Committed to purging child pornography from the internet, Adult Sites Against Child Pornography (ASACP) was founded in 1996 by Alec Helmy, the president of XBiz. ASACP urges consumers to speak out against internet child pornography, and unifies the adult industry against it. Developed as a response to the mainstream industry’s attempt to link adult pornography with child pornography, ASACP sets and promotes a standard for adult entertainment. Executive Director Joan Irvine said about the adult business, “We are providing the best practices for the industry. Companies want to be presenting and doing things legitimately; they really want to comply with our code of ethics.” ASACP encourages the adult industry to function as a self-regulating business, and also heightens child pornography awareness. On their resource page are links such as industry Best Practices, the Children’s Protection and Advocacy Coalition, and even a sexual abuse recovery forum.

ASACP since its birth in 1996 has had the adult industry’s support, but in the last year and a half, since Irvine signed on with the company, it has won tremendous backing throughout the industry. Irvine, who is a member of the American Society of Association Executives, is a therapist with a background in sex therapy. She was looking for a cause-based company to work with when she found ASACP. “It had to be something I really believed in,” she maintained. “And ASACP fit my background completely. I couldn’t believe something like this existed.”

ASACP acts as a hassle-free, no-questions-asked resource for reporting child pornography, and also facilitates the removal of it from the web through two primary methods. Their chief function is to act as a hotline to which people can report suspect sites; they have assisted in generating over eighty thousand suspected child pornography reports. “Many people don’t feel comfortable reporting child pornography directly to the government,” Irvine observed. “They may feel that they’ll be asked why they were looking at pornography to begin with, or [otherwise questioned].” ASACP acts as a gateway for many people who would not normally speak out, to give testimony to child pornography that they have witnessed without worrying about repercussions. If people reporting elect to include an email address, ASACP will even send them a thank you note. “We want to let people know that we have received it,” Irvine said.

Often people are confused by the fact that sites they have reported to ASACP are not always shut down right away. Some want to know about the status of their report. ASACP cannot shut down sites themselves, nor can they provide any information about the report once they have alerted the FBI and other appropriate agencies. “We do believe that there’s an educational aspect that we need to get out,” said Irvine. “We are not law enforcement. Once we turn it over to them we don’t know what’s going on.” Frequently when a reported site has not been removed from the web, it is because investigations have not yet been completed, or that it has been found to be in compliance with current child pornography laws.

Once a claim is validated, ASACP sends a report directly to the FBI in Los Angeles, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Validating child pornography is a process taken very seriously; ASACP will not simply report any claim from an unknown source. “People will often criticize us for not reporting a model that looks young; we want them to understand why we can’t just report someone who appears [to be] young without looking into it,” Irvine commented. “One of the reasons the FBI works so well with us is that ninety nine point nine percent of the reports we send them are validated child pornography. They know that [this] is something they can act on immediately.”

The second method under which ASACP operates is by gaining the support of adult websites in the form of usually members and sponsors. The application process for sponsor and membership includes a method called ‘spidering,’ which is a careful screening of the prospective site through a list of tip-off words that could reveal the potential presence of child pornography. Once ASACP has determined that the site is ‘clean,’ it will then approve the site to display their logo. Said Irvine, the logo “indicates that we have reviewed the site and found that it complied with our code of ethics.”

After membership approval, ASACP will periodically monitor its sites through spidering. Affirmed Irvine, “Through our new technology, we can always be spidering our members, making sure that they are constantly in compliance with our code of ethics. That way, we can really say that our members are clean.” Through this process, ASACP also offers protection against internet predators. “We will be able to give a full report; if an affiliate is directing traffic that is child pornography related, we can report that back to our member,” Irvine pointed out.
By continually acquiring members and sponsors, ASACP will not only gain industry support, but hopes to eliminate child pornography from the web, site by site. “It’s been a real industry effort; everyone sees that the industry is supporting this,” asserted Irvine. “People will write to us wanting to be members,” she said, “and we’ll write back wanting to know if their 2257’s are in order; they’ll make sure that it’s taken care of right away. Or we’ll say something about an image looking very young, and they’ll respond right away certifying that all models are eighteen or older. It has become the association that everyone wants to be a member of.”

Among the Founding Sponsors are AVN Online, XBiz, and Sex.Com at twenty five thousand dollars and up per sponsorship. Title Sponsors include SilverCash and Adult.Com, coming in at ten thousand dollars, and five thousand dollar sponsors such as Adam and Eve are dubbed Corporate Sponsors. “Ninety five percent of revenues are funded by sponsorships,” reported Irvine. “When someone becomes a sponsor, we usually put out a press release.”

