ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests some of the ways in which such images have been employed by various political perspectives and interest groups as symbolic weapons in their particular cause. In this perspective, the rhetoric might well be deployed against the government and official agencies, and provide the basis for a radical political critique. Thus attention turned to types of exploitation such as child pornography, child murder and child abuse, and it will be argued that the emphasis on children often sought to appeal to ant homosexual sentiment. The serial murder activists stood to benefit from the perceived vulnerability of children to this type of homicide, as the emphasis on young and innocent victims would justify the expansion of official powers to meet the alleged threat. Such affair illustrates the role of genuine spiritual evil in crime causation, "not an admission that our sophisticated culture usually accepts". Evil implied individual responsibility and theories of punishment based on retribution and deterrence.
