Some myths
about Denmark
An extract from
‘Whatever happened to sex?’
by Mary Whitehouse
We reproduce chapter 8 below because we believe it is
relevant to the current debate about pornography and strengthening the criminal
law. ‘Whatever Happened To Sex?’ was
published in 1977 and the conclusions she reached about the government are as
true today as they were then. The only
difference now is that pornography is now finding its way on to mainstream
television instead of being confined to seedy back streets. The book as a whole chronicles a very
disturbing story of inaction and compromise.
T |
here can be no doubt that the illusion of success which has created an
aura around the 'Danish Experiment' has had a profound effect upon the thinking
and attitudes, not only of commentators and individuals, but on governments
across the free world. I myself found - to my amazement and dismay - during a
visit to the Home Office in 1975, that all considerations of pornography and
its possible effects upon society had stopped short in 1969 following the
publication of Dr Berl Kutchinsky's trivial, now outdated, research into the
effect of the repeal of many of the obscenity laws in Denmark.
The apathy of the Home
Office, and its willingness to abrogate any further responsibility in this
field, was frightening. How does it
come about, I asked myself, that private people make it their business to keep
in touch with events and developments in this most crucial area, yet the Home
Office apparently just does not want to know?
Does its blindness result from pressure from the Home Secretary -
himself under pressure from the anti-censorship lobby - or is it a disturbing
example of the dead hand of bureaucracy stifling open discussion and the
continuing exchange of evidence and data? I certainly discovered that our
'progressive' Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, has a very non-progressive mind in
the true sense of the word. At the
Labour Party Press Conference before the 1974 election, I asked publicly what
the Labour Party would do, if returned to office, about indecent display and
the sale of pornography. Mr Jenkins's
reply was totally evasive and, when I challenged him personally afterwards, he
simply smiled rather smugly and said, 'Some of us do not consider the matter
very important, Mrs Whitehouse'. Well,
history may yet show that his complacency was ill advised and his sense of
judgement at fault.
Kutchinsky has, over the years, become the 'pet' of the anti-censorship
lobby. A key witness in the American Presidential Study (1970) ubiquitous as a
defence witness in obscenity trials in Britain and elsewhere, this high priest
of 'no censorship' orthodoxy is quoted and misquoted endlessly by the media -
the final defence against any who dare raise their voice in concern about the
danger of pornography to the quality of our life.
The myths created by the anti-censorship lobby have now become
established dogma:
Myth 1: 'People get bored with pornography when it is readily available.
Only the tourists but porn in Denmark'.
Here again, Kutchinsky is the key figure. His paper 'The Effect of
Pornography on Sex Crimes in Denmark' (1970) was originally published for
the American Presidential Commission on Obscenity.
The general interpretation of this study - that people become less
interested in pornography as a result of viewing it, and less interested also
in engaging in sexually deviant behaviour - has become accepted fact and has
profoundly influenced public and official positions throughout the Western
world. It is important, therefore, that
one, as it were, researches the research.
It is true that the above conclusions are perfectly valid in terms of
this particular piece of research - but what are its peculiarities? It was, according to Kutchinsky, 'a pilot experiment',
an 'exploratory study'. The subjects of
the research were 'more experienced with pornography than the average
population of Copenhagen' and did, in fact, 'volunteer' for the experiment. The
material was presented to the whole group together - all these things are of
significance and raise the question of precisely how 'typical' was this
particular cross-section. Kutchinsky himself admits that his 'findings' cannot
be considered confirmed by this study and that 'they are unsuitable as a
serious debate on the political level'. It is deplorable, indeed culpable, that
governments, people in positions of authority and responsible private persons
have been enthusiastically prepared to depend upon such superficial research,
especially as it was carried out only a year after the final repeal of the
obscenity laws in Denmark - long before any trends could validly be assessed.
Kutchinsky's research was carried out in Copenhagen only, not in the whole of
Denmark, and there are interesting sociological factors in this situation which
are of some relevance. Not only is there a steadily declining population in
Copenhagen, due to city rebuilding but the population remaining behind tends to
be much older than the average of the whole country as the younger people move
out into the suburbs. Therefore the very group most likely to commit sexual
offences is being continually reduced within the area covered by Kutchinsky's
research - a small but significant pointer to the dangers of jumping to
conclusions on inadequate data! So do big doors hang on little hinges - not
because of the strength of the hinges themselves but because the intellectually
committed believe what they want to believe, see what they want to see, and do
their best to ensure that the rest of us see it their way too.
