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PART 4: CHAPTER 1
Women, men, and children who believe they have been harmed by pornography described adverse physical and psychological effects in their public testimony before the Commission and other bodies and in accounts given in writing or in interviews by Commission staff. The Commission heard testimony from thirty witnesses who reported that they or others with whom they had special relationships had been harmed in some manner by or as a result of pornography. More than one hundred persons were interviewed by Commission staff investigators, who were law enforcement personnel with considerable experience in dealing with trauma victims. Although in many instances, facts related by the person interviewed could be verified by reference to treatment records, court records, or law enforcement files, in other instances no independent verification was possible. In addition to the foregoing, a number of other statements were received in letters from persons who reported pornography-related victimization and in exhibits filed by witnesses from hearings before other fact finders, including city councils, courts of record, and the United States Senate. Some of these individuals reported an extensive series of traumatic events in their lives, making it difficult to assess the relationship, if any, between pornography and their suffering.
Witnesses attributed to pornography their having been coerced into pornographic performances, bound and beaten in direct imitation of pornography, and forcibly imprisoned for the purpose of manufacturing pornography. Although this Commission can neither conclusively determine that pornography caused these physical harms nor conclusively determine that it did not, it was the opinion of the witnesses that pornography played a central role in the pattern of abuse within which they were harmed.
Witnesses attributed many different kinds of damage to psychological functioning and sense of self to their having been used in the production of pornographic materials, exposed to pornographic materials, or sexually assaulted by offenders who used pornography as part of the abuse. Many of these psychological injuries correspond to the signs and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.[762] Witnesses also attributed to pornography financial losses due to hospitalization and therapy, damage to family relationships and status in the community caused by defamatory representations in pornography, associations between prostitution and pornography, and sexual harassment through pornography. Many of the women, men, and children who testified reported each of these types of consequences, and some individuals are quoted repeatedly in various sections of this chapter.
Although we have tried in this chapter to allow victims to speak in their own words, without interpretation or commentary, we have in several instances quoted the words of victim's mothers, friends, or therapists. We have done so only because there are instances in which the victims themselves were unavailable for testimony. In the same vein, we quote here pertinent excerpts from the eloquent testimony of Andrea Dworkin on behalf of other victims whose voices were not heard:
My name is Andrea Dworkin. I am a citizen of the United States, and in this country where I live, every year millions of pictures are being made of women with our legs spread. We are called beaver, we are called pussy, our genitals are tied up, they are pasted, makeup is put on them to make them pop out of a page at a male viewer. Millions and millions of pictures are made of us in postures of submission and sexual access so that our vaginas are exposed for penetration, our anuses are exposed for penetration, our throats are used as if they are genitals for penetration. In this country where I live as a citizen real rapes are on film and are being sold in the marketplace. And the major motif of pornography as a form of entertainment is that women are raped and violated and humiliated until we discover that we like it and at that point we ask for more.
In this country where I live as a citizen, women are penetrated by animals and objects for public entertainment, women are urinated on and defecated on, women and girls are used interchangeably so that grown women are made up to look like five- or six-year-old children surrounded by toys, presented in mainstream pornographic publications for anal penetration. There are magazines in which adult women are presented with their pubic areas shaved so that they resemble children.
In this country where I live, there is a trafficking in pornography that exploits mentally and physically disabled women, women who are maimed; there is amputee pornography, a trade in women who have been maimed in that way, as if that is a sexual fetish for men. In this country where I live, there is a trade in racism as a form of sexual pleasure, so that the plantation is presented as a form of sexual gratification for the black woman slave who asks please to be abused, please to be raped, please to be hurt. Black skin is presented as if it is a female genital, and all the violence and the abuse and the humiliation that is in general directed against female genitals is directed against the black skin of women in pornography.
Asian women in this country where I live are tied from trees and hung from ceilings and hung from doorways as a form of public entertainment. There is a concentration camp pornography in this country where I live, where the concentration camp and the atrocities that occurred there are presented as existing for the sexual pleasure of the victim, of the woman, who orgasms to the real abuses that occurred, not very long ago in history.
In the country where I live as a citizen, there is a pornography of the humiliation of women where every single way of humiliating a human being is taken to be a form of sexual pleasure for the viewer and for the victim; where women are covered in filth, including feces, including mud, including paint, including blood, including semen; where women are tortured for the sexual pleasure of those who watch and those who do the torture, where women are murdered for the sexual pleasure of murdering women, and this material exists because it is fun, because it is entertainment, because it is a form of pleasure, and there are those who say it is a form of freedom.
Certainly it is freedom for those who do it. Certainly it is freedom for those who use it as entertainment, but we are also asked to believe that it is freedom for those to whom it is done.
Then this entertainment is taken, and it is used on other women, women who aren't in the pornography, to force those women into prostitution, to make them imitate the acts in the pornography. The women in the pornography, sixty-five to seventy percent of them we believe are victims of incest or child sexual abuse. They are poor women; they are not women who have opportunities in this society. They are frequently runaways who are picked up by pimps and exploited. They are frequently raped, the rapes are filmed, they are kept in prostitution by blackmail. The pornography is used on prostitutes by johns who are expected to replicate the sexual acts in the pornography, no matter how damaging it is.
Pornography is used in rape-to plan it, to execute it, to choreograph it, to engender the excitement to commit the act. Pornography is used in gang rape against women. We see an increase since the release of "Deep Throat" in throat rape-where women show up in emergency rooms because men believe they can penetrate, deep-thrust, to the bottom of a woman's throat. We see increasing use of all elements of pornography in battery, which is the most commonly committed violent crime in this country, including the rape of women by animals, including maiming, including heavy bondage, including outright torture.
We have seen in the last eight years, an increase in the use of cameras in rapes. And those rapes are filmed and then they are put on the marketplace and they are protected speech-they are real rapes. We see pornography in the harassment of women on jobs, especially in nontraditional jobs, in the harassment of women in education, to create terror and compliance in the home, which as you know is the most dangerous place for women in this society, where more violence is committed against women than anywhere else. We see pornography used to create harassment of women and children in neighborhoods that are saturated with pornography, where people come from other parts of the city and then prey on the populations of people who live in those neighborhoods, and that increases physical attack and verbal assault.
We see pornography having introduced a profit motive into rape. We see that filmed rapes are protected speech. We see the centrality of pornography in serial murders. There are snuff films. We see boys imitating pornography.
We see the average age of rapists going down. We are beginning to see gang rapes in elementary schools committed by elementary school age boys imitating pornography. We see sexual assault after death where frequently the pornography is the motive for the murder because the man believes that he will get a particular kind of sexual pleasure having sex with a woman after she is dead.
We see a major trade in women, we see the torture of women as a form of entertainment, and we see women also suffering the injury of objectification-that is to say we are dehumanized. We are treated as if we are subhuman, and that is a precondition for violence against us.
I live in a country where if you film any act of humiliation or torture, and if the victim is a woman, the film is both entertainment and it is protected speech. Now that tells me something about what it means to be a woman citizen in this country, and the meaning of being second-class.
When your rape is entertainment, your worthlessness is absolute. You have reached the nadir of social worthlessness. The civil impact of pornography on women is staggering. It keeps us socially silent, it keeps us socially compliant, it keeps us afraid in neighborhoods; and it creates a vast hopelessness for women, a vast despair. One lives inside a nightmare of sexual abuse that is both actual and potential, and you have the great joy of knowing that your nightmare is someone else's freedom and someone else's fun.
. . . The first thing I am going to ask you to do is listen to women who want to talk to you about what has happened to them. Please listen to them. They know, they know how this works .... It has happened to them.
I am also asking you to acknowledge the international reality of this-this is a human rights issue-for a very personal reason, which is that my grandparents came here, Jews fleeing from Russia, Jews fleeing from Hungary. Those who did not come to this country were all killed, either in pogroms or by the Nazis. They came here for me. I live here, and I live in a country where women are tortured as a form of public entertainment and for profit, and that torture is upheld as a state-protected right. Now, that is unbearable.
I am asking you to help the exploited, not the exploiters. You have a tremendous opportunity here. I am asking you as individuals to have the courage, because I think it's what you will need, to actually be willing yourselves to go and cut that woman down and untie her hands and take the gag out of her mouth, and to do something, for her freedom.[763]
The Commission received testimony alleging rapes related to pornography. For example, a woman reported that her daughter was forced to engage in sexual acts in the making of pornographic materials.
My daughter attended [a] Pre-school in ... California. She was three years old when she began attending. During the six months she attended before the school closed, she was sexually molested on multiple occasions, by teachers on the school grounds and also was taken off school property to unknown locations to be molested by persons unknown to me. Photographs were taken on many (if not all) of these occasions. She was threatened with physical violence with a knife and a gun and was forced to watch animals being killed.[764]
A man who claimed he had participated in over one hundred pornographic films in two and a half years testified:
I have seen it totally destroy too many lives, but mostly the girls'. It's a lot harder on young ladies. I have seen a lot of producers and directors and photographers, just to get out a product that they have in mind, either badger or almost force the girls into doing things that they would really rather not do. I, myself, have been on a couple of sets where the young ladies have been forced to do even anal sex scenes with a guy which is rather large and I have seen them crying in pain and just totally destroys their personality when they are forced to do things like that.[765]
Other rapes were allegedly stimulated by the viewing of pornography or modeled after particular pornographic materials.
