THE SEXUAL FREEDOM COALITION

Stephen Ruddell
Ministry of Justice
Selbourne House
54 Victoria Street
London SW1E 6QW
Your ref 188308

5th March 2008

Dear Stephen Ruddell,

I very much appreciate your detailed reply to my letter to the Attorney General. As you may know, things have moved on since then, with new amendments tightening up clauses 113-116 in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill.

I want to respond to your claim, “We do not feel the proposals should impact disproportionately on those with disabilities, as there is no reason to believe they are accessing such illegal material more than other groups”.

I wonder what you base this on? My experience with the sexual habits of disabled people spans 29 years in Outsiders. I single handedly answer the Sex and Disability Helpline, voluntarily. There are no other organisations like ours, we are the only experts, and have not been consulted. So how do you know whether disabled people are accessing extreme porn on the net more than others? I don't think there is a place to tick online, to say whether you are disabled or not.

It is not uncommon for disabled people to develop fetish fantasies as a result of being hospitalised at an early age, experiencing pain, needle injections, surgical blades, enemas, isolation from their parents, surrounded by machinery and staff in uniforms. Many disabled are sexually and otherwise abused within the family or residential home, which can have devastating events on their personal lives. Sometimes their disability brings shame to their families and they develop very low self esteem, feeling unworthy of conventional sexual relationships. From this, it is easy to see why some disabled people enjoy extreme pornography.

In Outsiders, we are aware of some of such people, but increasingly disabled people are afraid to discuss their sexual tastes, for fear of stigmatisation and criminalisation.

As you may or may not know, communication is essential for sexual health, and such fear is thus very damaging.

We do not just deal with people with physical disabilities but also those with hidden disabilities such as social phobia, epilepsy, Aspergers Syndrome, shyness and the symptoms that result from sexual abuse. These people add up to perhaps 15% of the population.

Disabled members of Outsiders are angry that disabled people have not been considered nor consulted regarding this Bill.

Another thing that concerns us is that some images that will be made illegal to possess sit in art galleries, universities and council-run establishments which would cost the tax payer thousands of pounds in fines and legal fees. One such artist is J.A.M. Montoya, whose beautiful photographs are published in elegantly bound volumes such as Sanctorum, and have been shown in galleries across Spain and a lesser extent the UK. There could be a repeat of what happened with Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs – a man thought by many art historians to be the most important photographer of the second half of the 20th Century. On Monday 9th March 1998 police interviewed the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Central England (UCE) under caution because a Robert Mapplethorpe book was in the university library. A chemist had sent photographs (taken by a student doing a project on the book) to the West Midlands porn squad. The V-C was under threat of imprisonment unless portions of the book were destroyed. The university involved Ministers the Rt. Hon David Blunkett and the Rt. Hon Chris Smith. The case got dropped but it shows how porn is impossible to police and makes things more difficult for the police, for us, for academics' freedom, to use, and write about, controversial images.

Members of the House of Lords have argued that taste cannot be decided by a jury. I lived through the Obscene Publications Act trials of the 70's and 80's when expert witnesses were able to steer the jury into thinking clearly so that they could see that the material being considered did not “deprave or corrupt” the viewer, and all prosecutions failed. In desperation, the use of expert witnesses was banned, so that pornographers could be sent to prison. What a waste of time and money that all was!

It has been proven that images do no harm to the viewer. I know that some violent criminals blame their acts on porn, but they are clutching at straws. You need to consider how many people look at porn and the percentage of these who commit crimes of violence, compared with those who do not look at porn, which REA cannot possibly have done.

Outsiders members suggest that the police spend their valuable time stopping real crimes, rather than intruding into the private lives of British citizens.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Tuppy Owens