No one questioned the validity and seriousness of Kutchinsky's research,
and indeed it was immediately and delightedly grasped as received truth by the
anti-censorship lobby. However, in 1974
and 1975 Dr John Court of Flinders University, Adelaide, studied it objectively
and in depth. He discovered for
instance, that Kutchinsky had based his conclusions regarding the purchasers of
pornography on his sampling of thirty of the sixty sex shops in Copenhagen. He stood in each one for half an hour,
'eyeballing' the customers as they came in, but not speaking to them. He concluded, on the basis of this, says Dr
Court, 'that foreigners accounted for most of the purchases'. It was on this
flimsy data that the myth of 'only tourists' has been built. It is true that,
for a short time immediately after the repeal of the laws in 1969, there was a
dramatic decline in production of pornographic material in Denmark. But in the years of 1967/68, when the
publishers could still make a huge profit, there was an overproduction of
material and with the lowering of retail prices following the change in the
law, publishers in 1969 produced little or nothing. This has been interpreted as a loss of interest by consumers but
was, in fact, no more than adjustment to the temporary satiation of the
market. Once that slack had been taken
up, production started again - though not, it is true, so much in written
material, which declined in popularity when pictorial magazines were freely
available. And it has been in this
market that the sales have rocketed.
Court has demonstrated that the said sex shops are established in the
most expensive parts of the city of Copenhagen and that it would be impossible
to support such high rentals on a three-month tourist system. Sex shops have
increased, not decreased, in number in Copenhagen itself - and, of course, it
is true that pornography is purveyed as a tourist attraction. But it is equally
to be found on bookstalls in the suburbs, while sex shops and live shows are
developing in the working class dormitory suburbs and proliferating in towns
far beyond Copenhagen. The clientele for these is undoubtedly local and much
printed material is in a Scandinavian language. Add to all this the fact that
the mail order business in pornography is recognised to be considerable and
Kutchinsky's conclusions begin to look very insubstantial indeed, especially as
pornography and its sidekicks have become part of the very structure of the
economy in Denmark and thus, as David Holbrook has pointed out, 'utterly beyond
the access of moral debate'.
The idea that people will become bored with pornography when it is
freely available was the view of the Danish Minister of Justice who was
responsible for the altered censorship laws. 'Allow obscene literature and
people will soon tire of it, the illicit attraction having been removed', he
persuaded the Danish Parliament and people. But 'liberalisation' of the law had
precisely the opposite effect. Interest shifted from normal erotica into
homosexual and bondage material, into sado-masochism and bestiality. Then came
the live shows, the abuse of young children as pornographic models, the
exploitation of racial prejudice and the public display of performances of
racial prejudice and the public display of performances of bestiality. David
Holbrook in one of his books cites a report stating that 'a young Danish woman
has made a name for herself and a great deal of money appearing with stallions
and dogs…Lately the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals petitioned
and Courts to prohibit the use of four-footed animals in live and filmed sex
scenes with humans'. It is a telling commentary on just how sick the West is
that we appear more concerned to protect animals than children - I know of no
action in Denmark to petition its equivalent of the NSPCC in defence of the
child! The same process is apparent in all those countries which adopt a
so-called 'liberal' attitude to pornography.
Already rape as entertainment attracts huge box-office success around
the world, as witness A Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs. Manson (Sharon
Tate murders) was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in 1972 - 'Sit in the sun
and enjoy your bit of sadism', one reported said cynically. Perverted sexual
fantasies, murder for sexual pleasure, sacrificial practices in the context of
the occult and orgies stimulated by the use of hard drugs, these are all
surfacing in the backstreet world of hard-core porn and their way to the
traditional cinema is being paved with films like Straw Dogs, The Exorcist and
Last Tango in Paris and with a 'London X' certificate the incredible
brutal Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Myth 2: It is possible to protect children, so adults should be free to
hear, read and see what they like.
