by Pat Centner
Alejandro Avila, the Lake Elsinore, California, man accused of raping and murdering Samantha Runnion, has been reported by two Southern California newspapers as being involved with pornography through the rental of videotapes and visits to porn sites on his computer.
The Orange County Register in Santa Ana said Avila's mother recalled finding pornographic images on her son's computer, while a Los Angeles Times article indicated that Avila had a video rental membership at Video Shores, a store near his apartment. As an example of his viewing habits, store records indicate that last December 26, Avila rented two X-rated films and the children's movie, The Emperor's New Groove.
This high-profile case is just one of several U.S. tragedies in the past few months that involve the murder, rape, and/or sexual assault of children. Statistics regarding such crimes are difficult to obtain for cases involving children 12 and under because most states do not formally track them. However, a February 1997 report compiled by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice and published online by Violence Against Women reveals some disturbing facts. Police-recorded incidents of rape in three states revealed that 44% of victims were under the age of 18, while the self-reports of convicted rape and sexual offenders in those states revealed that 58%, or roughly six in 10, of their victims were age 12 or younger.
While this is of grave concern, the real “elephant in the room” is pornography and its relationship to sex crimes. Law enforcement officers typically report a criminal's use of pornography if it is revealed in the investigation of a crime, but this information is seldom formally tracked or consistently reported. However, several studies of convicted sex criminals show an extremely high correlation between porn use and actual sex crimes committed. One prison chaplain said that during his 15-year career, 100% of the inmates he has known who have been incarcerated for a sex crime have been pornography users.
Don Wildmon is chairman of the American Family Association, a pro-family group well acquainted with the negative influences of pornography on the family and traditional morality. “Pornography use and the sickness it causes is growing in prevalence because of its unhindered availability on the Internet,” Wildmon says. “It must be recognized as the major threat it is to this country, and Christians must become educated on how to stamp it out before the number of children raped and killed reaches epidemic proportions.”
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(Pat Centner is a staff writer for AFA Journal, a monthly publication of the American Family Association. This update courtesy of Agape Press.)