California law about reporting child porn puts psychotherapists in a bind

On the face of it, the amendment may seem like a helpful addition to the reporting mandates for psychotherapists and psychiatrists. Child pornography is, after all, a damaging and illegal practice. As a society we surely want to decrease its production, distribution and consumption.

On closer inspection, however, the law falls short on three fronts: First, it will not protect children from either the production or distribution of child pornography, which is its intent. Second, it violates therapist-patient confidentiality and decreases the likelihood that people will get the psychological help they need to stop accessing child pornography; if the goal is to undercut production by reducing demand, the law will likely have the opposite effect. And, third, it conflates desire with action.

There is little evidence to suggest that consuming child pornography causes individuals to commit sexual abuse. While it’s true that individuals who commit sexual abuse are more likely than others to have consumed child pornography, this is a clear case of correlation and not causality. Given the ease and privacy with which people can access sexual images of children and teenagers, data on consumers of child pornography are neither complete nor reliable. The majority of the evidence we have comes from those convicted of what is termed a “hands-on” sex offense against a child.