Seduction by Deceit -- Part One

Janet Chismar | Senior Editor, News & Culture | Updated: Mar 06, 2002

Seduction by Deceit -- Part One

It started so innocently. As a brand new believer, Justin sat down at his computer to search the Internet for information. When he keyed in "born again Christian," a screen immediately popped up, but not the one he was expecting. A single glance at the site led him down a road to sexual fantasy and addiction that took years to break.

Justin was a victim of pornography's latest ploy -- pirating Christian sounding names and search terms to lure unsuspecting victims onto X-rated sites. And his experience is not unusual.

In a Feb. 28 article from The Guardian, Sara Gaines reported that social psychologists at the London School of Economics found that nine out of 10 children, aged 11 to 16, had viewed pornography on the Internet last year. "Many had stumbled across it after putting in search requests for pop groups such as Boyzone," Gaines wrote. "And a U.S. government report said porn sites commonly use the brand names Barbie and Disney in hidden code to ensure they crop up in general searches."

Donna Rice Hughes has also studied the deceptive practices of pornographers. "Beginning in 1995-96, we began noticing that innocent word searches that anybody could type in, but especially children, could lead to a porn site," she told Crosswalk.com during a recent interview. "A child could type in 'girls' or 'boys' or 'dogs' -- and they would find more porn sites than they would legitimate sites."

Hughes is the author of Kids Online: Protecting Your Children In Cyberspace. From 1999-2001, she served as spokesperson and senior adviser to FamilyClick.com, a state-of-the-art Internet filtering service. In 1999, she received a Congressional appointment to the Child Online Protection Commission (COPA) to examine technological solutions to protect children online and served as co-chair of the COPA Hearings in July 2000 on filtering, ratings and labeling technologies.

From 1994 until July of 1999, Hughes served as Communications Director and then Vice President of Enough Is Enough, a non-profit educational organization whose mission is to make the Internet safe for children and families.

"The online pornographers have been very deceptive for a long time because they've been able to get away with a great deal," says Hughes. "They have had a window of opportunity to violate laws on the Internet because, for one thing, law enforcement simply hasn't been up to snuff on this issue."

According to Hughes, Internet pornography hasn't been a top priority in the past year for federal law enforcement in the Justice Department. "And number two, we simply don't have enough cyber cops to deal with all of the cyber criminals out there -- of which pornographers are just one lot."

The earliest black market porn surfaced on the news groups, even before it hit the web, says Hughes. "It was mostly child porn and hard core obscenity that you couldn't buy in a triple X-rated bookstore," she explains. When the pornographers found they weren't getting prosecuted, porn started to spring up on the web. It began with the soft-core version, but quickly, harder material began surfacing.

Deceptive marketing tactics have been around for a long time. "Now they are finding new ways to trick people into getting to the porn sites," says Hughes. "It goes without saying that anybody looking for it isn't going to have any trouble finding it, but the pornographer is after the new consumer."

Enter the Christian

And that's how Justin became a consumer -- by typing "born-again Christian." Why would a pornographer want to target believers?

"I think they're targeting any new market," Hughes responds. "This is marketing, and if they know the stats like I do, they'll know there are just as many professing Christians who are struggling with pornography addictions as there are people who aren't Christian. So it's a viable market for the pornographer."

According to Hughes, "whether you are a Christian, you're a non-Christian or you're a kid, this material is highly toxic and highly addictive." So if the pornographers can trick you into getting to their site and keep you there, they've got an opportunity to create a consumer.

While the initial viewing is "free," to continue onward, a credit card is required. That is how the pornographers make a profit. "Often times, the free images are quite deviant," Hughes explains. "They show you this so you'll know what type of porn you will get if you're paying."

One question that Hughes often hears is: "Why do they go after children? Children aren't paying."

"They are trying to hook as many people as they can," she responds. "When a young person or a child gets hooked on pornography -- unless they have real true inner healing that only comes from the Lord -- they are going to have an ongoing pornography consumer."

It's not a habit or an addiction that is easy to break, Hughes adds. "It is much more difficult than substance abuse, because when you stop using alcohol or cigarettes or drugs, you go through withdrawal, but you're not using anymore. When you stop using pornography, the thoughts are still in your head. You don't just erase them. There's a deeper level of healing and deliverance that needs to happen."

Hughes attributes the targeting of Christians by pornographers to another factor -- plain wickedness -- "you know, just to be mean and evil." In a way, they are "throwing darts at Christians," she says. "If you understand the root of evil, you know everything is coming from Satan to destroy you and the credibility of Christ."

The bottom line is the bottom line, Hughes adds. "Believe me, the pornographer is non-discriminate. As long as you're coming to their site and they can hook you, and you start paying, they don't care who you are."

In our final installment, we will look at ways to fight this problem.

Seduction by Deceit -- Part One