Child pornography laws in the Netherlands are among the measures in that country against commercial sexual exploitation of children.
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In 1984, a major police raid against child pornography occurred in the Netherlands. During the late 1970s, there had been media reports about the illicit trade, but there were few if any criminal investigations on the topic.[1]
On October 1, 2002, the Netherlands introduced legislation (Bulletin of Acts and Decrees 470) which deemed "virtual child pornography" as illegal.[2] An attempt to test the law came in 2007, when the public prosecutor opened investigations into Second Life (the US based virtual world).[3] A number of Second Life users engage in sexual ageplay where their online avatars dress, act and look like underage children while engaging in virtual sexual acts. Although there is no Dutch law that legislates against under age depictions of sexual acts for computer generated images, the public prosecutor is investigating this on the basis that these virtual actions may incite child abuse in the real world.[4] So far this has not led to any successful prosecutions.
Press reports in 2008 described a large rise in the number of child pornography websites hosted in the Netherlands, increasing from 100 reports of sites in 2006 to 700 in 2007.[5]
In March 2008, a 52 year old male was convicted for abusing a 5 year old. He has been convicted to a two-year suspended jail sentence, with a ten-year probation period. The police also found a CGI clip depicting sexual acts between a man and an eight year old girl on his computer. Prosecution claims that this animation could have been used to entice young children into sexual acts with grown-ups, due to the title and the contents of the animation.[6]