having an impact on the overall quality of children’s lives. Children’s rights online, bullying, privacy, self-harm, and self-generated sexualized pictures and videos are now considered mainstream matters by those engaged with children’s welfare.

Predicting Risk of Reoffending in Persons with Child Sexual Exploitation Material Offense Histories: The Use of Child Pornography Offender Risk Tool in a Scottish Population

In the past decade, there has been an increase in child sexual exploitation material (CSEM) offenses and convictions. Although research shows that individuals with CSEM offence histories generally are at low risk of reoffending, certain factors do increase in CSEM convictions, in order to assist with case prioritization, management and supervision, risk assessment is helpful across agencies. The Child Pornography Offender Risk Tool (CPORT) was created specifically for this population and shows significant predictive validity for various outcomes. This study aimed to validate the use of the CPORT in a Scottish sample of 141 adult males who were convicted of CSEM offenses. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) and logistic regression analyses indicated that the CPORT significantly predicted any recidivism (Area Under the Curve = .81), any sexual recidivism (AUC = .78) and CSEM recidivism (AUC = .74), suggesting that it is a valid risk assessment tool for Scottish populations. Recommendations for further research and clinical implications are discussed.

Smart System to Detect Adult Content and Child Pornography on Web

Adult contents on the internet is very common today but it has become a serious concern now because of many reasons such as the proliferation of free to view adult websites has made it easier for individuals of any age to gain access to explicit content. Children increasingly use mobile devices such as smartphones to access the internet and these adult content can have bad impact on their mind. Excessive exposure to these contents can lead to addiction which can have very adverse effect on their mind and their heath.so i came up with an idea to reduce this activity on internet saving people and childrens in particular. In this paper we will discuss a pipeline of a system developed which consists of three modules. The first one is scanning the heading and subheading of the web page to identify if the page is toxic or not. For this task we have used the SOTA model. The second module finds if the page contains a video and identifies it as adult video or not through video caption. we have used LSTM[1] network for this classification task and the last module is CV module which is the most important part of the project. It is an age detection module which detects the age of the people inside the video. The objective was to block the video if the age of any people doing activity exceeds 18. These modules when passed to the pipeline will forbid internet users to watch any kind of adult content specifically which involves a child. It's important to stop this because this has a very negative impact on our society and it is ruining our culture. Index Terms: Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Computer vision, Transformers, LSTM