Because, again, here is the real problem, Lee.

You insist we consider such a thing a "real" problem when you, in turn, insist that we should go entirely on what the various LEOs [Law Enforcement Officers] say, when they refuse to produce any proof of often outrageous claims, and will not even allow open-minded journalists who are not MAPs view their archives to see if what they are saying is the truth. And this in a system where LEOs have much motivation to lie, and have been proven to spread lies on this and both related and unrelated areas in the past to acquire greater power over society, substantive government funds for bloated task forces, and promotions to powerful, highly paid positions where they could make outrageous claims about things like the thoroughly debunked multi-billion dollar international stuff film industry; the supposed vast conspiracy of Satanic ritual abusers of children who allegedly infiltrated day care centers across the U.S.; and their heavy promotion of the use of hypnosis in recovering "repressed" memories that caused them to arrest and indict numerous innocent people without a shred of material evidence to back up these "uncovered" memories. If LEOs should be considered above the burden of proof with their claims, then we necessarily grant them the power to arrest and indict people with impunity.

When a massive silence, instead of the expected multitude of now adult women (and boys) who were supposedly victims of forced on-camera sexual assault and anatomical mutilation with bodies full of scars culled from multiple cigarette burns and whip lashings, when we live in a climate where such individuals would be given massive sympathy, become total media darlings, and be offered highly lucrative lawsuits and movie deals. But no, you will insist the supposed millions of them out there are "too ashamed" to come public about this, when the two or three who have (sans any visible physical scars) received the above mentioned royal treatment like no child who was ever physically abused in a non-sexual way--or subjected to trauma due to our approved institutions like enforced schooling and the problems it often causes, or the rampant poverty and neglect in the U.S. that kids routinely suffer from--ever have.

When it's well known from the few investigations that have been done made it clear that the vast majority of reported CP are actually grainy old pics of adolescents during the days when such films were legal; that what fits under the rubric of "CP" continually broadens each year; where we know that the increasing access for underagers (largely young adolescents, but increasingly kids younger than that) to technology enabling them to easily create their own pics and vids, and whom are regularly arrested for creating and sharing CP of themselves.

And despite having a system of legal jurisprudence where the burden of proof is on the people making accusatory claims, rather than the reverse, being highly valued as a democratic form of dispensing justice for a very good reason. You have seen what happens when such a system collapses, but clearly do not care if the alleged crime ruffles just the right emotional feathers.

You accuse us of minimizing a problem with no evidence to back up the often outrageous claims that are used as a constant convenient propaganda tool to attack and make unfounded accusations against the MAP community with, yet you and your ideological ilk (which is large but gradually decreasing numbers of people in the West) have no problem with minimizing the large amount of social and political phenomena that cause untold harm to kids--e.g., rampant poverty; physical abuse and bullying by parents and teachers that the disempowered legal status of underagers in today's society make them all but helpless to resist; the even more rampant examples of emotional abuse and bullying that occur for the same reasons (and often passed off as 'discipline' or a legitimate parenting methodology), which kids are helpless to resist for the same reasons; extreme neglect; the bullying from teachers and fellow students as a result of a mandatory totalitarian educational system that allows kids few, if any, choices; the fact that thousands of underagers feel the need to run away from home because they are forced to live in abusive households that are not 'extreme' enough for the authorities to intervene (and because the abuse doesn't involve a sexual component); their near-total lack of civil rights where they are not even allowed freedom of speech or freedom of peaceful assembly, or to advocate for their own interests in any way (save for the growing number of them doing so on socnet sites or video channel sites, where they face the constant threat of increased monitoring and censorship "for their own good"); in other words, you gladly minimize any severe problem often causing great harm and discomfort to kids that do not specifically involve a sexual element.

This, my newest friend, makes it quite clear that your concern is not so much with the safety or suffering of children per se, but rather the preservation of a certain pervasive cultural paradigm and the promotion of a certain moralistic stance regarding children, both of which are reflective of the West's great love/hate relationship with sexuality, and how children (if not adolescents also) should be forcibly kept separate from it. It's not about preventing harm to children as the popular rhetoric goes, but rather the prevention of 'harm' to a specific cultural conception of children that your moral ideology holds as sacrosanct.

And before you denounce the increasing number of non-MAP individuals who are opposing this attitude--like Judith Levine in Harmful to Minors and Roger Lancaster in Sex Panic and the Punitive State--note that they have no problem producing evidence to back up their statements, whereas those who hold your view most often do not. Hence, this boils down to another example of an uncomfortable but important set of objective truths vs. a popular but non-substantive system of beliefs.