MARTIJN accused of digital child molestation

By: Airboy

On Thursday morning, April 13th I'm reading the front page of the newspaper Trouw ("Fidelity"). Under the heading "Digital Child Molestation" there's an article about MARTIJN's website, including commentary on it from the "Hotline Against Child Pornography" as well as from child psychologist professor R. Bullens. What the article boils down to is that the HACP is vexed about the combination of a section for children on the site and a link to the site of our Internet provider, FPC. The HACP calls this "digital child molestation".

Why a section for children?

When you know how the MARTIJN website got its current shape, I don't believe you can strain yourself to imagine why the combination has been interpreted in the abovementioned way. The purpose of the website is, of course, to inform people about pedophilia and to interest them in the activities of the organization. We have reflected on the types of people who might visit our site. As some parts of the site treat pedophilia in detail and are, at times, of an academic level (the law sections, for instance), we thought about what we could offer visiting children.

We decided to shape the section for children in such a fashion as to send away those youths who are uninterested in the subject of pedophilia. Take a look at the section for children. There is indeed a page of links, as has been mentioned in the press: the upper links are for the youngest children and the lower links are for the older children (and these aren't links to pedophile sites, but to sites for children with homosexual feelings, since we thought that children looking for that type of information might accidentally end up at MARTIJN using the Internet search engines). As we wanted to hand children not looking for information on pedophilia quick options to go elsewhere, we first placed some links to Lego, Nintendo, etc., followed by links for older children to, among other things, model making and football sites. Only if children willingly click a link to another page in the section for children, they will find a detailed letter with information on pedophilia that was written especially for youths.

The contents of the entire site, including the letter for youths, have been considered carefully. The letter clearly states we think everybody had best observe the law.

Link to FPC

The FPC link that used to be on our site led to the homepage of our Internet provider (As of August 2001 no longer so, Red.). Being an integral part of the layout, it was at the bottom of every page of the MARTIJN site. I have removed the link from every page, as to my amazement the article contended that other FPC sites contain pictures that can be called 'child pornography'.

According to the line of reasoning of the HACP and child psychologist professor Bullens, the MARTIJN Organization has formed an opinion about the other websites that are hosted by FPC simply by putting up a link to the FPC homepage. The newspaper Trouw writes, "Visitors are advised to click a link to FPC [...] On that site there are dozens of webpages of men who call themselves boylovers. These webpages feature photo galleries mostly of (near-)naked children. 'Child pornography,' according to Chistine Karman of the HACP."

MARTIJN cannot be held responsible for pictures on websites that don't belong to the organization. The link to FPC was put at the bottom of the website out of gratitude, as FPC provided space for us on the Internet. MARTIJN realizes it's a bad idea to link to child pornography, and for this reason we carefully examined the FPC site before linking to it. The FPC rules, which played an important part in our decision to link to FPC, strictly forbid child pornography:

"Here's our rules:
- You have to make your pages about boylove, preferably containing scholarly content.
- We don't take pages that are mainly picture galleries.
- We don't take pages that contain or link to material considered illegal in the US.
- We don't usually take mirror or duplicate sites.
- And we don't accept nude pictures."
- Rousing popular feelings

Apart from writing about the pictures on other FPC sites, Trouw goes into the contents of the MARTIJN website. The paper cites from an article addressed to students who want to write papers about pedophilia. It was originally an informative letter in reply to a letter sent to us by students preparing a paper. We observe that Trouw has gone to great lengths to twist the tone of this article, leaving out a number of telling passages such as: "When a child likes to be around a certain adult and falls in love with the adult (believe me, it happens more often than you'd think), or when the adult falls in love with the child, they should be entirely free to develop their friendship. What's more, the international rights of the child state that a child has the right to select his/her own friends. A friendship with an adult should also be allowed to have a sexual touch to it. It should be carefully considered whether the child feels ready to engage in sexual activities with the adult; the sexual activities should be adapted to the child's level; and the surroundings should not react negatively to these activities. However, such uncondemned sexual activities are not feasible in this day and age, and for this reason I, for one, urgently advise against them."

This end conclusion, the advise for children and adults not to engage in sexual activities with one another due to societal attitudes, has been left out by Trouw. In our eyes this selectivity, in addition to the paper's mentioning pictures that have nothing to do with MARTIJN, indicates the intention to rouse popular feelings.

Can children be informed about pedophilia?

I was annoyed more by this attitude of Trouw than by the ignorant, pathetic actions of the HACP, which organization had hardly had the chance to mention any achievement of note on their website since November 1999, and apparently felt their right to exist was being threatened. But my feelings about the HACP changed when it became apparent from other news sources that the HACP had reported MARTIJN to the police.

I have drawn the conclusion that the HACP thinks the combination of a section for children and a link to FPC should be illegal. I think the HACP fears the possibility that children are informed about pedophilia or get in touch with pedophiles in whatever way. In fact the HACP as well as the police have not been able to detect a breach of the law. The HACP concludes that for this reason there "must" be a legislative gap, and an amendment should be carried through. If I summarize it correctly, the HACP believes that it should be illegal to link to a site that in turn links to what might be considered to be child pornography. If this were indeed illegal it would be very hard to maintain a legal website of any kind on the Internet. The HACP had best take a close look at the links on their own website: there are links to www.planet.nl, from which site reading material of a child pornographic nature can be accessed.

The HACP desires legislation to become even stricter, and freedom of opinion to be even further restricted. My opinion on this should be clear.

Update: The police have by now ended their investigation and are not taking legal action against MARTIJN.

source: Article 'MARTIJN Accused of Digital Child Molestation' by 'Airboy'; OK Magazine, no. 73; June 2000