Sharing child pornography photos illegal – AG

Attorney General Anil Nandlall says that persons distributing sexually explicit images of children while claiming they are trying to raise awareness about child pornography are just as guilty as the makers and could be held accountable.

“That which they are trying to prevent they themselves are doing or are contributing to… Ignorance of the law is not a defence to anything. You can’t claim you don’t know…  They need to look at the Sexual Offences Act, which deals with the indecent exposure. It has a whole regime of offences which many may not have seen,” Nandlall told Stabroek News.

His comment comes in the wake of the recent circulation on BlackBerry Messenger and Facebook of a photograph depicting a female child engaged in oral sex with an adult male. Some persons who shared the photograph on Facebook claimed that the child is from Guyana and defended sharing the image as indicative of their being against child pornography or as an attempt to aid the child’s parent in becoming aware of the situation.

Anil Nandlall

Nandlall said government could soon be taking a firm legal hand to regulate the distribution of nude photographs, pornographic videos and other offensive material posted online. He noted that many times women, particularly, are the targets and in some instances images are deleteriously altered to portray them in sexually explicit ways.

“I am privy to many instances of very graphic nude photographs, of women in particular, being posted all over the internet. Some of the photographs have been altered using Photoshop software. You also have instances where I would have seen persons post sexual intercourse videos online, most times out of maliciousness,” Nandlall said.

He also recalled that during the unrest in Linden in July and August of this year, images of violent incidents in Nigeria were being circulated as if they had represented incidents here, which could have had dire repercussions. In one of the photographs that were circulated, there was the image of a man’s head with a gaping hole, possibly from being shot at point blank range. On July 18 in Linden, three persons were killed after police opened fire during a protest in the town.

“We clearly are not a responsible people by allowing these things to continue… We have to look at mechanisms to regulate what is published on the internet and other related fora,” Nandlall said. “Legislation may be one of the mechanisms but that may not be the most effective one because it is difficult to trace back the origin of these publications,” he added.   He said one option would be to engage internet service providers and come up with some collaborative scheme to deal with the very serious problem.

Nandlall said Guyana could also learn lessons of the global community, such as the International Telecommunication Union and the Central American State of Costa Rica, which have online child protection initiatives. “I have no doubt that the more advanced countries are confronted with the same types of problems and we can look at the approach adopted by them for guidance,” he said.