In 1970, we had the Hill-Link report. Father Morton Hill, who started Morality in Media, and Mr. Link did a research project as members of the Presidential Commission on obscenity and pornography and reported to the Congress that pornography was very detrimental to American society and Congress, almost to the person, accepted that report. There was another report, the majority report of the Commission [which Congress rejected], that said that pornography had no effect whatsoever on any individual or society, and that's the report the press mass produced, and you could buy in airports. We'd do search warrants and find it in the porno stores.
In 1971 there was a meeting of the big three in Las Vegas, and this was the first time ever that pornographers organized their efforts and divided up our country. The big three at the time were Milton Luros of Parliament News in Los Angeles, Robert DeBernardo, a made member in the Gambino family from Star Distributors in New York, and from Peachtree Enterprises George Michael Thevis, who is still in federal prison today. Those three men in 1971, with their attorneys and entourages, cut up the United States and established distribution rights, production rights, and recruiting rights - who will do what, and how they will do it, and what defense attorneys would be set up in a national network to defend the pornographers in their areas.
In the mid to late 1970s, child pornography evolved out of adult pornography. When my father investigated pornography, there were no federal or state child pornography or child protection laws. We had to prove that child porn was obscene to make it illegal. When an underage person was involved it usually was double the penalty for the perpetrator. It was only because of citizens like yourselves got together and said, no, this isn't right. This is children. It's totally different, and finally, on February 6, 1978, a federal law was enacted removing the obscenity requirement from child porn, making it totally separate, and making child porn by itself illegal, so you did not have to use the obscenity test anymore. And then the states followed.
But child porn grew right out of adult pornography. It was all one and the same. The worst years in our country were '73, '74, '75 and '76, when you could go in just about any porno store and buy kids depicted on lamp shades engaged in sex acts, on the back of playing cards, and in movies, with each other, with adults, with animals, whatever. It was just all part and parcel of the total pornography industry.
In 1977, the FBI launched a major case called MIPORN. Two FBI agents went undercover and established a business called Gold Coast Specialties and foreign bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, and set up a warehouse in Miami and then went across the country and into Hawaii, meeting with major pornographers and purchasing what they believed to be obscene material. They had it all shipped to their warehouse in Miami. All the cases involved the organized crime strike force in Miami. On Valentine's Day 1980 we did simultaneous search warrants at 54 locations across the country.
In 1986, the Final Report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography (The "Meese Commission") was followed by a book titled "How the Meese Commission Lied." It was total propaganda, untruth put out by the pornographers and their attorneys, and it sold in bookstores and airports and everywhere. Not only that, but members of the Meese Commission were sued by the American Civil Liberties Union with money from the pornographers. I can remember donating to Dr. James Dobson's legal defense fund because he had no money to fight the suit. After all kinds of expenses had been incurred by Dr. Dobson and others, the ACLU dropped the suit.
In 1987, the FBI began a case called Blue Darcy to go after the wealthiest, most prolific producer and distributor of pornography in history, Reuben Sturman of Cleveland, Ohio. Sturman wound up serving time for tax related felonies, obscenity and racketeering in Federal prison in Kentucky, where he died in 1997.
In 1989, the FBI initiated a case called Woodworm, targeting all major producers and distributors of pornography in the San Fernando Valley.
In 1995, Congress authorized $10 million a year for Internet crimes against children, based on the FBI's "Innocent Images" investigations.
In the early 1960s, organized crime established a west coast base of operations in the San Fernando Valley. My father watched this take place and investigated it. The Colombo organized crime family sent two people out with money to start their west coast operations. It became the very first pornography business that departmentalized and had different corporation names for the different parts of their business - distributing, producing, recruiting participants for the movies, filming, packaging, advertising, all had different corporation names to make law enforcement think it was all owned by different people.
The defense doesn't want you to use common sense. The defense doesn't want the word pornography to be used in court. They want to say "adult material" or "sexually oriented material." They want to confuse you. They want to create doubt.
Try to use common sense. In one of the MIPORN cases in Miami, a film showed foreign objects being inserted into a body cavity of a woman. Defense attorneys argued that this had scientific value because it showed elasticity of female muscles of this particular body cavity. The prosecutor, a woman who happened to be seven months pregnant at the time, asked the ladies of the jury, 'How many of you have had babies? How many of you needed to see a film like this to learn about your elasticity?' The defendant was convicted.
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