A mother left her ten-year-old daughter for two hours with a very close friend who lived next door. The friend had the girl watch pornographic movies on the Playboy TV channel and then engaged in oral sex with her.[766]
In testimony before another body, one woman reported:
Over a period of eighteen years the woman was regularly raped by this man. He would bring pornographic magazines, books, and paraphernalia into the bedroom with him and tell her that if she did not perform the sexual acts that were being done in the "dirty" books and magazines he would beat and kill her. I know about this because my bedroom was right next to hers. I could hear everything they saId. I could hear her screams and cries. In addition, since I did most of the cleaning in the house, I would often come across the books, magazines, and paraphernalia that were in the bedroom and other rooms of the house. The magazines had pictures of mostly women and children and some men. Eventually, the woman admitted to me that her ex-husband did in fact use pornographic materials to terrorize and rape her.[767]
Another woman wrote:
When I first met my husband, it was in early 1975, and he was all the time talking about Ms. Marchiano's film, Deep Throat. After we were married, he on several occasions referred to her performances and suggested I try to imitate her actions .... Last January . . . my husband raped me .... He made me strip and lie on our bed. He cut our clothesline up ... and tied my hands and feet to the four corners of the bedframe. (All this was done while our nine month old son watched.) While he held a butcher knife on me threatening to kill me he fed me three strong tranquilizers. I started crying and because the baby got scared and also began crying, he beat my face and my body. I later had welts and bruises. He attempted to smother me with a pillow .... Then he had sex with me vaginally, and then forced me to give oral sex to him.[768]
Another woman alleged that her father had used Playboy in connection with his molestation of her when she was a small child:
... This father took a Playboy magazine and wrote her name across the centerfold. Then he placed it under the covers so she would find it when she went to bed. He joined her in bed that night and taught her about sex.
According to another source:
A five-year-old child told her foster mother, "We have movies at home. Daddy shows them when mother is gone. The people do not wear clothes, and Daddy and I take our clothes off and do the same thing the people in the movies do."[169]
Women who had been asked if they had ever been upset by anyone trying to get them to do what they'd seen in pornographic pictures, movies or books, described the following examples:
Miss D: I was staying at this guy's house. He tried to make me have oral sex with him. He said he'd seen far-out stuff in movies, and that it would be fun to mentally and physically torture a woman.
Miss G: He forced me to have oral sex with him when I had no desire to do it.
Miss M: Anal sex. First he attempted gentle persuasion, I guess. He was somebody I'd been dating a while and we'd gone to bed a few times. Once he tried to persuade [me] to go along with anal sex, first verbally, then by touching me. When I said, "no," he did it anyway-much to my pain. It hurt like hell.[770]
One rape victim said that her assailants had attacked her after perusing pornographic magazines:
The third man forced his penis into my mouth and told me to do it and I didn't know how to do it, I did not know what I was supposed to be doing. He started swearing at me and calling me a bitch and a slut and that I better do it right and that I wasn't even trying. Then he started getting very angry and one of men pulled the trigger in his gun so I tried harder. Then when he had an erection, he raped me. They continued to make jokes about how lucky they were to have found me when they did and they made jokes about me being a virgin. They started kicking leaves and pine needles on me and kicking me and told me that if I wanted more, that I could come back the next day.
Then they started walking away and I put my clothes back on and it was not far from where they had set up their camp and I looked down and saw that they had been reading pornographic magazines. They were magazines with nude women on the covers.[771]
Elsewhere a gang rape was attributed to imitation of a specific piece of pornography:
A gang rape of a juvenile girl [was committed] by six adolescent boys who used a pornographic magazine's pictorial and editorial layout to recreate a rape in the woods outside of their housing development.[772]
Another victim of sexual assault during childhood attributed her assailant's behavior to the instruction of pornography:
What this game consisted of was each child going into a tool shed with this guy. When my turn came I didn't want to go in because I was scared, it was dark in there and it was dirty. There were cobwebs and there was this giant pitchfork.
One of the kids pushed me inside and shut the door. Then this boy grabbed me and pulled down my shorts and sexually abused me. In short, he finger-fucked me and he made me masturbate him. I was really terrified. I thought I was in hell, and I was also in a lot of pain. I started crying really hard and he finally let me go, but I was told that if I told anyone I wouldn't be believed, that it was all my fault and that I would be punished. He also told me that he would hurt me again if I told anyone. His sister told me that this game he had learned from his dirty books. I knew that he had these dirty books because I had seen him with them.[773]
Another witness testified that pornography had been used by a man who had sexually abused her in childhood:
A lot of raping went on in the basement. That is also where the pornography books were. They were magazines that were brought of hiding, out of boxes that were on the top of shelves.
When [he] and I got to the top of the stairs I knew I was going to pay for my little arrangement. He ordered me to take my clothing off and he tried to rape me. He was too big and I was too small. He forced me to go down on him . . . .[774]
Other witnesses testified that men had required of them particular acts that had been seen in pornography:
While imitating the women in the magazines was one result of the material, I have always felt that another consequence was the initiation of oral sex into the abuse. This did not occur until after the pornographic material arrived and I firmly believe that the idea came from the pornographic magazines.
Pornography did not cause the incestuous relationship with my older brother but I have always felt that its use contributed to the different types of abuse that was used.[775]
Another woman described the same phenomenon within her marriage:
I had not realized the extent of the harm that pornography had done to me until a year and a half ago when I was working on a photo montage of the kinds of pornography for an educational forum. I came across a picture of a position that my ex-husband had insisted we try. When we did, I found the position painful, yet he was determined that we have intercourse that way. I hemorrhaged for three days. I finally went to my doctor and I recall the shame I felt as I explained to him what had caused the bleeding.
Once we saw an X-rated film that showed anal intercourse. After that he insisted that I try anal intercourse. I agreed to do so, trying to be the available, willing creature that I thought I was supposed to be. I found the experience very painful, and I told him so. But he kept insisting that we try it again and again.[776]
According to a former Playboy bunny:
A Playmate of the Year, also on the Woman to Woman Show, testified that a man attempted to rape her after he recognized her from the magazine.
I experienced everything from date rape to physical abuse, to group sex and finally to fantasizing homosexuality as I read Playboy magazines. The group sex held in Hefner's mansion was accompanied by the pornographic movie, The Devil in Miss Jones . . .[777]
A woman who said that both of her husbands had subjected her to sexual and other physical abuse testified,
Often he would be high on drugs or alcohol and force me to do violent sexual acts while he was leafing through the pictures.[778]
Testifying before another body, one woman described forced sexual activity during the screening of pornographic films:
... comments like "That's how real men do it," instructing the handicapped men, teasing them that if they watched enough of these movies they would be able to perform normally. There were constant remarks made about what normal male sexual experience was. Then the disabled men were undressed by the able men and the woman was forced to engage sexually with the disabled men, there were two weapons in the room. The woman refused and she was forced, held down by the physically able men. Everyone watched and the movies kept going.
After this, the able-bodied men said they were going to show the handicapped men how "real men" do it. They forced the woman to enact simultaneously with the movie. In the movie at this point a group of men were urinating on a naked woman. All the men in the room were able to perform this task, so they all started urinating on the woman who was now naked. Then the able-bodied men had sex with the woman while the disabled men watched.[779]
During the course of the hearings the Commission received reports from individuals who described situations in which they were forced to engage in certain sexual acts. These acts are distinct from and in addition. to those acts described as rape above. As with the acts of rape which were described to the Commission, acts of forced sexual performance included those done in the course of making pornographic material and those relating to the use of existing pornography. Examples of the first of these are abundant:
A mother and father in South Oklahoma City forced their four daughters, ages ten to seventeen, to engage in family sex while pornographic pictures were being filmed. This mother also drove the girls to dates with men where she would watch while the girls had sex, then she would collect fees of thirty to fifty dollars.[780]
A woman who had been forced into prostitution and participating in the filming of pornography testified:
He had video equipment in his home long before it was mass-produced. Every time my pimp sent me to him he would take pornographic pictures of me and a second woman. He also made video tapes of the sex that took place under his direction. This continued on the average of once a week for about a year. There was an apartment that I was sent to often. There were usually two to three men there. After I had sex with them, they would take pictures of me in various pornographic poses. When I was a young girl I didn't have the vocabulary to call them pornographers. I used to refer to them as "the photographers."
On another occasion another young girl and myself were taken to an apartment in to meet some men. We were told that they were gangsters and that we should be nice to them. When we arrived we were taken into a room that had a large bed at its center surrounded by lighting and film equipment. We were told to act out a "lesbian scene." After about fifteen minutes we were told to get dressed, that they couldn't use us. We were returned to [our city] unpaId. Again, it was only in retrospect as an adult that I realized I had been used in a commercial pornographic film loop.[781]
Another woman wrote:
My father was my pimp in pornography. There were three occasions, from ages nine to sixteen, when he forced me to be a pornography model. This was in the 1950s and 1960s.... I don't know if the pictures and films are still being distributed.[782]
A sixteen-year-old girl who had been molested by two family friends from age seven to age twelve testified:
Viewing the pictures in the magazine seemed to click something for him, for he then wanted his own personal record of all that he had taught me.
He whipped out his Polaroid camera, which was in his briefcase, and then he proceeded to take pictures of me in these various positions, which included using the vibrator.[783]
Another woman described her discomfort in trying to pose as demanded of her:
So I told him that I would try. The first few attempts I failed, he was very disappointed. I failed under the weight and under the heat of the plaster. He wanted me to be in poses where I had to hold my hands up over my head and they would be numb and they would fall. He eventually tied my hands over my head. Finally he succeeded, he ended up getting a plaster cast of my body.
