So Why Did You Do It?
The last thing I expected to be reading this morning was an article entitled, “‘So why did you do it?’: Explanations provided by Child Pornography Offenders,” in Sexual Offender Treatment, Volume 8 (2013), Issue 1, published by Pabst Science Publishers in Germany. And yet that’s exactly what I did.
I turned 52 this year, an age unfathomable back in 1990 when I was a freshman in college. That’s when I met Z* for the first time, a member of a fraternity that was the polar opposite of Animal House. It was a bunch of mild-mannered engineers who goofed around and enjoyed each other’s company. Joining a frat was something I’d never even considered, but this house felt like home. I pledged and lived with Z and the rest of the brotherhood for the next three years.
A few weeks ago, I discovered that Z is currently serving a 65-month sentence for possession and sharing of child pornography. He was prosecuted by the Assistant U.S. Attorney of the Major Crimes Unit, and since reading the government’s sentencing memorandum, I’ve been trying to figure out where it all went wrong for my fraternity brother.
I attended Cornell University, so when I imagine someone I know from my college years dipping into a life of crime, I think…insider trading? Cooking the books? Stealing a patent or two? Those types of greedy white-collar crimes are comprehensible. But I remain shocked at my friend’s transgression, and as I begin to accept his unfortunate fate, I can’t help but wonder if I had played a part in his downfall.
Even that last sentence I just wrote makes me feel uneasy. Child pornography is such a venal subject that I feel tainted having typed that very phrase, and reading about it in the news or even in a scholarly journal is incredibly upsetting. And yet I must persevere here, because not talking about it isn’t going to help, either.
As a fraternity pledge, one of my tasks had been not only to gather but memorize information about my future brothers, jotted down in a little green notepad. When I found it in my basement files, I was surprised to see that Z’s was the first entry. One of the categories I had to commit to memory was a brother’s hobbies. Z’s was, “reading, writing, models, running, volleyball, comics, looking for available women.” Another category was a personal quote, and Z gave me one he had to spell for me. It began, “’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves,” which I did not know at the time was Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” a poem comprised of so many gibberish words that recalling it would pose a great challenge. Which was the point.
It was all in good fun. Z was a fine, solid soul. In the time I knew him, I can’t recall a single instance where he was unkind to anyone. He was my roommate in the house during my sophomore year, and during my senior year, he was one of the three brothers with whom I shared an apartment in Collegetown.
When I told my wife about Z’s incarceration and filled her in with my history, she asked me why I hadn’t kept in touch with him. “For someone you lived with for two years…seems like you would?”
And it gave me pause. Why hadn’t I? I’d done a fine job of keeping up with many members of my fraternity. In fact, for my wedding that was held thirteen years after my graduation, ten of them had been in attendance, and my best man and my usher were both brothers. My best man is my best friend, and even though we now live on opposite coasts, the only years we have not met up in person since graduation were the COVID-affected 2020 and 2021.
In the timeline established in Z’s sentencing memorandum, May 2020 was when he “was identified as the subscriber of a particular IP address…that was downloading child pornography from a peer-to-peer file sharing network.” The following spring, he was arrested when “multiple electronic devices were seized — one of which was actively downloading from BitTorrent and sharing child pornographic files at the time.”
As we all know, the pandemic was a rough time for many. Had I reached out to him when I myself was going stir crazy like the rest of the world, would it have made a difference? One thing that surprised me from the journal article I read about child pornography possession is that consumption is not purely indicative of sexual desire. In fact, some offenders receive a different “positive emotion” from their experience:
…viewing CP [child pornography] became a source of relief and a means to escape
negativity, resulting from depression, anxiety or stress, sexual frustration, and emotional drought (“loneliness, wish to be loved.”). For some offenders, the positive side of CP was in the shock-value of the depicted material…”long story but i needed a distraction and nothing else worked cos I was not too bothered about it i.e. booze. CP was, in my view, very disturbing and t acted as the best distraction [sic]”.
