ABSTRACT
As we noted in Chapter 1, over recent years offences related to the production, possession and distribution of child pornography have assumed great prominence. Our attention has been focused on these crimes by what at times has been intense media coverage. Paradoxically, however, because possession of child pornography is now in the main illegal and also because by its nature it is an underground activity, there is little public knowledge of what it actually is, its attributes, or even the processes involved in its creation. We might even be misled into thinking that it is a new phenomenon, something that has its origins in the late twentieth century.