... He told me to take off my clothes and to pose in various positions, either draped over the corroded, rusty seats or in positions where I acted as if I was running towards the door. And then he asked me to put my body in contorted different positions, draped down the stairs of the bus, and they were quite jagged, and at that moment I realized that we were depicting a murder. I became very terrified and scared and I was really cold. I told him I didn't want to do this and that I wanted to go home and that I was really scared.
While we were doing this, I would like to backtrack for a minute, I wasn't achieving the right facial expressions for the pictures so he started telling me stories that depicted pursuits during rape so that I would have the right expressions on my face like the women in the magazines. I remember being very distant from him and just wanting to get home. I remember being very scared .[784]
In these instances in which forced sexual performances were said to be modeled after pornography, the individuals stated that they were shown various pornographic materials and forced to recreate the activities depicted. In some cases the imitation required of victims was highly specific, as in the following example:
My father had an easel that he put by the bed. He'd pin a picture on the easel and like a teacher he would tell me this is what you're going to learn today. He would then act out the picture on me.[785]
Another woman wrote:
I was sexually abused by my foster father from the time I was seven until I was thirteen. He had stacks and stacks of Playboys. He would take me to his bedroom or his workshop, show me the pictures, and say, "This is what big girls do. If you want to be a big girl, you have to do this, but you can never tell anybody." Then I would have to pose like the women in the pictures. I also remember being shown a Playboy cartoon of a man having sex with a child.[786]
A mother described her discovery of her daughter's abuse:
My daughter explained that the adults would come into the room and announce that [it] was time for a "movie" or a "bath" and then begin to usher the children ... into the den or the bathroom. When my daughter refused to undress one of the mothers removed my daughter's clothing with hand movement over her entire body. My daughter was seldom allowed to go home until she had at least one bath with one or more children. Upon hearing this I called the mother and gave her emphatic instructions that my daughter was not to take "baths" at her house. One such occasion after that my daughter came home with obvious dried tears on her face. I feared something dreadful had happened.[787]
They confirmed my fear and discovered even more horror. She had been not only sexually abused but over one thousand pornographic photographs were seized in a search of their apartment spanning a period of over two years. My daughter was only twelve years old at the time of the phone call. She had broken up over the events of the previous week.[768]
One woman who was asked if she had ever been upset by anyone trying to get her to do what they'd seen in pornographic pictures, movies or books said:
This guy had seen a movie where a woman was being made love to by dogs. He suggested that some of his friends had a dog and we should have a party and set the dog loose on the women. He wanted me to put a muzzle on the dog and put some sort of stuff on my vagina so that the dog would lick there.[789]
A woman who had been forced into prostitution and participation in the production of pornography testified:
They knew a child's face when they looked into it. It was clear that I was not acting of my own free will. I was always covered with welts and bruises. They found this very distasteful and admonished me about it. It was even clearer that I was sexually inexperienced. I literally didn't know what to do. So they showed me pornography to teach me about sex and then they would ignore my tears as they positioned my body like the women in the pictures and used me.
My pimp also made me work "stag" parties. These parties were attended by an average of ten to twenty men. These parties took place in catering halls, bars and union halls. I was also forced to work conventions. These were weekend affairs held at major hotels in New York attended by hundreds of professional men. The series of events was the same. Pornographic films followed by myself and other women having sex with the men. The films that were shown most often set the tone for the kinds of acts we were expected to perform.
My last pimp was a pornographer and the most brutal of all. He owned, on the average, three women and girls at any given time. There was always pornography in our apartment. Every night he would set up the projector and run a series of stag films. When he was sufficiently aroused he would choose one of us for sex. The sex that happened always duplicated the pornography. He used it to teach us how to service him. In retrospect the only sex I knew until I was well into my twenties was coercive sex taught to me through pictures of women coerced into pornographic performances.[790]
A sixteen-year-old girl testified:
At about age eleven and a half he started using the magazine again. In these magazines there were pictures of one woman masturbating another woman, two men and a woman having sex, oral, anal, and vaginal sex. It was with these magazines that he started having me act out positions with him.[791]
The mother of two girls testified:
[My daughters] also had an experience with an eleven-year-old neighbor boy. . . . Porno pictures that [he] had were shown to the girls and to the other children on the block. Later that day, [he] invited [my daughters] into his house to play video games, but then tried to imitate the sex acts in the photos with [my] eleven year old [daughter] as his partner; [my other daughter] witnessed the incident.[792]
A woman testified that her husband demanded that she enact behaviors he had found appealing in pornography:
... I was coerced into acting out certain sexual fantasies which he had, many times from reading pornographic literature or viewing certain pornographic movies.[793]
Another woman described her father's use of pornography to encourage and legitimize incest:
He encouraged me by showing me pornographic magazines which they kept in the bathroom and told me it was not wrong because they were doing it in the magazines and that made it o.k. He told me all fathers do it to their daughters and said even pastors do it to their daughters. The magazines were to help me learn more about sex.[794]
Another woman described the same phenomenon:
The incest started at the age of eight. I did not understand any of it and did not feel that it was right. My dad would try to convince me that it was o.k. He would find magazines with articles and/or pictures that would show fathers and daughters and/or mothers, brothers and sisters having sexual intercourse. (Mostly fathers and daughters.) He would say that if it was published in magazines that it had to be all right because magazines could not publish lies.
He would show me these magazines and tell me to look at them or read them and I would turn my head and say no. He would leave them with me and tell me to look later. I was afraid not to look or read them because I did not know what he would do. He would ask me later if I had read them and what they said or if I looked real close at the pictures. He would say, "See it's okay to do because it's published in magazines."[795]
Witnesses who appeared before the Commission and those who submitted statements reported acts of battery and episodes of torture associated with the production or use of pornography. Individuals described acts of battery or torture inflicted upon them during the course of producing pornographic materials. For example, a woman who reported having been sexually abused since infancy said:
That night that I was filmed for a pornographic movie, my stepfather tortured me both physically and sexually because I did not perform adequately enough to be convincing.[796]
A young man who had been the victim of a "sex ring" testified:
I became involved in bondage. I was shown pornography and was bound in various ways and photographed.[797]
Linda Marchiano testified:
When I decided to head back north and informed Mr. Traynor of my intention, that was when I met the real Mr. Traynor and my two and a half years of imprisonment began. He began a complete turnaround and beat me up physically and began the mental abuse, from that day forward my hell began.
During the filming of Deep Throat, actually after the first day, I suffered a brutal beating in my room for smiling on the set. It was a hotel room and the whole crew was in one room, there was at least twenty people partying, music going, laughing, and having a good time. Mr. Traynor started to bounce me off the walls. I figured out of twenty people, there might be one human being that would do something to help me and I was screaming for help, I was being beaten, I was being kicked around and again bounced off of walls. And all of a sudden the room next door became very quiet. Nobody, not one person, came to help me.[798]
One witness before the Commission described how women and young girls were tortured and suffered permanent physical injuries to answer publisher demands for photographs depicting sado-masochistic abuse. When the torturer/photographer inquired of the publisher as to the types of depictions that would sell, the torturer/ photographer was instructed to get similar existing publications and use the depictions therein for instruction. The torturer/ photographer followed the publisher's instructions, tortured women and girls accordingly, and then sold the photographs to the publisher. The photographs were included in magazines sold nationally in pornographic outlets.[799]
The Commission also had received several accounts from individuals who described the use of pornography in the course of physical abuse, and who attributed the type and forms of abuse to specific pornographic materials. For example, one woman who reported having been sexually abused by her father from the age of three testified that he would:
... hang me upside down in a closet and push objects like screwdrivers or table knives inside me. Sometimes he would heat them first. All the while he would have me perform oral sex on him. He would look at his porno pictures almost every day, using them to get ideas of what to do to me or my siblings."[800]
Testifying before another body, another woman said:
He would read from the pornography like a textbook, like a journal. In fact, when he asked me to be bound, when he finally convinced me to do it, he read in the magazine how to tie the knots and how to bind me in a way that I couldn't get out.[801]
A former prostitute testified before another body:
The man returned with two other men. They burned her with cigarettes and attached nipple clips to her breasts. They had many S and M magazines with them and showed her many pictures of women appearing to consent, enjoy, and encourage this abuse. She was held for twelve hours, continuously raped and beaten. She was paid fifty dollars, or about $2.33 per hour.[802]
Another woman wrote:
... solid charges ... could be brought forth. Amongst these charges would be sexual deviance due to repeated inflictions of sadomasochistic acts. I was also told I would be entitled to an annulment as the marriage remained unconsummated throughout.
... While doing household chores, I found very pornographic materials which illustrated sadist techniques and answered my questions as to where my husband got these bizarre ideas.[803]
A former prostitute testified:
He stripped me, tied me up, spread-eagled on the bed so that I could not move and the began to caress me very gently. Then, when he thought that I was relaxed, he squeezed my nipple really hard. I did not react. He held up a porn magazine with a picture of a beaten woman and said, "I want you to look like that. I want you to hurt." He then began beating me, and when I didn't cry fast enough, he lit a cigarette and held it right above my breast for a long time before he burned me.[804]
Another woman testified before another body:
During the time that I was held captive by that man, I was physically and psychologically abused by him. I was whipped with belts and electrical cords. I was beat with pieces of wood. I was usually forced to pull my pants down before I was to be beaten. I was touched and grabbed where I did not want him to touch me. I was also locked into dark closets and the basement for many hours at a time and I was often not allowed to speak or cry.