It isn't. But the myth itself pays lip service to what is established
international concern to defend the child against adverse and corrupting
influences. The X certificate for films
in Britain theoretically protects young people under eighteen. By making it illegal to sell pornography to
anyone under the age of sixteen in Denmark, those in authority theoretically
recognise the rights of the child. But in practice, of course, it does not
work. It has proved impossible to keep
even fourteen and fifteen year olds out of cinemas where X films are being
shown and near pornographic material is so widely on display on hoardings and
bookstalls that, in a society which is prepared to give pornography the seal of
adult approval, the child is immensely vulnerable. There is the further, very important, question of what happens to
pornography after it has initially been bought. Research shows that there may be anything from ten to a hundred
users of any pornographic publication what the pornographers term the 'ripple
effect'. Another survey showed that
only 5% of men who had seen pornographic pictures had actually bought the most
recent they had seen. This particular
survey found that amongst females, girls between fifteen and twenty see most
pornography while young men between fifteen and twenty nine get the heaviest
exposure to it and that more boys than men and more girls than woman are
exposed to pornography.
Every normal person, on the both sides of the argument, accepts in
theory the need to protect children and of course it is true that society
cannot be organised solely around the needs of children. Nevertheless, we are faced with the fact
that when and if society adjusts its standards and accepts the free
distribution and display of pornography then inevitably it will fall into the
hands of children. Common sense quite
apart from evidence tells us that it will have a deleterious effect upon
them. So we come to the crux of the
matter, does the 'right' of the adult to have pornography freely available to
him outstrip the 'right' of the child to be protected from it and to grow up in
culturally healthy non-exploitive surroundings? It is abundantly clear that one 'right' will have to be
sacrificed to the other.
The UNICEF Declaration of the Rights of the Child states unequivocally,
'The child shall enjoy special protection and shall be given opportunities and
facilities' by law and by other means, to enable him to develop physically,
mentally, morally, spiritually and socially in a healthy and normal manner and
in conditions of freedom and dignity. In the enactment of laws for this purpose
the best interests of the child shall be paramount'. No place for pornography
there.
Myth 3: (And most important of all). 'When Denmark repealed its
censorship laws the sex crimes dropped.
True or false? Both. That which is most obvious is sometimes the most
illusive, especially if half-truths and false interpretations are constantly
reiterated!
Professor H.J. Eysenck, in his book, Psychology is about People,
has this to say about the 'Danish experiment': "Anyone interested in
these matters ought to read both sides; they provide a wonderful example of
one-sided reporting, biased selection of evidence and failure to base
conclusions on the evidence".
Certainly, statistically speaking there has been a marked decrease in
the number of less violent sex crimes. When eleven categories of sex-crime have
been removed from the Statute Book then of course sex crimes will diminish very
significantly! The simple fact that
without law there cannot be crime seems to have escaped the attention of our
intellectual progressives! There has
also been a considerable 'liberalisation' of the law as regards incest, the
molestation of children and certain classifications of rape. The complacency of
politicians and opinion formers as they dabble in half truths and double talk
their gloating over the decrease in sex crimes in Denmark drive one to wonder
whether if murder and burglary were no longer crimes because of the
liberalisation of the law the advocates of permissiveness would claim with
satisfaction that the resultant collapse of criminal statistics in these
categories was an indication of maturity!
When one looks at the figures for serious sex crimes, rape and attempted
rape, which remain on the Statute Book in Denmark, the figures tell a very
different story. The Observer reported (26 January 1971) that 'sexual offences
reported to the police are now predominantly serious and violent. Rape and
assault and battery connected with sadism are more common and crimes of this
nature have risen by 5% since 1969' (the year in which pornography was finally
legalised). A spokesman for the police said that 'the rise in sex crimes is
causing grave concern over the future developments'. That this concern must be
increased is evidenced by the fact that 'offences against children since 1970
indicate that here too, a rise in frequency occurred beyond what had been known
for a long time' (Dr John Court, Law, Light and Liberty, 1975). And, indeed,
the Copenhagen police figures for recorded charges of rape and attempted rape
are higher now than at any time before the 'liberalisation' of the law.
There is another matter which has to be taken into account when
considering the Danish sex crime figures namely reporting rates. These are
obviously influenced by the sexual and moral mores of a particular society as a
senior Danish police officer said to me: "This country is now so
permissive that behaviour which would previously have been considered criminal
is no longer so considered and this is showing in our sex crime figures".
Talking about the figures for rape he said "Pre-marital sex is now so
normal even in our thirteen and fourteen year olds that it would be a brave
girl indeed who would confess that she had to be raped before she could claim
to have had intercourse". Even so the figures for criminal rape in Denmark
have greatly increased over what they were before the repeal of the sex laws.
