Page 3700 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 9 December 1992
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Mr Connolly: Madam Speaker, I take a point of order. That really is intimidatory behaviour from Mr Stevenson. He is ranting. That probably would be the best word to describe it. Members should express their passions in a moderate tone, I suggest.
Mr De Domenico: Under which standing order?
MADAM SPEAKER: Order! There is a standing order that refers to the type of language that is used in the chamber, Mr De Domenico. Thank you, Mr Connolly. Mr Stevenson, we are able to hear you at a considerably lower level than you are using presently. I ask you to proceed.
MR STEVENSON: Mr Connolly suggests that one should not be concerned about this. Just a few days ago there was a story about an eight-year-old girl on the front page of the Herald-Sun - a sex murder. She was eight years old. They have not caught the person yet, but no doubt - - -
Mr Connolly: They have. He was charged yesterday.
MR STEVENSON: Good. What I will do, as I usually do, is check whether pornography was involved. Again and again you find that pornography is involved in these things. Justice Sir William Kearney in the Supreme Court in Darwin said that people who think there is no connection between pornography and the violent and bizarre crimes that come before the courts ought to do some case studies instead of making incorrect statements. That is what they should do.
David Baker, writing for the Pepperdein Law Review, said that between October 1976 and March 1977 the Los Angeles Police Department investigated more than 40 child molestation cases. Pornographic literature, often exhibiting children, was found to be present in every case. The Michigan State Police research unit studied 38,000 sexual assault cases. Forty-one per cent of offenders had used pornography immediately before or during their crime. An FBI study revealed that 29 of 36 serial killers incorporated pornography in their sexual activity. The University of New Hampshire sociologists, Murray Strauss and Larry Brown, found that the American States with the highest porn sales had the highest incidence of rape.
The Californian Attorney-General's Advisory Committee on Obscenity and Pornography, in its interviews with a great many police officers, was frequently told that they had never arrested a child molester who did not have pornography in his possession. A Los Angeles Police Department investigation studied more than 40 child molestation cases and once again found pornography present. In Pasco County, Florida, after a one-year crackdown on pornography, the county had a 35 per cent drop in rape compared with the rest of Florida, where the incidence of rape rose by 18 per cent.
In June 1989 in Australia Crown Prosecutor Ms Leanne Hurley told a court that after a man viewed a pornographic video with his 11-year-old stepdaughter he led her to a bedroom, ordered her to undress and raped her. According to the prosecutor, the man showed her an adult cartoon showing Hansel and Gretel performing sexual acts. The video made sex look like a bit of a game. The X-rated video industry calls this non-violent erotica. Two psychiatrists who gave evidence before Mr Justice O'Brien in the Central Criminal Court when he
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