For others, the viewing process went beyond the relief aspect, triggering feelings of “being in control”: “Shocked initially but then was intrigued enough to go back. I think I carried on as a way to control some positive/ exciting feelings in a world that I felt I was drowning in due to stress from relationships, work, aprenting [sic] etc. essentially I wasnt [sic] coping and this was a means to receive a positive feeling I could control.”
Perhaps it’s just wish fulfillment that I opt for the best-case scenario, where Z’s motivation wasn’t actual attraction to minors but rather an attempt, a terribly ill-chosen attempt, to mitigate his stress or depression. Reading through these accounts, it’s almost tempting to draw a parallel between those who practice self-harm (those who try to feel something through the creation and release of pain) with these types of CP offenders, but it’s worth noting that self-harm is a victimless crime while CP is most definitely not. The article rightfully points out the inherent danger of continued CP consumption: “Again, some of the responses clearly linked back to a developing sexual interest in children, based on increasing exposure to the material.”
It’s ludicrously egocentric of me to even contemplate that a sustained friendship with Z would’ve saved him, but nevertheless, I’m filled with regret. Because the reason why I hadn’t kept in touch with him is so shamefully careless.
My answer to my wife: “Well, Z was…kind of annoying?”
Back in the day, Z talked a lot, especially when he got a little tipsy. He was a bit of a know-it-all. He was messy in the bathroom, often leaving the bath mat soaking wet after a shower.
Were those really the reasons why I never bothered to contact him ever again, after graduation? I believe so. In that cruel equation, prison is the price of being socially inconsiderate.
I don’t know why I became better friends with other brothers in the house, even when I lived with Z my entire sophomore year. Chalk it up to chemistry or the vagaries of collegiate interpersonal relationships, I suppose. As far as my senior year goes, I needed someone to pay a fourth of the rent on that apartment above the bar, and Z, even though he’d graduated the year before, was sticking around Ithaca, and he was a warm body who could foot the cash.
Still, he was a brother, and more than anything, times like these make me realize how blessed my life has been. If alternate universes exist, then there lives a guilt-ridden Sung II, who during his raging puberty years got so angry at his mother that the pencil he chucked at her went straight into one of her eyeballs instead of landing squarely between them. (Yes, this really happened; the pointed indentation between her eyes was there for days.)
I just visited my mother yesterday; what if she met me at the door with an eyepatch she’s been wearing for thirty years? What would that be like, to be reminded again and again of an unforgivable, irreversible moment of impetuosity?
What about Sung III, who bought a gaggle of visiting high school seniors a case of beers and a bottle of vodka? (Yes, this also happened; I’d recently turned 21 and was magnanimously stupid that summer.) What if one of those kids had died of alcohol poisoning?
Tragedies — crimes — happen. All the time. I’m just really, really lucky it didn’t happen to me.
Maybe it’s insensitive of me to compare my singular acts of immaturity to what Z did, but I disagree. Sharing child pornography used to be a physical affair, one sleazy human being trading stacks of photos with another; in economic terms, it was a transaction with significant friction. But in the realm of the internet, it’s just a search phrase away. The Netflixazation of underaged smut has made the illicit procurement simple enough to diminish the enormous legal ramifications of the offender’s actions. One click, and the Rubicon is crossed.
During the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, I was a little lost, too, but instead of searching for child pornography like Z, I was driving around in an ersatz Los Angeles, by way of Grand Theft Auto V. How I wish now I’d emailed him to tell him I’m playing a very juvenile video game to pass the time. Just one email, to an old friend, to a brother.
With the holidays upon us, it pains me to envision how Z will be spending his first one behind bars. It’s been almost three decades, but I recall his fondness for Christmas. Every year we got an outsized Douglas fir for the fraternity house to decorate before our fall exams, and Z was always eager to string the lights and wrap the tinsel. All I can hope at this point is that he’ll get the help and support he needs to begin the process of rebuilding the rest of his life.
* Z is not his real name, which I’ve chosen to protect out of respect for his family.
