ABSTRACT
Thus far, it has been emphasized that sex offenders are a heterogeneous group of offenders who commit various types of sex crimes. As will be discussed in Chapter 5, child sexual abusers Chapter 4 may utilize the Internet to establish contact with children and facilitate victim grooming. The Internet can also be relied upon to commit other sex crimes that do not involve the direct targeting and contact of children by sex offenders. Recently, the U.S. Subcommittee on the Oversight and Investigation of the Committee on Energy and Commerce made the following statement regarding sex offenders who use the Internet to commit sex crimes:
With regard to most sex crimes, there is a defined offender committing an illegal sexual act and a victim. A typical sexual assault, for example, involves a man victimizing a female without her consent. These are predatory crimes, which are violent crimes committed against a person. This chapter examines a relatively new sex crime that has garnered extensive attention and concern in recent years-one that does not necessarily require direct interaction with a victim. We turn our attention to child pornography, a serious sex crime for which arrests have been on the rise over the past 20 years (Walsh, Wolak, & Finkelhor, 2013). Many of us are familiar with the terms child exploitation, Internet offending, and production, distribution, and possession of child pornography. By the end of this chapter, however, you will have a basic knowledge of this type of sex crime, including the history of child pornography laws, the types of offenders who commit such offenses, and the criminal justice, legal, and political responses to them.
