Dodson, Chuck; The spectacular achievements of media control
Update of this article: 2024:

When most Americans think about aggression in our society, our first thoughts are apt to include children being abused and/or killed by sick or outrightly criminal adults. We usually don't consider the somewhat broader context of what is going on behind the use of these issues, or the time periods in which they are most emphasized; in fact, in not seeing this we miss out on a crucial issue that comes down to what kind of society we want to live in.
Anonymous; Prohibited Sexual Behavior and Sexual Violence: Adult Sexual Contact with Children
[...] However, it is important to understand two basic facts:
1. Not every adult who has sexual contact with a child is a pedophile, and
2. not every pedophile has sexual contact with a child.
[...] most sexual offenses against children are committed not by pedophiles, but by non-pedophilic men.
[...] Many pedophiles manage to control their urges. Some even deliberately avoid the company of children. This self-control is the goal of preventive therapy
programs for pedophiles, since their sexual interests are not likely to change.
[...] Children are girls and boys before puberty. Only the desire for sexual contact with them should be called “pedophilia”.
[...] Current treatments try, above all, to prevent them from breaking the law. Thus, training a pedophile to live with his fantasies without acting them out protects both him and the children he meets.
[...] Legal Aspects ... Psychological Aspects ... Incest ... Child Protitution ... Chidls Pornography ...
Guy, Shy; Architects of Oppression
The history of the child sex abuse witch hunt is chronicled from the times of Anthony Comstock and J. Edgar Hoover to the NCMEC of the present, including the influence of Kenneth Lanting, Ernie Allen and others.
Hamilton, Melissa; The Efficacy Of Severe Child Pornography Sentencing; Temple Law Review
Empirical Validity Or Political Rhetoric?

[USA's] Congress’s appetite for expanding the scope of child pornography laws and increasing the length of prison sentences for child pornography offenders endures, despite other officials involved in federal sentencing questioning the necessity and proportionality of severe sentences.
Emotions run high concerning issues involving the sexual exploitation of children. Moral panic has led Congress to pursue an ever-expanding federal regime of broadening the scope of child pornography laws and substantially increasing the length of sentences.
Based on an assessment of the empirical evidence, the Congressional stance is best characterized as political rhetoric. Overall, empirical research fails to establish a correlation, much less a causative link, between viewing child pornography and contact offenses against children.
Graupner, Helmut; The 17-year-old Child An Absurdity of the Late 20th Century
No language in the world ever used the term “child” for persons beyond their early teens. No person beyond its early teens is a “child”.
It was the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 which first did away with the distinction between children and adolescents and labelled all minors under 18 “child” (Art. 1).
The European Commission took this concept over into the criminal law area when it proposed an EU-Framework Decision on Combating the Sexual Exploitation of Children and Child Pornography in December 2000. This framework-decision obliges all the member states of the European Union to create certain sexual offences which goes far beyond what is known in that area in any European state so far.
The proposal of the Commission defined as “child” every person up to its 18th birthday (Art. 1 lit. a). It did not differentiate in any way between various age groups, i.e. it did not distinguish between children on the one hand and adolescents on the other. The proposal treated a 17-year-old young man in the same way as a 5 year old child.
This implementation of the same criteria for sexual protection and abuse to a five-year-old child and a 17-year-old adolescent leads to absurd and dangerous consequences.
Levine, Judith; Decent Exposure?, Apr 29 2009
I’ve been peeved all month about the latest panic: “sexting.”
More and more states are bringing child-porn charges against teenagers who take racy pictures of themselves and send them electronically to lovers or pals.You might call sexting a dunderheaded act — who knows where your immortalized nipples might end up — but also a victimless “crime.”
Yet here is the amazing part: Child-porn law is based on the minor’s inability to consent to being photographed; the model is ipso facto a victim of the photographer. Sexting, in which the model is also the photographer, is a crime in which a person can be both perpetrator and victim at the same time.
U.S. sex law is like a black hole: Once reason falls in, it can never re-emerge.
Can all this get any stupider?
Weldon, Dave; Protect The Children, Jul 29 1999
Speech In The House Of Representatives, Thursday, July 29, 1999, condemning the Rind c.s. research reports.
Wagner, Lindsay A.; Sex Offender Residency Restrictions, Jan 01 2009
Sex offenders, as a group, incite the public's fear and hatred, and politicians seeking to curry electorate favor often support increasingly harsh sanctions against these "political pariahs of our day." Most recently, in an attempt to keep communities safe, at least twenty two states and hundreds of local municipalities have placed severe restrictions on where sex offenders may live after being released from prison. These restrictions typically exclude sex offenders from living within 1000 to 2500 feet of schools, parks, day care centers, and other areas where children congregate.
However, research indicates that these fear-driven laws are ill-advised policy choices based on faulty reasoning. They aggravate recidivism risk factors, and hence may actually make communities less safe.
Parliament, European; Sexual abuse of children: MEPs want to criminalise "grooming" on the Internet
The European Parliament calls for a stop to sexual exploitation of children and child pornography.