In the Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, there is the story of a “plump” 36-year-old computer programmer “with a receding hairline and a rabbity twitch” who abducted a ten-year-old girl, attempted to have sex with her, and then killed her. Miserably enough, this is a relatively common story nowadays, but somehow this Toronto tale is especially creepy. Go read it if you have a minute.

Two things in particular stand out about the story. One is that it makes clear the gross disparity between the immeasurable grief brought about by the murder and the intense but essentially frivolous urge that caused it. “By the time police were notified of Holly’s disappearance,” the article says, “Mr. Briere had already dismembered Holly with a small manual saw, this after putting her body in his fridge for a time, and made two trips to dispose of her clothing and some of her body parts.” The perp had left his home at about 6:00 PM with the explicit intention of abducting some girl, and by 6:30 the victim was dead. Imagine that — a whole life extinguished for the gratification of an impulse that lasted less than half an hour. (What’s more, the impulse wasn’t even gratified, since he found it physically impossible to penetrate the young girl.)

The second remarkable thing about the story is the direct line it draws between child pornography and rape. Never before, a detective told the newspaper, had he seen “such a direct A to B connection between pornography and a sex crime.” The next time “’someone says that child pornography is a victimless crime and harmless,’ this case, where Mr. Briere ‘went literally from viewing images to snatching Holly Jones,’ will remove any doubt.” And yet while this is an incredibly direct connection between porn and murder, it would seem prudent to refrain from leaping to a causal connection. Did the porn really excite the murder? Or was the porn a different expression of the same deeper impulse that caused the perp to go commit murder?

As you think about it — about the proliferation of child porn across the internet and, more generally, the sexualization of children in the media — you realize that there are few attempts to combat this spread of imagery with a dose of reality. That is, yes, cops arrest purveyors of child porn. Yes, there are vigilante groups attempting to strike at pedophilies. Yes,there are now ad campaigns cautioning people to resist the lure of jailbait. But what is lacking is an in-your-face demonstration of some of the perils of pedophilia. The reason for this is no doubt that it would be difficult to produce such propaganda without basically creating child pornography. But at the same time, you can’t help but wonder if stories such as this — which emphasize the gratuity of the urge in comparison to the gravity of the consequences — might not be a healthy dose of reality for some guys. Have a look at children who have children — that’s a reality check. Or even worse, have a look at the story in which a man tried to rape a six-year-old — the disparity in sizes between the adult and the child resulting in a such a severe injury that her “intestines were hanging between her legs.” That can’t be sexy, can it?

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