Church of England Cutting Violent Porn Providing ISPs Funds
The Church of England is strongly considering cutting off its funding to Internet Service Providers who refuse to start cracking down on disturbing Internet pornography.
A report released by the Daily Mail revealed that the Church plans to withdraw its investments into ISPs, which are said to amount to millions of UK pounds.
The Bishop of Bristol told the newspaper that immediate action needed to be taken to tackle the vast collection of violent porn available on the Internet, which he blamed for a number of deaths of related nature.
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One particular case that shocked the entire UK community was that of the murder of Joanna Yeates, a 25-year-old landscape architect, in December 2010. She was assaulted, strangled and murdered by Vincent Tabak, a 33-year-old Dutch engineer.
The man was found in possession of many violent porn images on his computer, including women being suffocated during sex. Police also found 30 images of child pornography where young children were sexually abused. The British Crown Court said that Tabak had an “obsession” with such material, and sought to live out his fantasies in real life.
Tabak was sentenced to life in prison, but the Rt. Rev Mike Hill has warned that many people are in danger of being exposed and influenced by this material. He also urged the Church of England to do everything in its power to force ISPs to deny access to these images.
The Bishop said: “This kind of pornography seems so degrading, obscene and deeply unhelpful to the building of healthy communities.”
“It beats me why any Internet service provider would be happy to have that kind of stuff go out at all. You would have thought the risk to their reputations meant that any financial gain was not worth it.”
Besides withdrawing the Church’s money, the Bishop is also urging everyone who holds stakes in these ISPs to pull out their investments. He hopes that the threat of such financial losses will be enough to force the ISPs into action, and make them realize that concealing people who access images of graphic abuse or child exploitation is not worth the risk.
Among the ISPs accused of not doing enough to tackle the problem include AOL, BT Broadband, Sky and Virgin Media.
Internet laws prohibit people from visiting websites featuring extreme sexual violence, bestiality and necrophilia, which is punishable with up to five years in prison, but they are rarely enforced and few are ever persecuted. Officials have said that part of the problem is that not enough funding exists to enforce tighter surveillance and control.
Debate has emerged challenging the notion that violent sexual material has a direct correlation to every crime of such a nature, but Rev Hill said that no efforts should be spared in making sure other murders like that of Yeates do not happen again.
“Of course not everybody who looks at Internet pornography becomes a violent and sadistic killer. But the fact is a few do, and it may “turn on” something that was not there before,” the Bishop warned.