The things that this man did to me were also done to the children of the woman, except that they suffered from even worse abuse. I believe that part of the psychological abuse I suffered from was from the pornographic materials that the man used in his terrorization of us. I knew that if he wanted to, he could do more of the things that were being done in those magazines to me. When he looked at the magazines, he could make hateful obscene, violent remarks about women in general and about me. I was told that because I am female I am here to be used and abused by him and that because he is male he is the master and I am his slave.[805]
A women's shelter wrote to the Commission:
One woman known to us related that her spouse always had a number of pornographic magazines around the house. The final episode that resulted in ending their marriage was his acting out a scene from one of the magazines. She was forcibly stripped, bound and gagged. And with help from her husband, she was raped by a German shepherd. His second wife became known to us when she sought out support because of the magazines and bondage equipment she discovered in their home.
Penthouse and Hustler were always a part of the literature in the third woman's home. Occasionally, her spouse would add Cheri, Oui, Swedish Erotica to the collection. His favorite form of abuse was bondage. He enjoyed playing what he called a "game" of whipping and slavery. She knows that what he did to her was directly related to articles about bondage and sex [slaves] which he read. He wanted to involve a second woman, her friend, in the scenarios.[806]
A mother of two girls testified:
[My husband] had a large collection of bizarre S&M and bondage pornography that he kept in the nightstand drawer in our bedroom. On one occasion [he] tied me to our bed and sodomized me. This occurred after I refused to agree to be bound and tied as the models appeared in some of [his] pornographic magazines.
Also, the girls told me that [he] sometimes played a game with them in which their feet were tied up tightly with a rope. The molestation included "bad touching" and exhibitionism by [him], but did not involve actual penetration. [807]
In testifying before another body, one man said:
I understand pornography to be a force in creating violence in the gay community. I was battered by my ex-lover who used pornography. The pornography, straight and gay, I had been exposed to, helped convince me that I had to accept his violence and helped keep me in that destructive relationship.
Then one time, he branded me. I still have a scar on my butt. He put a little wax initial thing on a hot plate and then stuck it on my ass when I was unaware.[808]
Women who were asked in a research project if they had ever been upset by anyone trying to get them to do what they'd seen in pornographic pictures, movies or books described experiences similar to those reported by Commission witnesses:
Miss F: He'd read something in a pornographic book, and then he wanted to live it out. It was too violent for me to do something like that. It was basically getting dressed up and spanking. Him spanking me. I refused to do it.
Miss I: It was S&M stuff. I was asked if I would participate in being beaten up. It was a proposition, it never happened. I didn't like the idea of it.
Miss P: My boyfriend and I saw a movie in which there was masochism. After that he wanted to gag me and tie me up. He was stoned, I was not. I was really shocked at his behavior. I was nervous and uptight. He literally tried to force me, after gagging me first. He snuck up behind me with a scarf. He was hurting me with it and I started getting upset. Then I realized it wasn't a joke. He grabbed me and shook me by my shoulders and brought out some ropes, and told me to relax, and that I would enjoy it. Then he started putting me down about my feelings about sex, and my inhibitedness. I started crying and struggling with him, got loose, and kicked him in the testicles, which forced him down on the couch. I ran out of the house. Next day he called and apologized, but that was the end of him.[809]
A woman whose father had sexually abused her from age three testified:
I have had my hands tied, my feet tied, my mouth taped to teach me big girls don't cry. He would tell me I was very fortunate to have a father that would teach me the facts of life. Many of the pictures he had were of women in bondage, with their hands tied, feet tied and their mouth taped.[810]
In testimony before another body, a woman said:
I was hit and punched because I refused to allow my partner to put his fist in my vagina in the same fashion as in one of his pornography magazines.[811]
Another woman, testifying before the Commission, reported:
... a trick first showed me how to do bondage and discipline acts. I had numerous customers who would have pornographic material with them. I was asked to shave my pubic hairs because it reminded them of a child or engage in specific sex acts they had seen in a magazine. Having me urinate on them, commonly referred to as golden showers, was a popular request.
Again my customers, who were mostly professional types, would bring many examples in magazines or books of the types of bondage they wanted or of other acts they thought would satisfy their sexual desires, like me acting like their mother, enemas, spanking or cross dressing (men dressing in women's undergarments or clothing). I would also get couples (a man and woman) who were into bondage and discipline, with me as the instructor and ultra dominatrix. My customers would want me to dress like women in the magazines or to bind them in some specific way. Urinating on my customer was also not uncommon.[812]
In addition to the physical harms already mentioned, some evidence was received alleging a connection between murder and pornographic materials. Cases were reported to the Commission in which a murder may have been patterned after a depiction found in a pornographic magazine or film. For example, the New York Times reported:
The December 1984 issue of Penthouse carried this eroticized torture into the 'men's entertainment' forum with a series of photographs of Asian women bound with heavy rope, hung from trees, and sectioned into parts. It is not known whether this pictorial incited a crime that occurred two months later wherein an eight year old Chinese girl living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, was kidnaped, raped, murdered and left hanging from a tree limb.[813]
Witnesses also described the influence they perceived pornography had in their criminal activities or the crimes others had committed:
The day came when I invited a small neighborhood boy into my apartment, molested him and then killed him in fear of being caught. Over the next few years I kidnapped, sexually abused and murdered four other boys.
Pornography wasn't the only negative influence in my life, but its effect on me was devastating. I lost all sense of decency and respect for humanity and life.[814]
The Commission received testimony and other evidence from individuals who reported that they had been kidnapped or held captive during the production of pornographic materials. For example, the woman who appeared in Deep Throat testified:
My name today is Linda Marchiano. Linda Lovelace was the name I bore during a two and a half year period of imprisonment. For those of you who don't know the name, Linda Lovelace was the victim of this so-called victim less crime. Used and abused by Mr. Traynor, her captor, she was forced through physical, mental, and sexual abuse and often at gunpoint and threats of her life to be involved with pornography.
I literally became a prisoner. I was not allowed out of his sight, not even to use the bathroom. Why, you may ask? Because there was a window in the bathroom.[815]
Well, at night what he would do is put his body over my body so that if I did try to get up he would wake up. And he was a very light sleeper. If I did attempt to move or roll over in my sleep he would awaken.[816]
A women's shelter wrote:
In another case, a woman was imprisoned in the house by her husband. He had a video cassette recorder. He would bring home pornographic movies, tie her to a chair and force her to act out what they were seeing on the screen. She was severely injured and came to our Shelter.[817]
Witnesses reported various injuries and diseases associated with the production of pornography.[818] The diseases which were reported included a variety of sexually transmitted diseases. For example, a citizen's group wrote to the Commission:
How does a three and a half year old girl learn to cope with gonorrhea of the throat and a painful vagina, stretched many times its normal size because her father used her for sexual gratification. This father was another pornography addict.[819]
A former Playboy bunny testified:
I heard a bunny I knew had her reproductive organs removed due to a venereal disease left untreated.[820]
A man who had participated in the production of more than one hundred pornographic films testified:
I decided to get out of the business because I was kind of scared about all the different diseases and stuff going on. I myself was pretty lucky to only have got gonorrhea a couple of times. I never caught herpes or nothing like that. But it was scary. The diseases are really rampant out there, and especially with the AIDS scare. You have one person that has AIDS in the industry and within six months you can really infect about half the industry because there's so much contact; you have so many different jobs, different people, each month.[821]
A woman testified:
There seemed to be a lot of venereal diseases and other contact diseases going around and I was afraid of catching something.[822]
One person described her son's use of pornography and his resulting death.[823]
My son, Troy Daniel Dunaway, was murdered on August 6, 1981, by the greed and avarice of the publishers of Hustler Magazine. My son read the article 'Orgasm of Death,' set up the sexual experiment depicted therein, followed the explicit instructions of the article, and ended up dead. He would still be alive today were he not enticed and incited into this action by Hustler Magazine's 'How To Do' August 1981 article; an article which was found at his feet and which directly caused his death.[824]
A woman testified about her husband, who was a medical professional and an avid consumer of pornography:
... extremely excited about was the story of a man who had fish in an aquarium, stuck his organ in the aquarium and they nibbled on it until he orgasmed. John was so excited that he would go out and buy a fish tank. At that time John was physically abusing me by pulling my hair, slapping me, kicking me, stomping on my feet.[825]
Witnesses who testified before the Commission and individuals who submitted statements reported several connections between pornography and prostitution. One such connection was the use of pornography as instructional manuals for prostitutes.
For example, a former prostitute testified:
One of the very first commonalities we discovered as a group, we were all introduced to prostitution through pornography; there were no exceptions in our group, and we were all under eighteen.
