Last Thursday, a federal judge sentenced former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar to 60 years in prison. He has been accused of sexually assaulting more than 140 girls and women. But his 60-year prison sentence is not for assault. It is for child pornography.
Over 37,000 child porn images and videos were found in his possession. And he pleaded guilty in July to possession of a vast collection of images depicting children as young as infants. Also included was actual video footage of the abuse. Prosecutors contended that Nassar’s “prolific molestation of children” was linked to his addiction to child porn.
He will be sentenced next month for those charges, to which he has pleaded guilty – 10 counts of criminal sexual conduct. It is quite unlikely that Nassar will ever be released from prison.
I am heartbroken for these girls and young women who were sexually molested under the guise of medical treatment. I am also amazed by their courage, especially that of Rachael Denhollander – the first to come forward. I can’t imagine what she must have gone through in coming to that initial decision. She is exhibiting a protective inner strength and leadership, inspiring others to follow suit. With no signs of backing down, she is determined to hold accountable the three government agencies that allegedly protected Nassar for years: Michigan State University, USA Gymnastics, and the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Several intriguing facets exist to this story, but I am most affected by the fact that Nassar was sentenced to 60 years for child pornography – for viewing and possessing images that, according to the prosecutors, played a vital role in establishing the behavior for which he has yet to be sentenced – actual physical abuse.
Now, I realize that child pornography is illegal, and adult porn is not. Child porn is illegal presumably because it is criminal behavior for an adult to take advantage of a child in a sexual way.
Also illegal is prostitution in the vast majority of U.S. states. According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of prostitution is “the act or practice of engaging in promiscuous sexual relations especially for money.” Yet, women and men are being paid to commit sexual acts in front of cameras in this country, while vast numbers of Americans legally purchase and observe the footage. Does that make any sense?
What does make sense is the prosecution’s arguments concerning Nassar’s relationship with child porn. His brain was obviously pickled in the vast array of images he viewed and owned, and his repulsive, criminal behavior was the result, along with countless shattered lives in its wake. His evil desires were heartily fed, and he spent decades acting on them, to the detriment of allegedly dozens of girls.
If that principle applies to child porn, it most certainly applies to the adult version as well. The advanced stage of pornography addiction is the physical follow-through. According to Focus on the Family, many “make a dangerous jump and start acting out sexually. They move from the paper and plastic images to porn in the real world.”
And we wonder why we have a sex-saturated culture. We wonder why women are treated as sexual objects to be groped and aggressively solicited. Some reports indicate that as much as 80% of adult pornography depicts violence against women. But let’s put that aside for the moment. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a 2011 study “proposed that the more men are exposed to objectifying depictions, the more they will think of women as entities that exist for men's sexual gratification (specific sexual scripting), and that this dehumanized perspective on women may then be used to inform attitudes regarding sexual violence against women (abstract sexual scripting).”
I have an idea that because the American people are so drenched in the filth of porn, much of the concern about objectification and sexual mistreatment of women and juveniles is actually pretentious. We see this is in the story of Larry Nassar, and the university’s refusal to address the issue for decades.
The first complaint concerning Nassar was allegedly received by MSU in 1997, and multiple other complaints were reportedly received over the years. Nothing was done until August 2016, shortly after Denhollander filed a police report. Finally, the university’s sports medicine star was fired.
We’ve been talking a lot about the swamp on Capitol Hill. No doubt, it exists. If that’s a swamp, I’m not sure what we should really call this wicked pit of pornography. For statistics that reveal just how saturated we are, click here, and here.
It’s time to stop playing with the fire of pornography. For help, go to the conquerseries.com.
