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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/leishman.html
Case shows tougher child porn law needed
By RORY LEISHMAN - London Free Press
April 9, 2002
Not so long ago, every respectable university undertook to imbue its students with wisdom and virtue. In our debased times, it's a rare academic who is still willing and able to defend the right and condemn the wrong.
Prof. Paul Delaney, chair of the department of English at Simon Fraser University, is a conspicuous exception. He made that clear in testimony before the Supreme Court of British Columbia in the case of John Robin Sharpe, a sexual pervert charged with possessing child pornography.
The case focused on a collection of lewd photographs and two texts written by Sharpe entitled Boyabuse and Stand by America, 1953. Counsel for Sharpe based much their defense on subsection 163.1(6) of the Criminal Code which states, "the court shall find the accused not guilty if the representation or written material that is alleged to constitute child pornography has artistic merit."
Delaney and two other English professors - Lorraine Weir of the University of British Columbia and James Miller of the University of Western Ontario - were called upon to testify at the trial on the artistic merit of Sharpe's writings. The trial judge, Mr. Justice Duncan Shaw, has summarized their evidence in his reasons for judgment. The following quotations are drawn from his summary, not the direct words of the witnesses.
According to Shaw, Delaney did not mince words. He noted the majority of Sharpe's stories, "deal with captivity; boys being kidnapped by people with power and then systematically tortured. This torture creates sexual excitement in the boys and in the torturers. The boys are encouraged to have sex with each other and are then raped and sexually abused by their torturers."
Of course, the Marquis de Sade also had a depraved imagination, but at least he could write with some flare. The same cannot be said for Sharpe. According to Delaney, his style, "is crude and almost childish in its simplicity; there are spelling and grammatical errors, ambiguities and incomplete phrasing; the characterization is as crude and simple as the narrative prose."
Delaney said for him, the effect of Sharpe's writings is "boredom and disgust." He surmised that the, "only authorial purpose is to take pleasure in graphic and repetitive descriptions of pain inflicted on boys by genital mutilation, flogging and rape." In summation, said Delaney, Boyabuse and Stand by America, 1953, could not reasonably be viewed as art."
In marked contrast, Weir claimed Sharpe's writings have literary merit according to the normative "classical hermeneutics" first expounded by Aristotle.
Is that so? Is Weir unaware that Aristotle repudiated pederasty and other forms of sexual immorality in the Nicomachean Ethics?
Miller undertakes to edify Western students with courses in "gay" literature, "taboo" literature and "trans-gressive" literature. According to Miller, Shaw explained, trans-gressive literature, "represents the defiant breaking of taboos controlling sexual relations and practices established by the Holy Book, by literature, and by taboo."
In Miller's opinion, Sharpe's writings belong to the Sadean tradition of trans-gressive literature. He particularly commended Sharpe's depiction of the fortitude of boys under torture. Shaw observed: "While not purporting to pass moral judgment upon Mr. Sharpe's writings, Prof. Miller expressed the view that the theme of fortitude adds to the literary value of the stories in Boyabuse."
After weighing all the contradictory expert testimony in the case, Shaw concluded Sharpe's writings have literary merit. And on this basis, he acquitted Sharpe on all charges relating to his pornographic literature.
In response to this travesty of justice, Parliament should not only toughen up the law on child pornography, but also declare it shall apply notwithstanding any more extravagant judicial misrepresentations of the meaning of freedom of conscience and expression in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Will the Chretien Liberal government initiate such resolute action to protect the children of Canada? Not likely. It is more apt to defer to our judicial masters who insist in the name of artistic freedom that perverts like Sharpe have a right to produce their "trans-gressive literature" for publication, sale and mass distribution over the Internet.
Write Rory at The London Free Press, P.O. Box 2280, London, Ont. N6A 4G1 or fax 519-667-4528 or E-mail.
Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@lfpress.com
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