Pornography was our textbook, we learned the tricks of the trade by men exposing us to pornography and us trying to mimic what we saw. I could not stress enough what a huge influence we feel this was.[826]
Another connection was the use of pornographic films by pimps to blackmail the participants:
I was the main woman of a pimp who filmed sexual acts almost every night in our home. The dope man, who supplied us with cocaine for free in exchange for these arranged orgies, was a really freaky man who would do anything. They arranged to have women, who I assumed were forced to be there, have sex with dogs and filmed those acts. There were stacks of films all over the house, which my pimp used to blackmail people with.[827]
Yet another connection was the use of magazines to stimulate the clientele:
When I worked at massage studios, the owners had subscriptions to Playboy, Penthouse, Penthouse Forum and the like. These magazines were arranged in the waiting area of most of the massage places which I worked in. If a girl was not inside with a trick, she was expected to sit out front with the men who were waiting or who were undecided and to look at the magazines with them in order to get them titillated. They used the soft porn to help them work up the courage to try the acts described in the magazine with the prostitutes at the massage studio.[828]
The Commission received testimony from many individuals who reported suicidal thoughts and behavior. These individuals described experiences related to pornographic materials that led them to feel worthless and hopeless, which in turn led to thoughts of suicide or attempts. For example, the mother of an adolescent girl who said she had been molested through the use of pornography testified:
This is not accomplished overnight, nor is it ever undone. She is now sixteen. She tried to commit suicide at the age of thirteen and a half as her only means of escape. She spent five months in an adolescent psychiatric unit and nineteen months at a residential care facility for twenty-four hour round-the-clock help with her problems. The brunt of the expenses for her care were our responsibility, reaching close to $100,000.[830]
Another witness testified:
By age fourteen, I had attempted suicide three times and had been in three different mental hospitals. Never had I revealed to anyone my childhood nightmare. Finally, in an effort to revive our sex life, we began to use pornography. This had a devastating effect on our lives. I began to become very depressed and suicidal again. Though we did become more sexually active, the quality of our relationship deteriorated almost to the point of divorce. Pornography again had touched my life in a very destructive way.[831]
A former Playboy bunny testified:
I was extremely suicidal and sought psychiatric help for the eight years I lived in a sexually promiscuous fashion.
In Los Angeles, my roommate, who was a bunny, had slashed her wrists because she was so suicidal.
Although I received small parts in Godfather II and Funny Lady, had sex with movie stars and producers, I felt worthless and empty. Out of my despair I attempted suicide on numerous occasions.[832]
Other individuals reported suicidal thoughts and behaviors as a result of being forced to participate in the production or use of pornography. For example, a teenage boy who had run away from home reported having been sexually abused by his uncle. He stated he was shown pornographic materials in the course of sexual abuse and he was used in the production of pornographic films:
He told me they were for him and his friends to view ... It was a difficult situation for me. And afterwards, I attempted suicide several times.[833]
A woman reported experiences:
... which I found very humiliating and very destructive to my self-esteem and my feeling of self-worth as a person. To prevent these I agreed with him to act out in privacy a lot of those scenarios that he read to me. A lot of them depicting bondage and different sexual acts that I found very humiliating. About this time when things were getting really terrible and I was feeling very suicidal and very worthless as a person, at that time any dreams that I had of a career in medicine were just totally washed away. I could not think of myself any more as a human being.[834]
A woman who testified that her former husband of eleven years was an avid consumer of pornography and had attempted to force her to view pornographic materials testified:
... [I] was very suicidal throughout my marriage; attempted several times.[835]
The Commission heard testimony from several witnesses who described fear and anxiety associated with being shown pornography. The anxieties which have been described may be divided into two primary categories: anxiety attributable to memories of prior abuse which are relived through the images portrayed in the pornography being shown; and an overall embarrassment or discomfort in being made to view pornographic materials.
One witness reported being forced by her father to view pornographic materials during the course of an incestuous relationship:
... and of course he had booked a double room. He had all kinds of things in his briefcase, and he pulled out a magazine or book and told me to read it. He sat on the bed and watched me and his facial expression frightened me. I did not want to read it. I did not want to look at those pictures.... I was emotionally tortured and I didn't know what to do. I did not like my body or my father's body and having to look at those pornographic pictures forced me to visually memorize painful incidents with my father.[836]
Another witness described similar feelings of anxiety and fear of being shown pornography during the course of sexual abuse in her childhood, beginning when she was ten:
... I have no memory of there being any pornography in the bungalow where we lived. All nine kids slept in one room. My stepfather had his own room. My mother slept on the couch in the living room. The pornography was at the store. The pornography was also in the garage where Carl had some kind of office. He was involved in some kind of activity that needed to be hidden. I have no idea what that was. I remember the pictures on the wall and I remember boxes of books again. These were books I didn't want to look at. Carl's apartment is the place where I remember he made the pornography of me.[837]
As they would show me this pornography, I would look at the pictures and then I would feel real scared....[838]
Other women have described their feelings about pornography and the pain it recreated from a previous abusive experience. One woman appearing before the Minneapolis City Council reported that she currently experiences anxiety upon viewing pornography because it reawakens the experience of sexual abuse she had earlier suffered:
Two days later, having failed my attempts to keep those images away from me, I was sexually abused in my family. I don't know if the man that abused me uses pornography but looking at the women in those pictures, I saw myself at fourteen, at fifteen, at sixteen. I felt the weight of that man's body, the pain, the disgust.... I don't need studies and statistics to tell me that there is a relationship between pornography and real violence against women. My body remembers.[839]
Parents also reported children's lasting fears after abuse. The mother of a girl who reportedly was molested and used in the production of pornography in a California pre-school testified:
She has also talked about a lot of lights, big strong lights, and she is also very fearful of having her picture taken. My sister was visiting from overseas and tried to take her picture and she hid under the bed.[840]
The second category of fear and anxiety was described primarily by adult women who during the course of an intimate relationship were forced to view pornography by a spouse or close friend. These women described feelings of embarrassment, disgust, and public humiliation.
My husband is very knowledgeable about the Marquis de Sade. He was raised by prostitutes. One of his stepfathers had what he called the largest pornography collection he had ever seen. There was pornographic art throughout his stepfather's home. One evening when we went to visit his mother and his stepfather, the evening's entertainment consisted of getting together with the neighbors and their children and watching a pornography film involving sex with children. I got up, left the room to throw up; and my husband came over to tell me that I had embarrassed him.[841]
Other witnesses described feelings of humiliation at being forced to view pornography and being subject to ridicule when they demonstrated a reluctance to participate. For example:
We would meet together as a group at pornographic adult theaters or live sex shows. Initially I started arguing that the women on stage looked very devastated like they were disgusted and hated it. I felt devastated and disgusted watching it. I was told by those men if I wasn't as smart as I was and if I would be more sexually liberated and more sexy, that I would get along a lot better in the world and they and a lot of other men would like me more. About this time I started feeling very terrified.[842]
The Commission heard testimony from several women whose husbands requested they accompany them to view pornography. These women reported feelings of embarrassment and humiliation as well as a deterioration of the marital relationship:
I went with him once. I was disgusted with what I saw. I was also very embarrassed to have been seen in the theater. He continued going by himself and probably never missed a new showing.[843]
Another woman testified:
He would take me to the pornography stores here in Houston with the intention of going to get a newspaper or going to get a Better Homes and Gardens. Before I knew it, he would kind of lead me back into the second part of the store. I think that only happened twice because I would get so upset and traumatized....[844]
Yet another woman experienced fear and anxiety when she listened to Dial-A-Porn messages that her son had been calling:
The chilling horror I felt in my kitchen after my first encounter with Dial-A-Porn lingers with me today. After my initial reaction of disbelief subsided, I was overcome with grief. I cried uncontrollably for myself, my son....[845]
The Commission heard testimony from many witnesses who described feelings of worthlessness, guilt, and shame which they attributed to experiences involving pornographic materials.
As an adolescent, I was sexually molested in my own home by a family member who regularly used pornographic materials. I have been threatened at knifepoint by a stranger in an attempted rape. I have been physically and verbally harassed on the street, in other public places, and over the telephone at all hours of the night. I have experienced and continue to experience the humiliation, degradation, and shame that these acts were meant to instill in me.
This connection became clear to me when I saw a documentary about pornography called Not a Love Story. I realized that I was any one of the women in the film, at least in the eyes of those men who have abused me. I saw myself through the abusers' eyes and I felt dirty and disgusting, like a piece of meat. It was the same shame and humiliation as in the other experiences.[847]
The Commission also heard testimony from people who experienced feelings of guilt and shame when shown pornography:
It was important to me to try and stop the feelings of embarrassment because then I thought that they would not be able to see my shame. Somehow I thought they watched me, waited to see my reaction to the pornography and then they would continue holding it up in front of me to make me squirm. I felt humiliated and hollow.[848]
Guilt and shame were also reported by witnesses as feelings associated with the production of pornography. For example, a young man who was used in the production of pornography as an adolescent testified:
A couple of months later I went into the Straight program, and I talked about it a couple of times, why I would do it. Take her money and go down to buy cocaine with it. I just felt it really disgusted me and I shamed myself.[849]
A statement submitted to the Commission by the National Conference of judges discussed the feelings of guilt and shame that victims experience because of the production and use of homemade pornography:
... collections of self-made pornography detailing who their victims were and the acts they committed. This is a particularly traumatic issue for many of the victims that we treat. It is a source of extreme shame and embarrassment for the victims that pictures of the activity between them and the offender exist. We may not have all those pictures, copies of the pictures may have been sold or traded to other collectors, and we may not have found the entire collection. These collections are catalogued at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension and continue to exist long past the time when the crime has been reported....
In many of our incest families, the perpetrators use pornography as tools or guides in order to initiate their family members into sexual behavior. Manuals and books that speak of father-daughter love, father-son sex, or family love have been used to rationalize and validate this kind of behavior.
