Even with all of the strict pornography laws around the world, child pornography is still being produced. Most often the pornography is being produced for the benefit of the producer or a small group of customers that is known to the producer. During the last decade, there have been some dramatic and well-publicized raids of child porn distribution and production rings in North America.

The problem is that the production centers have moved from North America to Asia, Eastern Europe, and India. There have also been small production centers in Central and South America.

Due to perpetual poor economics, countries in Central Asia have had a long and sordid problem with child pornography. Child pornography goes hand in hand with child prostitution. Because of this fact child erotica and pornography continue as a thriving business in countries like Thailand.

Families who are impoverished in other countries allow there children to be used in the production of pornography. Street children sometimes find that it is hard to resist the any opportunity of obtaining money to survive even though they might have to resort to participating in pornography production and prostitution.

The new epicenter in the world for the production of child pornography is Eastern Europe. Two of the major reasons behind this are the collapse of these countries' economics and law enforcement agencies. There are many parts in Eastern Europe, there is a feeling that "anything is allowed" as long as you split some of your profits with the local mafia. This "anything is allowed" feeling also goes for the massive production of erotica and pornography involving children.

The production of child erotica and pornography in these Eastern European countries is two-fold. With the first part, there is so-called "legal" material (photographs and videotapes) that involves "naturalists" or "nudists". Most often the participants in these photographs and videotapes are not nudist but people who can overcome their modesty in order to put some food on their tables. Then of course there is the illegal material that involves children participating in explicit sexual acts.

It is really difficult for some people to picture child pornography in their mind. Most people cannot concieve any reason why somebody would even want this material. However, if you have ever seen any explicit sexual magazine or videotape, whether it was gay, lesbian, or straight, and substituted for just one, some, or all of the actors, you will have some idea on what I am talking about.

To give you an idea how prevelent child pornography has been in the past years here is part of an abstract that was prepared under Grant No. 84-JN-AX-K007 from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Office of Justice Assistance, Research and Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. The principal investigator was Judith A. Reisman, PhD.

Mainstream erotica/pornography is widely believed to portray nonviolent adult female nudity for an adult audience. However, a content analysis of 373 issues of Playboy,184 of Penthouse, and 126 of Hustler magazines, December 1953 to December 1984, yielded 6,004 child images as well as an estimated 14,854 images of crime and violence. Newsstand- available child-depiction in the context of erotica/pornography, imagery received both by juvenile and adult readers, increased nearly 2,600 percent (from 16 to 412) from 1954 to 1984, peaking in 1978 at 465 newsstand-available depictions. Nearly two-thirds of the child scenarios were sexual and/or violent; the dominant age-bracket 3 to 11 years; girls more prevalent than boys and most likely associated with adult males; and racial portrayals almost exclusively Caucasian. Close to 1,000 sexual scenarios included children with adults; 80 percent of the children were actively involved in all scenes; and each magazine portrayed children as unharmed and/or benefited by adult/child sex.

Juxtaposed with some 50,000 images of adult female nudity, the 6,004 child depictions were also associated with 14,854 images of adult crime and violence. In the latter, young adult Caucasian males and females were equally victimized, with primary offenders being young adult Caucasian males. As the only mainstream newsstand publication of its genre from 1954 to 1968, Playboy averaged 17 monthly depictions of children, crime and violence. Since 1975, the addition of Penthouse and Hustler increased the newsstand-available aggregate to 111 monthly depictions of children, crime and violence. In sum, these magazines paired adult female nudity with images of children, crime and violence, for millions of juvenile and adult readers for over three decades.