A nation has been scandalized by the use of children — some as young as
three years old — in pornographic films and magazines.
But "kiddie porn" is only the tip of a much larger iceberg
involving the sexual abuse and exploitation of thousands of young people.
Hollywood, California — A Local Restaurant (Night): Frank takes out his wallet and opens it for the reporter to see. It is bulging with ten and twenty dollar bills.
"How much do you have?" the reporter asks.
"Almost $200," Frank replies.”Not bad for one day's work."
The day's work that Frank has just completed involved the selling of his body for sex with five male customers and posing in the nude for pictures for a sixth.
Frank is a male prostitute. He has just returned from a trick — a customer — and has decided to call it a day.
"How many tricks have you turned in your career?"
"I don't know," he replies, shrugging his shoulders.”Maybe two hundred."
"How long have you been turning tricks?"
"Over two years."
Frank is only 15.
"You must have a lot of money by now."
"No way!" He laughs at the thought.”I got a habit." He rolls up a sleeve and shows the needle marks dotting his arm. Heroin.
University of California at Los Angeles (Day): "Every year up to 30,000 children and teenagers pose for pornography in the Los Angeles area," testifies Sergeant Lloyd Martin of the Los Angeles Police Department before a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing an a congressional bill to curb child pornography. Martin heads a squad of five detectives who comprise a special unit of the Juvenile Division of the LAPD which investigates sexual exploitation of children.
At the same hearing, Representative Robert K. Dornan denounces the Los Angeles area, his home, as the center of the U.S. pornography industry.
"This county [Los Angeles] is perverting this nation with the vilest material that's ever been seen by man," he says.”This county leads the nation in distribution of hard and soft-core pornography, bestiality, sadism, masochism, bondage and discipline, and child pornography."
Hollywood, California (Night): Frank, restless for another fix of heroin, gets up and leaves. Others are leaving also — it's almost closing time, anyway.
The restaurant sits on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmas Avenue. It is the first stop in an area of Hollywood called the "meat rack," the sexual supermarket where kids, called "chickens," display and sell themselves to customers, or "chicken hawks," who slowly cruise the area in cars, or ogle from seats in the restaurant.
At this time of the night, about a half dozen kids are loitering on the corner outside the restaurant. One looks no older than ten or eleven, but he says he's thirteen: Around the corner a couple of others thumb through magazines at a bookstall on Las Palmas, including gay magazines which, from time to time, feature nude photos of some of the chickens who frequent the restaurant. Still others are down the block on Selma Avenue waiting for the cruising chicken hawks. A couple of the young male prostitutes sit nonchalantly on the steps of the First Baptist Church on Selma sharing a cigarette.
New York, New York: If there is any one person responsible for the recent publicity about child pornography, it is Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, president of Odyssey Institute Inc., a private organization concerned with various social problems such as drug rehabilitation. A year ago she became concerned about the increasing amount of child pornography. Since then she has, in her own words, "become a raving banshee" over the sexual exploitation of children.
To dramatize her crusade against child pornography, she called a news conference in Times Square (the heart of the city's porno district) in January. She displayed two films depicting explicit sex acts involving children between the ages of eight and thirteen — films bought across the street from where she was talking. In addition, she showed magazines and even a deck of playing cards with youngsters in lewd positions.
Dr. Densen-Gerber claimed at that time that as many as 120,000 children in the New York metropolitan area are involved in some type of sex for money, including prostitution.”We permit our society's sickest members the license to sexually use three-year-olds."
Many of the participants in kiddie porn are runaways forced into the acts by unscrupulous operators and procurers, she said, but other children are engaged by parents or guardians who "live off their backs" through earnings from the illicit operations.
"These parents who subject their children to this type of environment are monsters who are sick and need treatment," she said.
Who are some of these villains?
At least 600,000 boys and girls between the ages of eight and sixteen
become involved in pornography and prostitution each year in the United States.
North Bellmore, New York: An ex-aerospace engineer decides to make a few extra bucks. He places an ad offering "$200 fee for girl model, 8-14 (must have parents' consent), one day photographic session." The response is overwhelming. Some adults actually appear in the pictures with their children. Others merely allow their children to have sex with other adults. By the time the police break up the engineer's newfound business, some 18 children have had their pictures taken. The porn operation had grown into a $250,000-a-year business.
Winchester, Tennessee: A defrocked Episcopal priest goes on trial, charged with taking in neglected children at his boys' farm and secretly filming adult "sponsors" sexually abusing the boys.
New Orleans, Louisiana: A ring of men, including three millionaires, are charged with involving a Boy Scout troop in the filming of homosexual acts.
Los Angeles, California: A three-year-old girl, a five-year-old girl, and a ten-year-old boy are sold into the kiddie porn trade by their prostitute mothers.
Hollywood, California: How do the chicken hawks — the pederasts and pornographers — rationalize the sexual exploitation of youngsters? The reporter approaches several of them for an explanation. They come from all walks of life; they don't fit into any stereotype. They are truck drivers and TV technicians, actors and executives. But their justifications do fall into a pattern.
One chicken hawk: "I love kids. I don't mistreat them. I give them more attention and respect than they get at home."
Second chicken hawk: "Some guys have taken these kids off the streets and given them room and board for months — even years. They've sent them through college. And all they asked for is a little sex now and then. Nothing in life is free."
Third chicken hawk: "Before you make me a villain, just remember I'm a human being who needs sex. But in the gay world, the premium is put on beauty, youth. I'm not young anymore, and I know I'm not good-looking. I have to pay my hard-earned money to get what I want. It's strictly a business proposition, and both parties get what they want. What's wrong with that? It ain't my fault if the kid's going to take the money I give him and buy drugs. That's his problem. If he didn't get it from me for sex, he'd go out and steal it to support his habit."
Chicken hawks and chickens seem to operate under a credo formulated by the basic impulses of lust and greed: "Everyone has his vice and his price."
Hollywood Boulevard (Day): In addition to homosexual prostitution along the "meat rack," Hollywood is afflicted with heterosexual prostitution along famed Hollywood Boulevard and other streets in town. Police and an enraged citizenry waged a highly publicized and fairly effective campaign in 1976 against one form of prostitution — massage parlors. But efforts to clean the streets of male and female prostitutes, particularly the "meat rack" area, have not been as successful. Streetwalkers of both sexes still abound.