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Child Pornography: Legal Analysis and policy implication

Satisfactory Essays

I. Introduction
The huge profits, easy accessibility, convenient dissemination and low marginal costs have attracted an increasing number of people to trade child pornography. The ever expanding child pornography market is an affront to public decency, and the ubiquitous circulation of these images and videos brings endless and even permanent injuries to child victims engaged. One of the child pornography victims has described her feeling as “being abused over and over and over again” when she knows her images as a child being sexually abused are repeated watched. The “non-contact” defendants of child sexual abuses are offenders who possessed and circulated child pornography but did not create it . James Marsh, the first lawyer seeking restitution for child pornography victims from “non-contact” defendants maintained that “in many ways the actual propagation, distribution, receipt, trading and profiting off of child pornography is worse than the actual hands on crime” .
It is generally acknowledged that the “non-contact” defendant’s conduct causes both emotional and economical losses for the victim. However, opinions are polarized regarding to the question what causal relationship between the defendant’s conduct and the child victim’s losses the victim or the prosecutor should establish in order to recover the restitution; and whether the “non-contact” defendant should be ordered to make restitution to the victim, if so, in what amount.

II. Statute 18 U.S.C. § 2259
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