In September 1999, the FBI raided the home of Thomas and Janice Reedy in Fort Worth, Texas. Inside they found the largest child pornography business ever, one which had 250,000 subscribers, including 100 in Ireland.

Operating as Landslide Productions, the Reedys were earning up to $1.4m (€1.2m) a month selling child porn images over the internet. For a monthly fee of about $30, the likes of Tim Allen, the celebrity chef from Cork, could access websites with titles such as Child Rape containing images of four-year-olds being sexually abused.

Many of the paedophiles used credit cards to pay for the images, and that was how they were caught.

Professor Max Taylor from Copine, a child-porn research unit in Cork, reckons that credit-card companies made up to $3m a year from Landslide’s tawdry trade, based on their 4% to 6% commission on each transaction.

“There is a social problem here — pornography — and people are benefiting from it,” says Taylor. “Barclaycard made a profit of £3.8 billion (€5.7 billion) last year, and American Express made $6 billion. It is not unreasonable to say that a fraction of that may come from what people would see as being unsavoury if not illegal.”

Credit-card companies are coming under increasing pressure to disavow this money. While it is difficult for consumers who object to pornography to have a direct impact on those who produce it — they are already boycotting the “product” — they are now realising they can influence banks that enable its finance.

“If companies have been identified as having links with the pornography industry, then people should act by taking their business elsewhere,” says Joanna McMinn, director of the National Women’s Council.

This threat will be taken more seriously by Irish financial institutions after a campaign by the women’s group shamed Bank of Ireland two weeks ago into promising to get out of a deal with a UK pornography magazine firm.

The bank had offered a €7m loan to Remnant Media to purchase 45 top-shelf titles, such as Asian Babes, from Richard Desmond, joint owner of the Irish Star with Independent News & Media, and owner of Express Newspapers in Britian. The women’s council urged members to close their Bank of Ireland accounts in protest. Surprisingly, it worked.

“It was customer comment that swayed our decision,” admitted a bank official. “We didn’t lose any business but we did move quickly in response to the threat.”

The women’s council is understandably chuffed. Now it has identified this new target — the link between credit-card companies and pornographic websites. “Women have moved into the labour market and a lot more of them have credit cards. They should use them to have an influence. It is easy to change credit card,” says McMinn.

But can it score a second success, and do Irish banks even have a case to answer?

THE business of EuroConex, a company based in Arklow, Co Wicklow, is to check out businesses that want to receive payments by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Diner’s Club, Laser in Ireland and Switch in Britain. It considers new clients from a credit and an ethical point of view.

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