How one is able to judge what percentage of criminal cases remain
unreported is a valid question. Such information can only be obtained by social
survey methods and research carried out in this field in Denmark by Kutchinsky
himself shows a decrease in reporting readiness ranging from 10% to 40% over
the last ten years. The actual percentage could well have been considerably
higher since people surely would find it difficult to remember what they would
have done ten years ago when the moral climate was so different to the
completely new 'norm' of sexual behaviour which has been established. There is
a further 'sieve' which lowers the official figures and it is one which is well
enough known even in this country. For a report to be recorded it requires a
policeman to take the report seriously and police attitudes can be as affected
by changing social attitudes as everyone else's. This is likely to be true even
in the case of rape, which is universally considered undesirable and a proper
basis for legal action though changes in the level of reporting may well less
than in minor sex crime. However, 'it must be noted that the absolute level of
reporting is generally believed (in Denmark) to be low with perhaps one in four
or five cases coming to the attention of the police'. Five years after the
completion of legislative changes, Court claims that there are indications of not
lesser but greater social problems. Those which suggest a reduction of problems
are either highly questionable on scientific grounds or to be found in the area
of minor offences. This must be
interpreted as a Pyrrhic victory if the more serious problems advance
unchecked.
One might accept the Kutchinsky theory that freely available pornography
reduces sex crime more readily if it could be cross-validated in other
countries where a similar trend has been occurring in recent years. The United
States does appear to have a slight decline in reported sex offences with a 17%
decline in the period 1960-69 but the Justice Department indicates that this is
a spurious misleading statistic. It is due to changes in law enforcement policy
primarily involving homosexual acts between consenting adults (Victor B Cline,
'Another View: Pornography Effects, the State of Art). The upward trends for
Australia and in particular South Australia are unusually steep by world
standards and this is clearly related chronologically to the 'liberalising' of
the law on books and films in 1970.
By contrast, rather steady rates over a decade have been reported for
Austria, Italy, France and Singapore, where pornography has not been legalised
and is not widely available. As far as Britain itself is concerned there are
disturbing similarities to the Danish situation. Here the problem has been not
the repeal by Parliament Stature of its obscenity law, but the nature of the
law itself. Roy Jenkins's legislation the Obscene Publications Acts of 1959 and
1964, set out - it really did! - to punish anyone who publishes an obscene
article whether for gain or not. A simple enough proposing one would have
thought until one looks at the wording of the Act. It declares an article to be
obscene 'if its effect or the effect of any one of its parts which if taken as
a whole is such as to deprave or corrupt persons who are likely having regard
to all the relevant circumstances to read, see or hear the matter contained or
embodied in it'.
The use, in a legal context of the phrase 'tend to corrupt and deprave'
has been the salvation - if that is the right word - of many a pornographer and
the undoing of an equal number of prosecuting counsellors. The ineffectiveness of the Act is reflected
in the mushrooming pornography industry and significantly in the serious sex
crime figures. In London where the crime figures are assessed separately from
the rest of the country total sex offences are not recorded as such but violent
offences and rape are recorded separately. The sharp increase in the number of
indictable offences in the mid sixties coincided with the passing of the
Obscene Publications Act and it is by no means without significance - though
completely ignored in the anticensorship propaganda - that while, for crime in
general, the increase between 1969 and 1972 was only 14% for violent crime it
was 28% and for rape 33%.
Allowing that year-by-year analyses of crimes can often be misleading
the Scotland Yard figures for London over a longer period of time show that
there is an unmistakable trend in relation to rape. The Metropolitan Police
Commissioner's Annual Reports show that between 1964 and 1975 the figures for
reported rape rose from 57 to 167 and the figures for rape offences proven from
44 10 106 over the same period. Increases far outstripping population growth
appear to have been occurring since the early sixties and these rises need to
be looked at in the prospective of other types of crime.
In Britain's increasingly permissive society the laws governing the age
of consent for both homosexuals and heterosexuals are regularly violated.
(There is evidence, also, that the Director of public Prosecutions is failing
to take action even in admitted cases of incest).
Often it is plausibly suggested by those unfamiliar with the evidence
that rises in sexual crimes are just as part of a general trend in increased
crime in society and it is true that, in many places, marked rises in some
other kinds of crimes are also occurring but the rises apart from violent crime
are small compared with the figures cited above. As a matter of fact, crime
fell by 3.8% in England and Wales in the period January to September 1973. This
was the biggest decline for some years, yet in the same period offences of
violence rose by 19.3% and sexual offences rose by 11.5%. Clearly, these
problems are more than just another symptom of a sick society: the relatively
greater increase suggests that something additional is at work.