Many of our child molesters, both juvenile and adults, have utilized both adult and child pornography as a way to initiate their victims into the sexual behavior as well as a tool or guide for the sexual behavior of child molesting. Many of our victims blame themselves and feel a great deal of culpability because they believed the original depiction from pornography as being normal behavior between adults and children.[850]
In a letter presented to the Minneapolis City Council, a woman described her public embarrassment and shame at seeing what seemed to be a photograph of herself:
It was a full-length figure, naked except for high-heeled shoes and stockings, taking off a shirt. Never in my life had I posed for any photograph, drawing or painting remotely similar to this image. The people giving me this laughed, thought it was funny, thought I would find it funny and truly meant no harm-they are all talented, intelligent, nice people, an indication of the extent of the pornographic mind-set we all suffer under. I felt upset, ripped-off, diminished, insulted, abused, hurt, furious and powerless. All of which I concealed from my friends by smiling and saying, "Where did you get this?" (For the moment I thought they had it made up by the art department at the studio.) "From a magazine" was the answer. Added to the aforementioned reactions was horror! I thought, "This has been published! It is publicly available for anyone to see and assume I may have posed for it."
I curtailed my honest reaction because in a few minutes we would all have to begin filming our show-which we dId. They, thinking it had been a fun joke, me in a great deal of pain and distress.[851]
Some witnesses feared the future dissemination of pornography which had been made of them. For example, a woman who had been forced to participate in the filming of pornography testified:
But there still exists the pornography that was made of me. I know the men who made it, I know where they are, and there is nothing I can do about it. I live knowing that at any time it could surface and could be used to humiliate me and my family. I know that it can be used to ruin my professional life in the future. I know because some of it was produced within months before my eighteenth birthday that it is protected under current law.[852]
Linda Marchiano, who appeared in the film Deep Throat as Linda Lovelace, testified:
I have a son who will be ten in April. My daughter Lindsay will be six on the 4th of July. There are times when my phone rings and it's just obscene phone calls and people saying the typical kind of degradation they say on the telephone. And it's hard because, how do you say to these people, come on, you are hurting my six- and my nine-year-old children. That hurts and it does hurt that the film is still being shown.
I mean, we have a video store in our town, and we have a VCR, and I will not go into that store and get my tapes. I will go to the next town to get them. I just don't feel that store should have that film in the town that I live, but there is nothing I can do about it.
I have no rights as a victim. The only right I have is to be able to tell my story and hope that someone listens.[853]
The young man who had been sexually abused by his uncle and used in the production of pornography testified:
The sexual abuse that was afflicted on me lowered my self-esteem and the films reminded me of that. I was afraid that this would be shown to the world.[854]
A woman who reported that she was forced into prostitution at age thirteen after running away from a sexually abusive home testified that she was forced to participate in the production of pornographic films and tapes:
It was clear to me that in the years I was in prostitution that all of the women I met were systematically coerced into prostitution and pornography in the same way a prisoner of war is systematically imprisoned, tortured and starved into compliance by his captors. The difference is that prisoners of war are not held responsible for coerced statements and acts but when a girl or woman is coerced in this very manner into prostitution and for use in pornography, she is held responsible.
This pimp made pornography of all of us. He also made tape recordings of us having sex with him and recordings of our screams and pleading when he gave us brutal beatings. It was not unusual for him to threaten us with death. He would later use these recordings to humiliate us by playing them for his friends in our presence, for his own sexual arousal, and to terrorize us and other women he brought home.[855]
According to the submission on behalf of the National Judges Conference, the continuing existence of pornography impedes treatment of victims:
The therapeutic issue for the victim to complete treatment is the need to put the crime in the past, an impossibility when there is an existing pictorial history.[856]
The Commission heard accounts from several witnesses who were unable to recall portions of their lives or specific events. These witnesses attributed their amnesia to trauma associated with the production or use of pornography. The woman who had been sexually abused and forced to participate in the production and viewing of pornography from age ten testified:
I do not remember the exact beginning of my personal war.[858]
In 1984 is when I started to speak publicly against pornography because it was during that year that I learned and remembered that I was victimized as a child. Prior to that time I had no memory of it.[859]
My upset has to do with not being able to remember exactly the beginning, or for that matter, the lost segments of time such as a year or two of my life.[860]
It is essential, if one is to survive years of physical abuse, whether one is a child or an adult, to distort one's reality and live in denial.[861]
Witnesses described various psychological mechanisms they used to endure the sexual abuse or humiliation associated with pornography:
Sometimes I would make believe I was in a coma and I'd have to lay absolutely still, because people in comas don't move. So I would set about my task by practicing how not to move and how not to make a sound.[862]
... and because of what my family life was like, I learned to cope with being shown pornography.
The way I did that was I would behave as if I was looking at the pictures. But I would not directly look at them. I would make believe that I was blind, that I could not see. In my mind I said to myself, I do not see them, but then concentrated on not allowing my body to respond in any way that would be visible to them. I repeated to myself over and over again, don't move any part of your body. Somehow I believed if I denied the feelings that I could forget the experience, which I later translated to it never happened, and I had stayed that way for twenty years.[863]
A woman who said she had been sexually and emotionally abused since childhood through the use of pornography and who said she suffered from multiple personality testified:
In every episode with him are ones I realized that I could not avoid his advances; I would put myself in a trance-like state and pray for it all to be over with as soon as possible.[864]
... Then, like an internal sore, the repressed memories began erupting, baring all of my symptoms and anxiety; I looked for the long-term help that I knew I would need.[865]
... It has been extremely difficult for me to write my testimony. I am only now, because of the request that I testify today, beginning to remember the pornography to which I was subjected. The memories that I have relived completely have been of a physical nature, the extreme traumas which were responsible for my splitting. I feel that I have been so desensitized that the memories of having been shown pornographic pictures have seemed harmless and therefore, until now, there has been no need to remember them.
* * *
...trauma of my relationship with my stepfather, and the role pornography played. Each time I have reread what I have written I am so re-appalled, re-horrified and re-traumatized myself that I decided it more important to just tell you that I knew pornographic magazines played a large part in my stepfather's life. I do not remember in detail the magazines he used, but I do know that they were of a sadomasochistic nature.[866]
The mother of an adolescent girl who said she had been sexually abused through the use of pornography testified that her daughter had recurrent nightmares of the abuse:
He used this magazine to get her to do the same type of thing to him and as a tool to instruct her as to how he wanted her to pose for his nude photographs. To this day, she has nightmares and is continually remembering additional details of his assaults.[868]
Many witnesses described an inability to engage in healthy sexual relationships, including reports of a seeming need for abuse or unhealthy dominance. One woman whose husband was an avid consumer of pornography testified:
This obsession and addiction did not enrich our sex life. It robbed me of a loving relationship, and our sex life turned to his masturbating with his pornography.[870]
Another witness testified:
My unhealthy concept of sex began when I was a child between the ages of seven and nine. At that time I was introduced to both pictorial and written pornography. This was over fifty-five years ago. My entire concept of what sex was all about came from these materials.[871]
A woman who had been forced to participate in the production and viewing of pornography testified:
So at night in order to go to sleep I would act out scenes in my head of being tortured and I had to practice how to endure extreme pain. This is how I put myself to sleep at nights as a child. As an adult, instead of having to imagine these scenes, John acted out his violent sado-masochistic fantasies on my body.[872]
* * *
I lived with [a man]. One day he told me he had fantasies; fantasies of tying up a woman and using whips. I told him I had the same fantasies. In fact I have been having those fantasies since I was at least twelve or thirteen years old. One of the ways I would put myself to sleep at night as a child was I would run skits through my head and the main character I would act out was me. I was always being hurt.[873]
A former Playboy bunny testified:
My first association with Playboy began in childhood when I found Playboy as well as other pornographic magazines hidden around the house. I have since discovered that a great deal of pornography ends up in the hands of the children. This gave me a distorted image of sexuality. Pornography portrays sex as impersonal and insatiable.[874]
A woman whose father had used pornography in his sexual abuse of her from the age of three testified:
I was nothing but a pornographic tool for his use. I cannot distinguish the difference between sex and pornography. Because of my sexual abuse as a child I am extremely against pornography, and because of pornography I cannot enjoy sex.[875]
Other witnesses attributed feelings of sexual insecurity and inadequacy to experiences with pornography. For example, a woman whose husband attempted to force her to view pornography testified:
It was at that point, early in our relationship, that I began to think that there was something wrong with me. After all, if I loved this person, why didn't I share his enthusiasm?[876]
Another woman who said her husband had sexually abused her through the use of pornography testified:
I thought that I was either a frigid, uncaring wife, but that's the idea; I have received messages from my husband.[877]
Another woman whose husband was an avid consumer of pornography testified:
It finally progressed to the desire for exchanging parties and sex orgies with many partners. He again told me there was something wrong with me because I would not share him with others and I did not enjoy sex.[878]
* * *
I can still remember when I told him I still loved him and I would not divorce him if he would change. He said I was sexually cold and selfish....[879]
He was convinced there was something wrong with me because I could no longer respond to him. In fact, I felt very uncomfortable whenever he touched me. He continually told me I was cold, even though he had nothing to offer me. And I believe this was justifying his involvement with pornography.[880]
Some individuals described situations in which pornography had been used to instill feelings of racial inferiority. For example, one women testified before another body:
In thinking about coming here today to speak, I realized that my life would be in danger. As a woman of color these dangers seem many and great, an absolute loss of credibility and respect, wrath and disgust, potential violence both verbal and physical, and ridicule and harassment to name a few. I also realized the dangers to my life if I did not come. These dangers being complacency, letting go of my rage and terror about pornography and its impact on my life, accepting that the shame is mine, accepting that I am the slut and the whore that deserved what was done to me, believing that I am usable. I have no illusions about men not seeing me as a slut, they do.[881]
Witnesses also described the pornography was used to degrade them as women. For example, a woman whose husband used pornography to abuse her testified:
As a result of this I developed a very low self-esteem. I felt emotionally isolated because of the fear and embarrassment.[882]
Another woman said:
He showed me art books and also books, magazines of pornography. And as he was showing me these works, he was doing a critique of women's bodies, of their facial expression, of parts of their bodies and of their dress. Following this was a critique of my too athletic, too muscular body. I was seventeen, it was very devastating to me that my body was being torn apart in this way.[883]
Another woman testified:
Once he insisted that we go see an X-rated movie at a theater that showed pornography exclusively. I remember feeling humiliated and frightened being the only woman in the room while the men around me sat masturbating openly. I kept my eyes glued to the top of the screen and prayed for it to be over soon. When we got home, he demanded sex.[884]
A witness who appeared before the Minneapolis City Council described feelings of inferiority and inadequacy:
When we arrived, he informed me that the other men at the party were envious that he had a girl friend to fuck. They wanted to fuck too after watching the pornography. He informed me of this as he was taking his coat off.
