2015 NCSE Capitol Symposium Highlights

Prominent Researchers & Medical Professionals Made Educational & Emotionally Moving Presentations.

Speakers included Sharon Cooper, MD, FAAP, Ernie Allen, , PH.D., Gail Dines, PH.D., Donald Hilton, MD, Mary Anne Layden, PH.D., Cordelia Speakers and NCSE Staff & Friends Preparing Anderson, MA, Ed Smart, and For the Capitol Symposium Dawn Hawkins.

Presentations were made on how links to child sexual exploitation, , , , addiction, and more.

2015 NCSE Capitol Symposium Highlights

The room quickly overflowed past maximum capacity with over 150 Congressional staff, advocates, press, and public attending.

Regretfully, many more wanted to attend but had to be turned away.

We had over 85 press hits regarding our symposium, some of which resulted in the below articles:

 The Hill: “Porn Foes Seek Allies in Congress”  USA Today: “Pornography Foes: Make this a health issue.”  The Washington Times: “‘Tsunami’ of pornography (mis)shaping next generation: briefing.”  Christian Broadcast Network: Trafficking, Prostitution: America Hijacked by Porn?

Below is the full text of two articles written about the 2015 Capitol Symposium on the Public Health Crisis of Pornography

2015 NCSE Capitol Symposium Highlights

Pornography Foes: Make this a health issue By Jennifer Calfas

Ed Smart almost didn't want to hear the details of his daughter's abduction. They were too upsetting. Smart is the father of Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted from her Utah home in 2002 at age 14. She told him the details of her abductor's obsession with violence, sex – and porn. She was found nine months later and testified to being raped and abused each day. "Pornography provides a slippery slope to take the next step to abuse and exploitation," Ed Smart, who serves as the vice president of the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, said Tuesday. Smart was one of eight public health experts, social researchers and legal experts who addressed the connection between sex trafficking, prostitution and pornography in an event held at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSE), an organization that aims to highlight these links, hosted the event, which drew more than 150 Congress staff members, advocates for ending sexual exploitation and members of the public. NCSE says pornography may be at the root of sexual exploitation, and it shapes the minds of children. Several of the speakers addressed this issue Tuesday, citing a host of studies that note how violent pornography creates a desire to rape or abuse. The group also said pornography is connected to sex trafficking and prostitution and promotes violence against women and children. Citing cultural expectations and research, each speaker emphasized the same 2015 NCSE Capitol Symposium Highlights point: Pornography is a public health issue. "It's not the sex that's the problem, it's the violence," said Cordelia Anderson, founder of the National Coalition to Prevent Child Sex Abuse and Exploitation. "It's not the nudity that's the problem, it's the novelty." According to Gail Dines, the founder and president of Culture Reframed, a non-profit dedicated to educating the public on the effects of pornography, there are 40 million regular consumers of porn in the U.S. She said the number of porn users exceeds those of websites such as Netflix and YouTube dramatically. Because of this wide reach, speakers said this should be treated as a public health issue – just like the country responded to findings that tobacco caused many health issues decades ago. "You don't solve these kinds of problems by pulling out the women from the river one at a time," said Marry Anne Layden, the director of education at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. "You have to go upstream and find who's pushing them in." Ernie Allen, former president and CEO of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said restrictions on the Internet, where porn is widely available, might be one solution. "This is an issue that calls out – cries out – for leadership," Allen said. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, was the honorary sponsor of the event. Grassley has supported bipartisan bills that have put more restrictions on the selling of child pornography and introduced the Curb Human Trafficking Act in February, which aims to provide more resources for victims of sex trafficking. More legislation addressing sexual exploitation is underway in Congress, tackling the issue of "revenge porn," which is when someone posts explicit photos of a former partner without his or her consent. Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California, plans to introduce legislation that will make revenge porn a federal crime. Some social media sites, including Twitter, Reddit and Google, have already created rules to prohibit 2015 NCSE Capitol Symposium Highlights revenge porn and comply with requests to remove sexually explicit content. Eleanor Kennelly Gaetan, the legislative adviser to the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should conduct research assessing the connection between pornography, sex trafficking and prostitution. "It's essential. Until CDC identifies a phenomenon as harmful to the public, then from that identification can flow policy," Gaetan told USA TODAY. "To date there's no research by the federal government." Yasmin Vafa, the co-founder and director of law and policy at the Human Rights Project for Girls, agreed. She said Congress should first conduct research to determine these connections, and, from there, assess policy changes and potential legislation. "We can't have , we can't have an elimination of gender- based violence. We see that all of these things are inextricably linked," Vafa said. "Pornography is fueling those types of exploitation."

