Concurrent with funding research into the legal status of fantasy sexual materials, the Percy Foundation is supporting a multi-stage inquiry into their prevalence, forms, and ultimately their psychological impact on consumers. As with the other project, there is an absence of empirical evidence to buttress the hyper-activism of lawmakers who legislate against these materials. The common assumption of lawmakers is that their availability does harm, even if no actual children are involved in their production, because they encourage unhealthy ideation in subjects with underage attractions, who may be motivated to imitate the scenarios of seduction they find in these fictional narratives.
However, some in the therapeutic community think these materials might have a cathartic effect for at least some individuals, providing a harm-free outlet for sexual desires that would be difficult or impossible to fulfill in real life without serious risk of harm to oneself and others. Just as violent video games have not been shown to lead to a greater propensity to commit violence and adult pornography involving rape-scenarios has not been shown to lead to a higher willingness to commit rape in individuals not so disposed, there is reason to doubt that exposure to fictional content involving children in sexual situations results in more child molestation. Indeed, study of countries that once had very lax regulations around child pornography, such as Denmark, Czechoslovakia, and Japan, suggests that the rate of child molestation was lower during the period these materials were openly available. However, few would support the legalization of actual child pornography involving real children because of the obvious potential for harm to those children.
The Percy Foundation is funding a research team at Nottingham Trent University, led by Prof. Rebecca Lievesley, which is experienced in studying therapeutic treatment for minor-attracted populations. The first phase of their research will involve a UK general population sample of 15,000 respondents to determine the prevalence of access to various kinds of fantasy sexual material among both minor-attracted and non-minor-attracted individuals. Once a subset of minor-attracted individuals has been identified from this large sample, later phases of research will study them more intensively using cross-sectional, qualitative, and longitudinal methods to assess the psychological and behavioral impact of these materials. Whatever they wind up showing, these results can hopefully at least provide an evidence base from which more informed policy discussions can take place in the future about how and whether these materials should be regulated by governments and international conventions.