More recent figures for rape are difficult to gauge as the feminist
movements are having some effect. The establishment of rape crises centres in
some countries can be having two possible effects: on the one hand, there is
more openness and therefore willingness in the public as a whole to report
rape; on the other, women attending such centres are often counselled not to
report to the police, so official statistics become artificially depressed.
In America, too, the official sex crime statistics are significant. As in the European countries, if there is a
link between pornography and sex crime, it is likely to show in the years after
1960 when American society was first flooded with porn. And this is precisely
what is indicated. Between 1962 and 1972, there was an increase of 124% in
'forcible rape', with the annual rate of increase sharply rising in the last
two years. It is perfectly true, of course, that there was a massive increase
in crimes of all kinds in America during these years, but while the increase in
violent crime generally was greatest in the 1960s, showing a drop of 5% in the
early 1970s the reverse was the case as far as rape is concerned.
Mr Raymond White, head of the San Francisco Police Department, Sex
Crimes Detail, was asked in 1972 whether 'there is any relationship for the
current upswing in rape to the filthy pictures being shown in porn shops'. He
pointed to his 'pin map' on his office wall and showed that attacks on women
cluster abundantly in the areas around the dirty cinemas and he said: 'Rape
attacks are becoming more brutal, bizarre and bestial in character, mirroring
the way-out animalism shown in the nearby theatres. In at least four cases the
methods of attack almost exactly followed the situation depicted in current
shows. In another case a woman raped in a hotel across the street from one of
the theatres was bound by a rope and attacked in precisely the manner shown in
the film playing at the theatre. In still another instance a woman was taken to
an apartment, forced to view a pornographic film then raped by each of the
three men'.
It is in America that the link between pornography and the Mafia is
already powerfully established. It is a connection acknowledged by Interpol and
on which the anxious eyes of police in Britain and other Western countries are
fixed.
In the New York Times (10 December 1975) Nicholas Gage reported
that organised crime had heavily infiltrated the pornographic film business and
is reaping huge profits. An investigation carried out by his paper has found that
Mafia money and Mafia members were involved in many aspects of the business
including the financing and distribution of films and the ownership of some
theatres. This, he said, 'had provided a tremendous new source of revenue for
organised crime'. Moreover, it was revealed the great success of these
pornographic films Deep Throat had at that time already made $25 million
had given several porno moviemakers with Mafia connections the money to go into
production and distribution of legitimate films.
'If the trend continues, these people are going to become a major force
in the movie industry within a few years', said Captain Lawrence Hepburn of the
New York Police Department's organised crime division. 'The movie business is
going to be like the garment business, riddled with Mafia influence'. But it
appeared that despite the enthusiasm of some pornographic film makers for the
Mafia members of the porno industry who had been involved with organised crime
had found themselves threatened or even murdered.
There is in America and increasingly so in Britain an astounding public
apathy or scepticism which leads many citizens to refrain from reporting to the
authorities when they have been the victim of criminal acts. A recent study
covering 25,000 households and 10,000 businesses in metropolitan areas of
American cities asked people whether they had been raped, robbed, burgled or
assaulted during the year and whether they had reported to the police and 62%
said they had not done so for one reason or another. This was particularly
marked in the case of rape where 'the least publicity can be ruinous to the
reputation of the woman concerned". One of the reasons given for not
reporting was that "the police would not bother" and in this regard
it is worth looking at the situation in Tokyo, the most populous city in the
world, where one would expect an eruption of crimes like murder, violent crime
and rape which are characteristic of high density population areas as in, say,
American cities like New York. But the reverse is the case. In 1973 New York
had 1,680 known murders - nearly twice as many as Tokyo - and 3735 reported
rapes (the police state that the total figure is certainly much higher) while
Tokyo, with its higher population of over nine million had 361. There are many
reasons for this disparity - one being the popularity and prestige of Tokyo's
large police force. But for the particular concern of this book it is worth
looking more closely at the reasons for the low incidence of rape and attempted
rape in Tokyo. It has not always been so. In Japan as a whole, and in Tokyo,
the figures in 1965 were 11,358 and 1,460, but by 1975 they had been reduced to
6,545 and i000. How? The Japanese police authorities point to their very strict
enforcement of the laws against pornography, which is quickly collected and
burned, while any public display of indecency on posters and such like is
immediately painted out. They have no doubt that their policy has been very
effective in the fight against serious sex crimes.
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