ASACP members are sites that are approved to display the ASACP logo on their pages, after being initially screened and periodically monitored for any material that could be child pornography. The three different types of memberships include an Executive, at twenty four hundred dollars, a Crusader, at twelve hundred dollars, and a Guardian, at three hundred dollars.

“We wanted to provide a lot of options for anyone who wanted to come onboard,” said Irvine, and provide options they did. There will even be a way for “ma and pa websites,” as she termed it, to be involved in the fight against child pornography. For a substantially lower price, ASACP will do a less lengthy search of the potential member site, therefore opening up the opportunity to any company that would like to participate. There will, however, be a disclaimer noting that such members do not undergo the same inspection as approved members and sponsors.

While their growth in the last year and a half has been groundbreaking, ASACP has not gone without their share of obstacles. “At first it was getting the technology to do the spidering, and getting the member sites reviewed,” said Irvine. When she first joined with ASACP, spidering was a manual procedure. For the first five months, she searched potential member sites for words that could indicate child pornography, one by one. It was only recently that ASACP developed the technology to allow for more thorough, efficient spidering.
“It was also getting the financial support we needed,” she added, about members and sponsors. But gaining the industry’s support happened quickly for Irvine, who initially had a goal of six months for putting together an advisory council. That all changed quickly, when Sex.Com and Python.Com contacted her. They were interested in becoming sponsors, but not convinced that ASACP had enough qualifications yet. Irvine and ASACP rose to the challenge, establishing their advisory council in November of 2002 instead of February. “We ended up being two months ahead of where we planned to be,” noted Irvine.

With only volunteers to “spread the message,” as Irvine dubbed it, ASACP boldly decided to employ a ‘go-getter’ strategy for maximum exposure. “I put together the sponsorship program and reviewed it; we went to people in the industry and said ‘what would you like us to do in order for you to be involved,’” she recalled.
The result was successful; ASACP secured their founding sponsors such as AVN Online, also on their advisory council, and found that companies were not only willing to work with them but also with each other. “People really respect what the organization stands for,” commented Irvine.

Last year their presence at INHOPE, an association that joins European Internet Hotline providers in an effort to remove child pornography from the internet, was well received. While INHOPE was at first apprehensive about dealing with an association in the adult industry, both parties quickly realized their fight was for a similar cause. “INHOPE was grateful to hear that people in the adult industry were so professional,” said Irvine. ASACP found that INHOPE faces some of the same issues they do. Currently a chief concern across the board is the fact that minors are using phones and other electronic devices that can generate imagery, without supervision. “We have applied for membership [to INHOPE]; there’s so much we can learn from them,” emphasized Irvine. “They’re dealing with phones doubling as computers, images, adult chat rooms; [we want to know] how are they handling this?”

Although some internet hotlines such as INHOPE view even adult pornography as a problem area, ASACP believes they can still be involved with them. “Even though we’re against child pornography, we’re not against adult pornography,” clarified Irvine. “Some of these hotlines are. They have larger agendas.”
In fact, Irvine lists one of INHOPE’s policies, the legal adult age, as an objective for ASACP themselves. “Some countries define it as sixteen,” she illustrated. “If you view [a depiction] of a sixteen year old in those countries, it is legal. But view it [in the states], and it is not. One of our goals is to connect up with INHOPE to define the international agenda age as eighteen.”

Irvine summed up ASACP’s goals for this year easily and succinctly. “Once we complete the technology aspect, including the spidering, the bigger companies will come onboard. They have the resources; [having them onboard] demonstrates to the industry that we are being recognized for our efforts and our effectiveness.”

ASACP’s next endeavor is to gain some mainstream acceptance. “Once we have [the technology aspect] in place, we can work with the mainstream industry,” Irvine confirmed. ASACP believes that circulating through mainstream can only help them in their mission. Said Irvine about the industry outside the adult business, “Once we are realized as an organization truly self-regulating and truly concerned about children, hopefully we’ll be able to contribute to mainstream, to let them know ‘Here’s what we are doing, can we provide you with the same information?’” Irvine’s vision of working with the mainstream industry spans ASACP onto a global level. “Eventually, we will be spidering the whole web,” she concluded.

To report child pornography on the web through ASACP, click here.

If you are an adult webmaster and want to apply to ASACP for membership, click here.