He then took off the rest of his clothes and had me perform fellatio on him. I did not do this of my own volition. He put his genitals in my face and he said, "Take it all." Then he fucked me on the couch in the living room, all this took about five minutes. And when he was finished he dressed and went back to the party. I felt ashamed and numb and I also felt very used.
This encounter differed from others previous, it was much quicker, it was somewhat rougher, and he was not aware of me as a person. There was no foreplay. It is my opinion that his viewing of the pornography served as foreplay for him.
* * *
... this usual treatment did result in feelings of low self-esteem, depression, confusion and a lot of shame.[885]
The Commission received reports from individuals who described feelings of exploitation through a partner's use of pornography in an intimate relationship:
He was a lover. He'd go to porno movies, then he'd come home and say, I saw this in a movie. Let's try it. I felt really exploited, like I was being put in a mold.[886]
A young man who had been forced to engage in sexual acts for the production of pornography testified that he and other boys who had been exploited by a sex ring felt stigmatized by the publicity surrounding the investigation and prosecution of the offenders:
Those of us who were involved in the ring never talked about it. We wanted to forget the experience. But since my name became public I couldn't escape the stigma of being involved in the...sex scandal. I started taking drugs heavily at age twelve to try to cope with the situation.[887]
A woman who had herself been forced into prostitution and the production of pornography testified:
My first husband was always withdrawn and had very little self-esteem. He was a sad young man. People often felt sorry for him. He died before his twenty-fifth birthday in a drunken car accident. lust a few months ago I learned something that helped explain his low self-esteem, his alcoholism, and his avid consumption of pornography. I saw a picture of him as an adolescent in a child pornography photograph in a Women Against Pornography display.[888]
The Commission heard testimony describing feelings of frustration and problems with the legal system. Some of the witnesses described helplessness and frustration which they thought could have been alleviated if they had been provided guidance in seeking legal redress. For example, one woman wrote:
Linda Marshiano testified:Please, please, use their experience and knowledge and work with them. They have tried to get legislation passed against the evils of pornography, for instance the Minneapolis ordinance....Lastly, there are many women's organizations which have been working hard against the evils of the ever-growing, and increasingly more violent pornography which is making our society even more sick.[889]
... At a grand jury hearing in California after they had watched a porno film, they asked me why I did it. I said, "Because a gun was being pointed at me" and they just said, "Oh, but no charges were ever filed." I also called the Beverly Hills Police Department on my final escape and told them that Mr. Traynor was walking around looking for me with an M-16. When they first told me that they couldn't become involved in domestic affairs, I accepted that and told them that he was illegally possessing these weapons and they simply told me to call back when he was in the room.[890]
A young man who had been forced to participate in the production of pornography testified:
During the trial the only name to come out in the newspaper was my name. I was eleven years old at the time.[891]
A woman whose memories of abuse and forced participation in the production of pornography had remained buried for many years testified:
If we had the civil ordinance passed, if I had access to something like that, I would be able to pull through the part of me that exists today. I have no means of doing so. All of the statutes of limitations have run out. Most of the time the women that have been abused, statutes of limitations have run out before we even remember we have been sexually abused.[892]
Another woman testified:
When I think that police, attorneys, legislators, jurors, judges, school teachers and doctors of our country can be desensitized to the suffering of a child, it angers me. A child's justice has been thwarted by the preconditioning of emotions. Victims of sexual violence don't get a fair trial. The true emotions that should be felt have been replaced by sexual fantasies. Victims are a curiosity. People come to see us talk about our genitals as if we are some form of entertainment. Our trial becomes an extension of pornography. So much that even nude photos of us are passed around.[893]
Another woman who had been forced into prostitution and the production of pornography alleged that policemen and juvenile facility workers had been among her abusers.
I don't think that consent was a possibility for a girl who was delivered into the hands of organized crime figures in New Jersey in the dead of night. Others might wonder why I didn't turn to the police for help. As a matter of fact I didn't have to walk all the way to our local headquarters to speak to the police. They were at our apartment every week for their payoff-me.
* * *
When I was sixteen I was sentenced to juvenile detention by the courts. My incarceration was a nightmare of sexual abuse at the hands of the male employees of the facility. One young girl complained to her parents about this on visiting day. That night, after her parents left, she was made an example of. We heard her cries and pleading all night. The official story the next morning was that she had tried to run away, was caught, and was being held in isolation.
* * *
Soon after I was transferred to a facility upstate. When I saw my opportunity I escaped.[894]
Several of the witnesses reported the use of various drugs, including alcohol, in connection with the manufacture of pornographic materials. A former Playboy bunny testified:
Drug abuse is deeply interwoven into the Playboy lifestyle. I saw marijuana being used at Hefner's mansion on a regular basis, and cocaine as well. I began taking moderate amounts of alcohol and tranquilizers thinking it would do no harm but the lust grows for more drugs and alcohol to desensitize the psyche to the sexual perversion.[895]
Some witnesses stated that drugs were used to induce an individual to participate in the production of pornography. For example, a woman who had run away from sexual abuse at home at age thirteen described the use of drugs and nude photographs to initiate her into prostitution:
The third night I was away from home I was wondering around the streets in a sort of daze when I was befriended by a man about twenty years my senior.
I confided my problems to him and he offered to take me in. During my stay with him he treated me relatively well. He was kind to me, he fed me, and he said he cared about me. He also kept me drugged, spoke glowingly about prostitution and took nude photographs of me.[897]
A young woman who had suffered years of sexual and emotional abuse testified:
I recall at time, from age thirteen until fifteen, having been drugged and used in group demonstrations....
Money, grass and alcohol were used as inducements by [two of the men in the sex ring] in their seduction process. [One] would use the school bus to pick us up and take us over to another's house in Revere. We were paid five dollars plus we were given beer and grass.[898]
Another young man testified:
When I was young, my uncle sexually molested me. He introduced me to alcohol and drugs. He took nude photographs of me with body paint....[899]
A woman who at eighteen became a nude model and posed for pornographic films testified:
He had me sign contract, so that scared me, because I had to go to the office every day, you know, and he would try to tell me that soon I would be there, I would be famous. He got me involved with drugs and made me service him, and if I didn't he would threaten me.[900]
The Commission also heard testimony from witnesses who used the money received for participation in prostitution and pornography to buy drugs. A young man who had been forced to participate in the manufacture of pornography testified:
I spent all the money on drugs. While hustling, quite often I would be picked up by a guy and taken to his house where he would show me homosexual porn films to get him and me turned on. Many times I would be photographed in pornographic poses for private collections. Most often I was involved in prostitution with guys.[901]
Other witnesses said that they used alcohol and other drugs to escape mentally from the abuse they were suffering. For example, one woman testified:
I escaped prostitution quite by accident. I became a heroin addict. I had been taking other drugs throughout the time I was in prostitution and pornography. They had been supplied and doled out by my pimp. I accepted them because they numbed my physical and emotional pain.[902]
Reports of sexual harassment similar to those described in the "Physical Injuries" section were also submitted as forms of social injuries. The witnesses stated the harassment was attributable to the presence of pornographic materials and served to reduce their social status:
I was working as a telephone repairwoman for Southern Bell in Florida. Porn was everywhere. They use it to intimidate you, to keep women out of their territory. They had pin-ups in the workrooms. Male workers would draw pornographic pictures of women workers in the cross-boxes and write comments about what we would do in bed. One day I went to the supply room to get some tools. The inside of the room was covered with pornography. The guy who ran it shoved a photograph at me of a woman's rear end with her anus exposed and asked, 'Isn't this you?' I was humiliated and furious.[903]
When I got on the job, three of the trades had set up a nice little shack and had lunch there. And it was a real shock when I walked in because three of the four walls in the room were completely decorated with pictures out of various magazines, Hustler, Playboy, Penthouse, Oui, all of those. Some of them I would have considered regular pinups but some of them were very, very explicit, showing women with their legs spread wide and men and women performing sex acts and women in bondage. It was very uncomfortable for me to go down there and have dinner and lunch with about twenty men and here is me facing all these pictures and hearing all these men talking about all the wonderful things they did on the weekend with all of these women. I put up with it for about a week and it finally got to the point where I could no longer tolerate sitting there and realizing that all of these men were there, I felt totally naked in front of these men.[904]
A working woman called the Pornography Resource Center in May 1984 to report that her employer had called her into his office, pushed her down on the floor, ripped her dress, taken a gun out of his pocket, and stuffed it into her vagina. A pornographic picture on the lunchroom wall showed a woman sucking a gun."[905]
Many of the complaints received by Amici are from women workers in nontraditional jobs. The following is typical:
"I've been a brakewoman for a railroad for almost nine years.... I've seen pornographic pictures of a woman with spread thighs being raped by a huge dismembered penis with my name below."[906]
The Commission heard reports from individuals who encounter financial consequences attributable to experiences with pornography. Many of these witnesses stated they had suffered financial difficulty because of the need to seek medical and mental assistance because of injuries they attributed to pornographic materials:
The tangible costs are real and run over five hundred dollars per month for weekly therapy, monthly consultations and outside testing. The hospitalization was nearly thirty thousand dollars. Most major insurance policies have a lifetime maximum benefit of ten to twenty thousand dollars on this type of problem; after that if the victim needs help guess who pays. This has a real dollar cost of over seventy thousand dollars so far with many months and perhaps years to go.
