The DVDs, which can be purchased for anywhere between $700 and $1,000, have an
eager audience in several high schools, where several copies have been
confiscated.
"Pornography is outlawed and this is something new to us where people from the
local scene are involved in it. It is an offence for people to sell bootleg
DVDs. We have arrested people for it in the past and we intend to clamp down
even harder on it. We have an ongoing drive. our colleagues in Kingston have
been doing it and we have replicated it," Deputy Superintendent Paul Stanton
told the Observer West. To this end, the police are asking teachers who
confiscate these recordings from their students to turn them in so that they
can question their parents.
The less explicit of the two features several well-known young men from
Trelawny and St James in skimpy skirts, cursing and gyrating to a sound system
pumping the latest dancehall music. According to DSP Stanton, this was not in
and of itself illegal.
"It is only a situation whereby society is going to think of you in a
particular way if a man comes out and dresses like a woman," he said.
He was, however, quick to point out that "the buggery law is still on the
books. If persons are caught in buggery then certainly the law will have to
take its course".
Several policemen stormed out of Freeport Police tation last week in Montego
Bay, after viewing the first few seconds of one of the recordings.
DSP Stanton said this was going to make it difficult to investigate.
"It will be difficult to have anybody look at the tape because from the first
second of viewing one's stomach churns," he said.
In the meantime Linton Smith, a Kingston educator, is recommending that parents
seize every opportunity to affirm their children.
"Everyone needs affirmation, a lack of it will create a void in the individual.
This void then becomes available to sop up any and everything. This is why it
is so important to emphasize the good, no matter how small it seems, that our
children do. Much of my experience with children tells me that they get
involved in these activities because they take place in company where they are
affirmed and feel good about themselves, so it's not so much the porn watching,
the smoking, etc, but the fact that they are able to feel comfortable around
people who make them feel good about themselves, " he told the Observer West.
