Hi everyone. I really wish I wasn’t writing this, but I don’t have much of a choice.
For those of you who have only joined the site in the past couple of years, I will give you some back story about some issues we’ve dealt with in the past.
Once upon a time the requirement for ratings was very relaxed, and there was never a ‘Yes, I’m over 17’ warning for stories over R ratings. Until one day when Ash received an email from a very angry mother whose pre-teen daughter stumbled upon some visuals on the site while searching for BSB on the internet and was very upset. This mother threatened legal action unless actions were taken to ensure that younger people would be protected when they visited Absolute Chaos.
At the time the thought was ‘well it's the internet... what could they possibly do?’ but the answer to that is a lot. The law applies in the country in which the website is registered, in this case the United States, the internet is not a free-for-all. Lesson learned, we changed the site to accommodate and everyone was happy.
Here we are again though, 7 years later and facing the situation again. I find it slightly disturbing but we’ve received a complaint about child porn on Absolute Chaos.
I want to make it painfully clear to everyone... you CAN NOT, under ANY circumstances, write erotica about children!
I will reference rule #7:
Stories that promote/endorse/encourage sexual relationships between an adult and a minor will be removed. (i.e. Don't post child porn. Even dealing with fictional characters.) If you're posting an abused child fic and it's tastefully done it may be excused from this rule, but please use good judgement...
There’s really no reason why anyone should have graphic sex between adults and children in their fics. “Tastefully done” means reference it, fade to black, or do whatever you can do to "tastefully" complete what you need for your plot.
We’re sorry to have to do this but we’ve had a legitimate complaint. If you’re reading this knowing that you have graphic sex between adults and minors in your fics, please change them. Mare and I can't read every story, so we didn't know this was an issue, but now that it's been brought up we have to crack down which means change it or we can't host it for you.
I know in the past authors have said that they’ve used molestation in their fics to provide awareness against it. Well sorry, you will have to do it without describing every intimate detail because unfortunately while being graphic may assist in your campaign for the cause it also provides fodder for those who are committing the crimes.
You can’t show an alcoholic how bad alcohol is for them by showing them a bunch of people in a bar drinking. If you truly want to show people how terrible child abuse is, I hope you can understand that describing every ugly detail is not a deterrent.
We are really going to be enforcing the rules, we've been slacking. They're there for a reason and they've worked fairly well since 2003. If that's not good enough for you, I apologize, but we want the site to be friendly to everyone and don't want a reputation.