‘Tsunami’ of pornography (mis)shaping next generation: briefing By Cheryl Wetzstein

A “tsunami” of obscene, violent and degrading pornography is harming children, women, men and the American culture, a panel of experts told a Capitol Hill briefing Tuesday. The standing-room-only event was organized by the National Center on 2015 NCSE Capitol Symposium Highlights

Sexual Exploitation and led by NCSE officials Patrick Trueman and Dawn Hawkins. Panelists urged members of Congress to see that pornography is linked to sexual victimization, prostitution, human trafficking, child abuse and addiction — and hold hearings on these topics. All of this makes pornography “a public health crisis,” said therapist Cordelia Anderson, an advocate for child abuse victims. It’s a “sexual tsunami,” said psychotherapist Mary Anne Layden, a specialist in treatment of sexual abuse victims and perpetrators. Public education is needed about modern-day pornography and how it is impacting people, said Ms. Anderson. She described a young adult man who uses pornography and now has premature erectile dysfunction, and a child rape victim, now a mother, who is worried about her stubborn addiction to violent pornography. Another case is a divorcing couple, where the wife says pornography killed their marriage. “He can’t look at me anymore. He’s not aroused by me. He’s only aroused by pornography,” the woman said of her husband, Ms. Anderson said. People may also be unaware of the extreme violence in today’s pornography, said clinical psychologist Melissa Farley, executive director of Prostitution Research and Education in San Francisco. One pornographic torture website, she said, has shown images of a man stuffing a rag in a woman’s mouth, sewing her mouth shut and hanging her on a wall. “Pornographers count on our tolerance for social injustice,” said Ms. Farley. Pornography is “a hydra-headed industry” that is completely linked to prostitution and trafficking. Ed Smart, father of former captive Elizabeth Smart and an official with the child-rescuing Operation Underground Railroad, gave a wrenching description of his then-14-year-old daughter’s abuse at the hands of long-time pornography 2015 NCSE Capitol Symposium Highlights user Brian David Mitchell. Mitchell, now imprisoned, had been exposed to pornography as a child by his father, who thought it was harmless. The irresistible images led Mitchell into a life of ever-increasing sexual risk-taking behaviors, leading to his kidnapping of the teen from her home at knife point in 2002. During his daughter’s nine months of captivity, the rapist would do especially vile things to her after viewing pornography, Mr. Smart said, adding that it is still used to instruct people, including children; desensitize them, and drive experimentation with sexually deviant activities. Challenging the public-health problem of sexual exploitation will be akin to getting people to wear seat belts in vehicles, or stopping smoking, experts said. It means a full-blown campaign to change the culture, backed by new laws and law enforcement, and exposing the pornography industry and the criminality and victimization that so often goes along with it, they said. Solutions included stepping up enforcement of federal and state adult obscenity laws, which prohibit distribution of hardcore pornography on the internet, on cable/satellite TV, in hotels and motels and in retail shops and by carriers. “Social activism” is also key, said professor and author Gail Dines, founder and president of Culture Reframed. No-smoking campaigns work to keep tobacco out of lungs; now it’s time to “keep pornography out of their eyes,” said Dr. Donald Hilton, a neurosurgeon and professor at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center. He and Dr. Sharon Cooper, a forensic pediatrician who is an expert on child abuse, spoke of the alarming impact pornography has on young minds. America can look at what is being done in the United Kingdom, said Ernie Allen, former president and chief executive of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. There, he said, at the behest of Prime Minister David Cameron, Internet Service Providers are filtering pornographic content to consumers, while permitting them “opt out” of the filter. 2015 NCSE Capitol Symposium Highlights

Corporate responsibility could be a very fruitful angle, said Donna Rice Hughes, president and chief executive of Enough is Enough, who attended the Tuesday briefing. Companies who want to create truly “family friendly” environments should block obscene images on their WiFi services, so people won’t end up standing next to someone in a store or sitting next to someone in the coffee shop while they are looking at torture sex or child pornography, said Ms. Hughes. Past anti-pornography efforts failed in part because of they couldn’t surpass pornography industry’s First Amendment claims, or were trapped into debates about morality, noted Ms. Hughes. “But now, we have peer-reviewed science to demonstrate harm and impact,” she said. “We can reframe the issue,” she said, noting that she had come to Congress in the 1990s to warn about the explosion of online torture, bestiality and child pornography on the new social medium — all of which has become even more entrenched.

2015 NCSE Capitol Symposium Highlights

A few of the other outlets that disseminated news of the Capitol symposium include:

2015 NCSE Capitol Symposium Highlights