What follows is not primarily based on the chilling information unearthed by
investigative journalist Duncan Campbell in the UK that the British police
catastrophically ignored obvious and unambiguous evidence that many of the men they
were rounding up in dawn raids during the first wave of the witch hunt, Operation Ore,
were innocent victims of credit card fraud (4). If true, this represents professional
neglect and contemptuous indifference of breathtaking proportions (and appears to have
resulted in multiple suicides amongst the accused); but I think the real crime of the
‘child porn’ witch-hunters is more malignant even than this.

The drive to elevate the private possession of some categories of pornography to the
same level as sexual assault is closer to my concerns in this work. Lowering the
threshold for the definition of serious crime is a relatively effortless way of creating the
helpful illusion that the police are catching more criminals. It’s far easier, after all, to
shoot fish in a barrel than to go to all the effort of angling or deep sea fishing; just label
a bunch of hapless, net-surfing depressives who would never harm a child as ‘paedos’
and you’ve got a crime wave to crush. As for those who abduct, molest and assault
children – well, they’re far too difficult to track down, too small in number to make a
viable career out of and they require too much time and tedious donkey work to boot.
Better by far to pretend that the two groups are the same; then you can round impressive
numbers of people up and throw them in gaol to a great fanfare of media adulation. This
is the lie which is authorising the devastation of many lives in the name of justice.