campaigner said yesterday.

Mrs. Patti Knap, a speaker at a conference on child abuse, called for a boycott of stores selling porn and a tighter control of imports.

"Pornographic magazines readily available encourage the use of children, always with the suggestion that the child actually enjoys being victimised,'' she told the National Symposium on Children at Risk.

"Playboy and Penthouse magazines have joked about and depicted adults having sex with children, even retarded children, and these are considered the `mildest' of pornographic materials.'' New Yorker Mrs. Knap, 32, said she was raped when she was 19, by a man who used porn. She became public relations director of a US anti-porn campaign, Morality in Media.

She married in July and is now living in Bermuda.

She is one of a host of speakers at the two-day conference, run by the National Drug Strategy and a new charity, the Coalition for the Protection of Children.

Mrs. Knap told delegates: "Pornography is a lie, and Bermuda is buying that lie each and every time we make a purchase in a store that offers such material as `harmless entertainment'.

"Throughout our Island, innocuous-looking gift shops, card and stationery stores, drug stores, even grocery stores, are selling material which is powerfully altering the sexuality of our young men while denying the inherent dignity of our women and young girls.

"Invariably child sex offenders are found to have been introduced to pornography in some way,'' she said.

"If anyone has any doubts about pornography's effects, I suggest they visit the meetings of Sexaholics Anonymous and personally witness the trauma. It seems to me such a group may be needed here.

"There is more evidence suggesting that pornography leads to sex crimes than there is to say that smoking leads to cancer.'' Mrs. Knap told The Royal Gazette she was not claiming explicit photographs of child sex were on the shelves of local stores. But there were magazines in Bermuda speaking positively about sex with family members, including children.

The message was carried in articles, "letters to the editor'' and cartoons.

Porn magazines also showed women as children, wearing pigtails and surrounded by cuddly toys and dolls, she said.

After Mrs. Knap had spoken, a local man who has asked to be identified only as "Simon'' told delegates how he was molested by a male family friend between the ages of nine and 11.

He said he tried to report the abuse, but his parents regarded sex as a forbidden topic and he was met with disbelief. When he grew up he was convicted of child molesting himself, and sent to prison.

He called on Government to provide "intensive treatment'' for abusers, who were sick, not criminal.

Dr. June Hill told delegates about her work as chairwoman of King Edward Hospital's child protection team, working with children who had been abused physically, emotionally or sexually.

In 1991, the team had dealt with 39 cases of abuse, involving 18 boys and 21 girls, aged from three months to 16 years. About 44 percent were physically abused, 26 percent neglected, 15 percent sexually abused, and two percent emotionally abused.

There had been too few prosecutions of adults responsible. "Sexual abuse is something we're seeing more often now,'' said Dr. Hill. The increase was probably due to more cases being reported to the authorities.

Sexual abusers were usually male, and known to the children. Abuse could involve showing children pornography or sex acts, touching or penetration.

"We have no idea how often it occurs, but we do know it's probably greatly under-reported even now.'' Sexually-abused children were often emotionally disturbed and withdrawn. They could have personality changes and their schoolwork could suffer.

Dr. Hill called on adults to believe children when they said they had been abused.

Canadian researcher Ms Lynda Laushway said child sex abuse could happen to rich or poor children, from any race, and from loving or neglectful homes.

Victims could grow up behaving in self-destructive and anti-social ways.

Earlier in the day, local historian Dr. Eva Hodgson told the conference of the inherited problems of black families.

African people had a long history of strong family life, taking in the extended family and kinship group. But these networks and traditions were disrupted when the people were made slaves and forced to build a new culture.

This was a "colossal social and psychological destruction,'' and it was followed by exclusion from the major institutions of white-run society.

"The real miracle is that so many black families were formed and were stable and did perform the functions that were expected of them,'' she said. Kids that no one cares about -- p2.