The texts from the back covers of pornographic films we quote in this pamphlet are all taken from films that are distributed in ordinary video rental stores, not from specific porn shops.

"Sandy is the cutest, sweetest little girl I have ever met. I am like a father to her. I guess I should take her to the zoo and things like that, but instead I fling her into THIS!!!
     Everyone gets to shag the girl. Four masked madmen do it, as do two Africans, and 11 blokes (!) are having a gangbang with her. All in all 30 men enjoy themselves with the young girl, complete strangers picked up from the street. It could have been YOU...
     Here you go! Enjoy true teenage sex!"

From the back-cover of the porn film "Italian Lolita".

In the autumn
of 1995 the American actress Traci Lords appeared on Swedish television, talking about how she was raped at the age of 11 and how after that she got into heavy drinking and drug abuse and then was exploited by the porn industry and used in porn films. In the USA all of the films but one are banned, for the reason that she was a minor at the time when they were recorded. In the TV show Traci Lords was very upset to hear that the films are being distributed in Sweden, and she asked if there was no law against child pornography in Sweden.
     Some time after the TV show we discovered that a producer of pornography had produced two films to be sold on the Swedish market, both consisting of cuts from the recordings with Traci Lords. They are called "The Worst of Traci Lords' " and "The Best of Traci Lords'". The films are distributed all across Sweden, they are even available in ordinary video rental stores.
     Not only are the films sold with the knowledge of them being child pornography – this fact is used as the main sales argument. On the back-covers of the video cases it says things like: "Totally prohibited in the USA!", "the teen scandal" and "The very first shootings – when she was at her YOUNGEST!". The example of Traci Lords shows that the commercial, mass distributed pornography can also be made up from documented child sexual abuse.
     The story of Traci Lords is not unique or unusual. Many of the teenage girls and adult women used in commercial pornography have been victims of sexual abuse at an early age. In the porn industry the abuse continues. What is exceptional about Traci Lords is that she has been strong enough to manage to get out of the exploitation of the porn industry and make it as an actress, despite her background. But it is also the fact that she is famous which triggers the porn industry to exploit her now. And the Swedish evening papers are quick to follow – both Aftonbladet and Expressen have had recurring advertisements offering the films featuring the abuse of Traci Lords by mail order.

According to Swedish law it is not Child Pornography
To put the Swedish Child Pornography Act to the test, we reported a video store that stocks the Traci Lords films, the producer (Max's), a mail-order firm and the evening papers Aftonbladet and Expressen which have published ads for the films, to the police. We referred to the fact that the sales argument is that the content of the films is child pornography. But the Chancellor of Justice replied that the films could not be defined as child pornography according to Swedish legislation – irrespective of what we knew about her actual age at the time of the recordings.
     In the UN's child convention a person is considered a child up to the age of 18. The social services in Sweden use the same definition. But in the law against child sexual abuse a person ceases to be defined as a child already at the age of 15. And in the legislation against child pornography age does not come into the picture at all. There it says that a child is someone "whose sexual maturity process has not been completed". Consequently, the Chancellor of Justice reckons that Traci Lords was sexually mature already in her early teens.
     Physically, Traci Lords was mature at a rather early age. But nobody seems to ask what her state of mind was when at the age of 13, drunk and stuffed with drugs, she was used and exploited by the porn industry.

Public Opinion
As recently as in 1992 it was "disclosed" to the public that child pornography was widespread in Sweden, when media reported on the confiscations of child-pornographic videos carried out by the Huddinge police (Huddinge is a suburb south of Stockholm, translator's note.). A large number of children had been raped and sexually abused in front of the camera, some very young girls had been subjected to very gross and sadistic abuse. The films and photographs were then distributed among groups of men across Sweden. The disclosure forced many people to see pornography as it really is; a brutal reality of violence and abuse, far from the harmless fantasies that sexologists talk about.
     The videos were confiscated and kept as evidence at the city court of Stockholm. That made them accessible to anyone according to the principle of public access to official records. There was a public outcry when it became known through the media that men ordered copies of the child-pornography films from the court; men who once again planned to masturbate to the documentations of the abuse of these children, among others there were men who were already serving prison sentences for sexual offences.
     At that time strong public opinion made the legislative assembly take a quick decision about an alteration in the principle of public access to official records. Child pornography and pornography containing violence are now exeptions to this principle.
     One would have thought that there should have been a similar reaction after the TV show featuring Traci Lords, when it became known to the Swedish public that the films showing the abuse she had been subjected to were spread among men all over Sweden. But this time there was no such reaction.
     Why?

Teenage girls as Sexual Objects
The absence of any reactions shows that people's notions of what is "allowed" to do with young teenage girls have been blunted. Together with other influences, it is commercial pornography that is responsible for this.
     Girls are expected to be sexual objects, and on advertising posters, in music videos, films and series on TV, they are.
     A video where a boy of 13-14 was used by the porn industry would probably arouse more indignation. (For example, compare with the case of Bengt Bolin, the Swedish pensioner who was known as "the 66 year-old" in Swedish newspapers a few years ago. He had abused a 13 year-old boy in Thailand and was later convicted in Sweden.) Furthermore, the reactions would probably have been stronger had there been one single perpetrator who filmed Traci Lords. But it was not, it was the commercial porn industry, which is very seldom questioned at all in Sweden.
     Of course, now and then there are articles in newspapers about one or other of the men behind the porn industry. When this happens, he is often described as a "porn king", and the report often focuses either on how loathsome this particular man is, or how successful. Analyses of the porn business itself, i.e. of the particular form of sex traffic that pornography is, are conspicuous by their absence. In Sweden of the 1990s pornography is most often described in the media not in terms of oppression and exploitation, but as the sexologists represent it; as erotic fantasies to add a little "spark" to people's sex lives. Few ask themselves what that "spark" really consists of.
     The story of Traci Lords is one example of how young girls are exploited by the commercial porn industry. To be able to understand why pornography exists as a mass phenomenon, though, we have to take a closer look at the porn industry; what it is and how it operates.

The t-shirt in the picture above is a trendy t-shirt for teenage girls, short to expose the stomach and tight at the bust, t-shirts with text alluding to sex, in particular sex as a commodity, for example "Open 24 hours", "Any time, any place, anywhere" and "Babe", or this one, "Don't TOUCH (What you can't afford)".

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