After
Graham Coutts' conviction in February 2004, the government and police forces called for "violent" adult pornography sites to be shut down and Jane Longhurst's mother and sister launched a campaign against such sites. A petition (which gained 50,000 signatures) promoted by MP
Martin Salter was submitted to the government, demanding a ban of "extreme internet sites promoting violence against women in the name of sexual gratification". The government was unsuccessful in shutting down such sites, since they are based in other countries and are legally made with consenting adults. In August 2005 the British government consulted on, instead, criminalising the possession of such images. On 30 August 2006, the government published the results of the consultation, and announced its intention to introduce a possession ban on all extreme pornography as soon as the legislative timetable allowed. Opinions on the proposals were sharply divided in the consultation, with 61 percent (241 out of 397) of responses rejecting the need for stronger laws in this area and 36 percent in favour (3 percent gave no opinion). The proposed maximum penalty for possession of these images was three years' imprisonment. On 26 June 2007, the government published the plans as part of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill. The bill extended the scope of the proposals from "serious, disabling injury" to "serious injury". The law came into force on 26 January 2009. In July 2009,
Baroness O'Cathain proposed an amendment to the
Coroners and Justice Act which would bring in an equivalent law for "extreme pornographic writings". There have been many more prosecutions under the law than the 30 cases a year originally predicted by ministers. In 2011–12, there were 1,337 prosecutions and in 2012–13 there were 1,348. By 2015, there were still more than 1,000 annual prosecutions. The lack of clarity means that the law would apparently outlaw images which have been exhibited in art galleries, such as the material from
Robert Mapplethorpe's
X Portfolio, which was included in the
Barbican Gallery's
Seduced exhibition in 2008. The possession of
rape pornography in England and Wales was not criminalised by the legislation. However, the
Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 amended the Act to include such a prohibition.
Notable uses • A 20-year-old St Helens man was prosecuted on 10 February 2009 for having "extreme" images involving women and animals. The images were reported by a PC repair shop. He was given an 18-month supervision order, 24 hours at an attendance centre and had to pay costs of £65. • In June 2009
The Register claimed that according to their sources in law enforcement, there have been two or three prosecutions against people selling Chinese bootlegged DVDs (which include some bestiality DVDs). A later case in 2010 also involved the use against someone selling unlicensed DVDs. In January 2011, a South African national living in Berkshire was sentenced to 12 months in prison, followed by
deportation, for having downloaded 261 videos of people having sex with dogs, pigs, horses and donkeys. He also received additional concurrent sentences of two months and one month for four images of children which he had also downloaded, allegedly inadvertently. • On 31 December 2009, a man was found not guilty under the law; he was cleared by a judge, after the prosecution offered no evidence against him. The film he was charged with possessing depicted a sexual act with a tiger, but it emerged that the tiger in the film was not real and the image was a joke. Police and prosecutors admitted that they had not watched the film with sound turned on. In March 2010, the same man pleaded guilty on a second charge for a six-second video clip involving humans, having been told by his
legal aid defence team that this was his only chance to avoid prison. However, when a judge told him to prepare for a custodial sentence he changed his plea to not guilty, having taken advice from the pressure group
Backlash. A new trial was arranged, but the prosecution chose to withdraw charges before it could begin. In 2014 a human rights impact assessment of the law by the
Crown Prosecution Service was requested under the
Human Rights Act 1998; it was argued that the legislation lacks adequately clear definitions, there is insufficient prosecution guidance from the DPP, and that the offence is disproportionate to the legislation's intended aims. • The law has been used against people possessing only images of human adults (as opposed to the animal clauses), who have pleaded guilty. • In February 2014 three police officers from the
Diplomatic Protection Group were arrested on suspicion of sharing "extreme" pornographic images using mobile phones. • In 2015 the footballer
Adam Johnson was arrested on suspicion of possessing animal pornography. In investigations, police found animal pornography on Johnson's laptop; he was not tried for possession of these files.
2011 test case In January 2011, a man was tried before
Stafford Crown Court for possession of staged images depicting a knife attack and a drowning in a bath. The prosecution said, "There is a need to regulate images portraying sexual violence, to safeguard the decency of society and for the protection of women". Expert witness for the defence Feona Attwood said the images were like stills from a 1970s
Hammer horror film. The trial was a landmark, possibly the first such case tested by a jury. It was also notable as a case where the defendant admitted that he intentionally downloaded and retained the images in question (as opposed to, for example, accidental downloading). On 6 January, the jury took 90 minutes to return a unanimous verdict of not guilty. The judge told them afterwards that this trial had been a test case; the legislation in question was still being interpreted.
2012 test case In August 2012,
Simon Walsh, a former aide to then-
mayor of London Boris Johnson, was charged with possessing five images of "extreme pornography", which were not found by police on his computers, but as email attachments on a Hotmail server account. He was found not guilty on all counts. Three images were of
urethral sounding, and two of
anal fisting. The images were all of consensual adult sexual activity. The Crown Prosecution Service maintains that the acts depicted were "extreme" even if the jury disagreed in this case.
Scotland In 2004 a committee of
members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) backed a law to ban adult pornography, as the
Equal Opportunities Committee supported a petition claiming links between pornography and sexual crimes and violence against women and children. A spokeswoman said, "While we have no plans to legislate we will, of course, continue to monitor the situation." In 2007, MSPs looked again at criminalising adult pornography in response to a call from Scottish Women Against Pornography for pornography to be classified as a hate crime against women. This was opposed by
Feminists Against Censorship. In September 2008, Scotland announced its own plans to criminalise possession of "extreme" pornography—extending the law further, including
depictions of rape imagery and other non-consensual penetrative sexual activity (whether or not the participants actually consented). The new law is included in Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010, and covers images which realistically depict: • An act which takes (or threatens) a person's life • An act which results (or is likely to result) in a person's severe injury • Rape or other non-consensual penetrative sexual activity • Sexual activity involving (directly or indirectly) a human corpse • An act which involves sexual activity between a person and an animal (or an animal carcass) Again, the law covers images of staged acts so long as a reasonable person looking at the image would think it was real or shows harm, and applies whether or not the participants consented. ==Arguments==