The Spread of Rumors
In 1986 the Senate Commission33 under the chairmanship of William V. Roth, Republican from Delaware, came to the same conclusion as the ILIC report. Nevertheless, neither the Roth report nor the ILIC report were able to dampen the spread of rumors about an enormous trade. Even in 1986, the claims of Lloyd and Densen-Gerber continued to come up as facts in official reports: the Meese Commission, initiated by the Reagan administration to prepare a drastic sharpening of the anti-pornography laws, uncritically took over these claims.34 According to the Meese Commission, Congress had discovered that child pornography and child prostitution "have become highly organized, multi-million dollar industries that operate on a nationwide scale."35 The monthly appearance of 264 magazines (Densen-Gerber) was again reported as truth, alongside the 30,000 exploited children of Los Angeles (Lloyd Martin).
The U.S. Supreme Court took over these claims in their first child pornography case, New York v Ferber (1982), saying that child pornography comprised, "highly organized multimillion dollar industries that operate on a nationwide scale."36 The otherwise dignified court was so upset by the alleged extent of the problem that the solicitor for the accused, Herald Price Fahringer, lost his composure and fled the sitting as fast as he could.37
The claims of Lloyd and Densen-Gerber also appeared outside the U.S.A. The report, Exploitation of Child Labour, which was submitted in 1981 to the Commission for Human Rights of the United Nations, claimed: "In the United States there are at least 264 pornographic magazines specializing in pornography concerning children."38 It was claimed that in 1977, 15,000 slides and 4,000 films of child pornography had been intercepted by the police, which was, according to the report, 5% of the total stock in circulation.
According to the United Nations report, the value of trade in child pornography in 1977 was estimated at $500 million. Such estimates are not based on any kind of empirical evidence, and are easy to refute. If these claims were true then the allegedly intercepted slides and films would have had a value of thousands of dollars each.39 In reality, these films were sold for much less, which can be checked with reference to the advertisement brochures of Deltaboek, publisher of homosexual pornography and literature. From here it is apparent that the Golden Boys film series, produced by COQ in Denmark, cost 85 guilders each, which is about $35.
In 1986, Defence for Children International prepared a report on child prostitution in which they claimed: "Estimates on the number of child prostitutes vary from 300,000 to several millions for the U.S. and Canada."40 A year later these figures were taken over by the Norwegian Ministry of Justice.41 This report was later submitted to the Ministers of Justice of the member countries of the Council of Europe. Within the Council of Europe a report on child exploitation was written in which it was claimed that: "A study of boy prostitutes had suggested that there were 300,000 boy prostitutes in the United States, many of whom are designated runaways."42 The claims of the United Nations report were also repeated. As late as 1988 the Dutch language world development magazine, Onze Wereld (Our World), claimed that: "The American (sic) periodical43 Child Abuse and Neglect reported that in the United States at least 264 different child pornography magazines are in circulation. The kiddieporn stars are drawn from the numerous American runaway teenagers."44 The same article made similar exaggerated claims about alleged illicit trade in donor organs obtained from children killed for the purpose. The story about donor organs had also appeared in the report of the Council of Europe, although there was never any evidence and the story was not credible from the beginning.45
The alleged size of the child pornography trade and the many children said to have been involved, are little more than myths. They are the result of the arbitrary multiplication of arbitrary numbers of alleged victims made by a journalist. The claims had taken on a life of their own. The fact that these claims had by 1980 been rejected by thorough official investigations was insufficient to prevent the claim from reappearing, not only in the media but also in other official circles, including the United States Senate, the United States Supreme Court, a Commission of the American Justice Department, the United Nations and the Council of Europe. After the number had been cited in the Hearings of the House of Representatives, it became associated with an ostensibly reliable source. The fact that the original source was anything but reliable was forgotten.
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