The Supreme Court’s Approach to Restitution For Victims of Child Pornography Possession
In April of this year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Paroline v. United States. In Paroline, the Court confronted a question about restitution for victims of the sexual abuse of children in the child pornography industry. In the particular case, the victim (whose pseudonym for the litigation is “Amy”) endured sexual abuse by her uncle when she was eight and nine years old. Her uncle perpetrated these violations against his niece in order to produce child pornography. Amy experienced tremendous psychological distress and other complications because of the abuse, and her suffering was severely compounded when she learned that her images were circulating on the Internet among consumers of child pornography.In the case before the Supreme Court, Amy sought restitution from Doyle Randall Paroline, a man who pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing images of child pornography, including two of Amy. Federal law permits victims of child pornography to seek mandatory restitution from their perpetrators, covering the full amount of the victim’s losses. The argument for restitution for Amy under this federal law was that Paroline, by possessing Amy’s images, was part of the infliction of tremendous distress on her and should therefore be required to pay for the total amount of her resulting lost income, future treatment, and counseling costs, amounting to almost $3.4 million. Paroline, in response, claimed that he could not properly be expected to pay restitution in such amounts, given that a causal link could not be traced between his particular crime and any (let alone all) of the harm experienced by Amy, as required by the causation provision of the restitution statute.
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