My oldest daughter has been in therapy for nearly four years receiving help including a two month hospitalization period for evaluation.[907]
Our four year old daughter was sexually molested at a preschool that she attended in Hermosa Beach, California. She attended the school, . . . for approximately ten months in 1984. She was two years old ....
She has spoken on many occasions where she was taken to certain residence and other locations where she was molested by strangers and threatened with guns and knives and also photographed. All of this was being kept secret through the continuous threats to our daughter that we would leave her, or, worse, that she would die if we were told the secret.
We spent the past year trying to help our daughter through the fears and anxiety over this experience. She is, and has been for about a year, undergoing psychotherapy on a weekly basis. I have also been receiving psychotherapy....[908]
The Commission received testimony from witnesses who reported that pornographic materials were used to place them in a bad light. The witnesses stated that they had been depicted in pornography without knowledge or consent. Although avenues of recourse may have been available, some were advised to avoid further adverse publicity. For example, one woman testified:
The buyer had their choice of seven famous women pictured in the nude; all of our full names were listed and, of course, choice of color of T-shirt. I was appalled and angry and had meetings with a lawyer regarding what action I should take. All my then advisers, this attorney, my personal manager (regarding career) and my business manager (regarding accounting and finances) advised strongly against taking any action whatsoever. They all concurred that it would be extremely costly and would draw attention to and sell more of these shirts.[909]
Other witnesses stated that pornographic materials were used to hinder their standing within the community. This apparently was particularly true for individuals who had at one time been depicted in pornography. For example, Linda Marchiano testified:
And the fact that this film is still being shown and that my three children will one day walk down the street and see their mother being abused, it makes me angry, makes me sad. Virtually every time someone watches that film, they are watching me being raped.[910]
The Commission received statements identifying pornography as a tool to promote racial bias and hatred. Witnesses identified specific pornographic materials which portray persons of color in a derogatory manner. These individuals attributed continued stereotyping and feelings of racial inferiority to the pornographic materials:
They made other comments, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." "A squaw out alone deserves to be raped." Words that still terrorize me today.
It may surprise you to hear stories that connect pornography and white men raping women of color. It doesn't surprise me. I think pornography, racism, and rape are perfect partners. They all rely on hate. They all reduce a living person to an object. A society that sells books, movies, and video games like "Custer's Last Stand" on its street corners gives white men permission to do what they did to me. Like they said, I'm scum. It is a game to track me down, rape, and torture me.[911]
The Commission heard reports of family problems attributed to pornography that were more subtle than some of the massive family ruptures described earlier in this Chapter. Some individuals stated that when a family member used pornography or was subjected to the use of pornography, other members of the family felt the effects. For example, a woman who had been forced to view and participate in the production of pornography in childhood by family members testified:
... I am the only member of my family who is speaking out. I am the only member of my family saying "no" to the abuse. It is very, very common that our families lose themselves from us. I have no support with the exception of one younger brother. My family is very angry at me for saying "no" to the abuse. They are very angry about the fact I am identifying it.
My sisters, they are all repeating the cycles of abuse. They are abusing their children and their children are being incested. This is the long-term cycles, the repeating and maintaining of violent life cycles.[912]
Witnesses who testified before the Commission and individuals who submitted statements reported several connections between pornography and prostitution. One such connection was the use of pornography as instructional manuals for prostitutes. For example, a former prostitute testified:
One of the very first commonalities we discovered as a group, we were all introduced to prostitution through pornography; there were no exceptions in our group, and we were all under eighteen. Pornography was our textbook, we learned the tricks of the trade by men exposing us to pornography and us trying to mimic what we saw. I could not stress enough what a huge influence we feel this was.[913]
Another connection was the use of pornographic films by pimps to blackmail the participants:
I was the main woman of a pimp who filmed sexual acts almost every night in our home. The dope man, who supplied us with cocaine for free in exchange for these arranged orgies, was a really freaky man who would do anything. They arranged to have women, who I assumed were forced to be there, have sex with dogs and filmed those acts. There were stacks of films all over the house, which my pimp used to blackmail people with.[914]
Yet another connection was the use of magazines to stimulate the clientele:
When I worked at massage studios, the owners had subscriptions to Playboy, Penthouse, Penthouse Forum and the like. These magazines were arranged in the waiting area of most of the massage places which I worked in. If a girl was not inside with a trick, she was expected to sit out front with the men who were waiting or who were undecided and to look at the magazines with them in order to get them titillated. They used the soft porn to help them work up the courage to try the acts described in the magazine with the prostitutes at the massage studio.[915]
Women who are or who have been prostitutes identified pornography as a significant factor in prostitution. These individuals reported that pornography was not only used and made of them while engaged in acts of prostitution, but they stated that pornography is used to perpetuate the concept that women are accustomed to being placed in the role of a prostitute.
I am speaking for a group of women, we all live in Minneapolis and we all are former prostitutes. All of us feel very strongly about the relationship between pornography and prostitution. Many of us wanted to testify at this hearing but are unable because of the consequences of being identified as a former whore. This is absolutely incredible to me that prostitution is seen as a victimless activity and that many women are rightly terrified of breaking their silence, fearing harassment to themselves and families and loss of their jobs.
We have started to meet together to make sense of the abuse we have experienced in prostitution and how pornography endorses and legitimizes that abuse.[916]
Several women reported incidents of sexual harassment in the workplace involving the display and use of pornography. For example, one woman said:
I put up with it for about a week and it finally got to the point where I could not longer tolerate sitting there and realizing that all of these men were there, I felt totally naked in front of these men. The only thing they talked about during lunch period was women, their old ladies, their girl friends, and all their conquests of the weekend.
I got to the point where I couldn't put up with it any more. And being one of the only two women on the job and being rather new at it and not knowing that I had any alternatives, I got pissed off one day and ripped all the pictures off the wall. Well, it turned out to be a real unpopular move to do. I came back in at lunch time and half the pictures were back up again, they pulled them out of boxes and stuck them on the wall and proceeded to call me names. And just basically call me names or otherwise ignore me.[917]
Another woman wrote:
I was working as a telephone repairwoman for Southern Bell in Florida. Porn was everywhere. They use it to intimidate you, to keep women out of their territory. They had pin-ups in the workrooms. Male workers would draw pornographic pictures of women workers in the cross-boxes and write comments about what we would do in bed. One day I went to the supply room to get some tools. The inside of the room was covered with pornography. The guy who ran it shoved a photograph at me of a woman's rear end with her anus exposed and asked, "isn't this you?" I was humiliated and furious.[918]
A woman testified before another body:
When I got on the job, three of the trades had set up a nice little shack and had lunch there. And it was a real shock when I walked in because three of the four walls in the room were completely decorated with pictures out of various magazines, Hustler, Playboy, Penthouse, Oui, all of those. Some of them I would have considered regular pinups but some of them were very, very explicit, showing women with their legs spread wide and men and women performing sex acts and women in bondage. It was very uncomfortable for me to go down there and have dinner and lunch with about twenty men and here is me facing all these pictures and hearing all these men talking about all the wonderful things they did on the weekend with all of these women. I put up with it for about a week and it finally got to the point where I could no longer tolerate sitting there and realizing that all of these men were there, I felt totally naked in front of these men.[919]
Another woman wrote:
A working woman called the Pornography Resource Center in May 1984 to report that her employer had called her into his office, pushed her down on the floor, ripped her dress, taken a gun out of his pocket, and stuffed it into her vagina. A pornographic picture on the lunchroom wall showed a woman sucking a gun."
"Testimony to Women Against Pornography, Feb. 1985. Many of the complaints received by Amici are from women workers in nontraditional jobs. The following is typical:
"I've been a brakewoman for the railroad for almost nine years.... I've seen pornographic pictures of a woman with spread thighs being raped by a huge dismembered penis with my name below."[920]
Similar to the harassment reported above, women identified pornography as a tool to continue sexual harassment. Women stated that pornography continued to perpetuate the harassment and alienation.
After the LEAP Offices and State had written letters to send out to these various employers, my boss, the man who owned the company, called me up one day and said, "Look, I heard you are having a little trouble down there, why don't you just kind of calm down a little bit. Don't make such a mess. We don't need any trouble down there, just calm down, just ignore it:' I said, "Hey, I can't ignore it, I don't have to, I can't, it is already done." A couple of days later they got the letter and they were told that this did not comply with the action guidelines.[923]
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