Child Pornography and Sexual Grooming
Legal and Societal Responses

An examination of the responses of society and law to child pornography and sexual grooming.

Suzanne Ost (Author)

9780521885829, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 May 2009

288 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.7 cm, 0.58 kg

'This book is a timely, rational antidote to the sex panic urging people to remove the naked body of a child from art galleries, photo albums, and the beach.' Dany Lacombe, Simon Fraser University

Child pornography and sexual grooming provide case study exemplars of problems that society and law have sought to tackle to avoid both actual and potential harm to children. Yet despite the considerable legal, political and societal concern that these critical phenomena attract, they have not, thus far, been subjected to detailed socio-legal and theoretical scrutiny. How do society and law construct the harms of child pornography and grooming? What impact do constructions of the child have upon legal and societal responses to these phenomena? What has been the impetus behind the expanding criminalisation of behaviour in these areas? Suzanne Ost addresses these and other important questions, exploring the critical tensions within legal and social discourses which must be tackled to discourage moral panic reactions towards child pornography and grooming, and advocating a new, more rational approach towards combating these forms of exploitation.

Introduction: Constructions, themes and critical tensions
1. The modern day phenomena of child pornography and sexual grooming
2. Criminalizing child pornography and behaviour related to sexual grooming
3. Matters of harm and exploitation
4. Moral panics and the impact of the construction of childhood innocence
5. The law elsewhere and questions of individual rights
6. Conclusions and implications
Appendix A. Details of dates of interviews with police officers.

Subject Areas: Criminal law & procedure [LNF], Criminology: legal aspects [LAR], Law & society [LAQ]