Pornography foes: Make this a health issue

Ed Smart almost didn't want to hear the details of his daughter's abduction. They were too upsetting.

Smart is the father of Elizabeth Smart, who was abducted from her Utah home in 2002 at age 14. She told him the details of her abductor's obsession with violence, sex – and porn. She was found nine months later and testified to being raped and abused each day.

"Pornography provides a slippery slope to take the next step to abuse and exploitation," Ed Smart, who serves as the vice president of the Elizabeth Smart Foundation, said Tuesday.

Smart was one of eight public health experts, social researchers and legal experts who addressed the connection between sex trafficking, prostitution and pornography in an event held at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday.

The National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCSE), an organization that aims to highlight these links, hosted the event, which drew more than 150 Congress staff members, advocates for ending sexual exploitation and members of the public.

NCSE says pornography may be at the root of sexual exploitation, and it shapes the minds of children. Several of the speakers addressed this issue Tuesday, citing a host of studies that note how violent pornography creates a desire to rape or abuse. The group also said pornography is connected to sex trafficking and prostitution and promotes violence against women and children.

Citing cultural expectations and research, each speaker emphasized the same point: Pornography is a public health issue.

"It's not the sex that's the problem, it's the violence," said Cordelia Anderson, founder of the National Coalition to Prevent Child Sex Abuse and Exploitation. "It's not the nudity that's the problem, it's the novelty."

According to Gail Dines, the founder and president of Culture Reframed, a non-profit dedicated to educating the public on the effects of pornography, there are 40 million regular consumers of porn in the U.S. She said the number of porn users exceeds those of websites such as Netflix and YouTube dramatically.

Because of this wide reach, speakers said this should be treated as a public health issue – just like the country responded to findings that tobacco caused many health issues decades ago.

"You don't solve these kinds of problems by pulling out the women from the river one at a time," said Marry Anne Layden, the director of education at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania. "You have to go upstream and find who's pushing them in."

Ernie Allen, former president and CEO of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said restrictions on the Internet, where porn is widely available, might be one solution.

"This is an issue that calls out – cries out – for leadership," Allen said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, was the honorary sponsor of the event. Grassley has supported bipartisan bills that have put more restrictions on the selling of child pornography and introduced the Curb Human Trafficking Act in February, which aims to provide more resources for victims of sex trafficking.

More legislation addressing sexual exploitation is underway in Congress, tackling the issue of "revenge porn," which is when someone posts explicit photos of a former partner without his or her consent.

Rep. Jackie Speier, a Democrat from California, plans to introduce legislation that will make revenge porn a federal crime. Some social media sites, including Twitter, Reddit and Google, have already created rules to prohibit revenge porn and comply with requests to remove sexually explicit content.

Eleanor Kennelly Gaetan, the legislative adviser to the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should conduct research assessing the connection between pornography, sex trafficking and prostitution.

"It's essential. Until CDC identifies a phenomenon as harmful to the public, then from that identification can flow policy," Gaetan told USA TODAY. "To date there's no research by the federal government."

Yasmin Vafa, the co-founder and director of law and policy at the Human Rights Project for Girls, agreed. She said Congress should first conduct research to determine these connections, and, from there, assess policy changes and potential legislation.

"We can't have gender equality, we can't have an elimination of gender-based violence. We see that all of these things are inextricably linked," Vafa said. "Pornography is fueling those types of exploitation."