Purportedly, an investigation indicated a link between the assailant's viewing of a pornographic magazine and the 13-year-old girl's assault (noted in Reisman's memorial page).
[15] The Southern Poverty Law Center has described Reisman as a "conspiracy theorist" and a promoter of "sexual pseudoscience" in regard to her views on Kinsey.
)[17]Diederik F. Janssen has reviewed her book Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America from a postmodern perspective.
[18] First, the observer says of her book: "This takes the unseemly shape of a paranoid sermon on American decency held together by acerbic ad hominems, a tapestry of slippery slope arguments, a string of unwholesome linkages ('Nazi serial pedophiles'), and a litany of medieval, Victorian, and McCarthyian diagnostics ('plague,' 'sexual psychopaths,' 'sexual deviancy,' 'perversions').
Judith Reisman has long circulated the calumny that Alfred Kinsey conducted sexual experiments on infants at his institute; she offers no substantiation.
She was then invited to apply for a grant, which was approved without competition for the amount of $798,531 (though later reduced to $734,371), to undertake a "study at American University to determine whether Playboy, Hustler and other more explicit materials are linked to violence by juveniles.
"[12][29][30] The allocation came under criticism as the grant was approved despite a staff memo from Pamela Swain, a director of research, evaluation and program development, in which she claimed that the study could be accomplished for $60,000.
Criminologist Robert Figlio of the University of Pennsylvania[34] stated "The term child used in the aggregate sense in this report is so inclusive and general as to be meaningless.
Trento writes that the public relations firm headed by Robert Keith Gray was hired by Playboy and Penthouse "to discredit Meese's Pornography Commission" specifically as well as others that threatened their business, presumably including Reisman.
[37] When Playboy and Penthouse printed nude photos of Madonna in 1985, Reisman warned that because of the entertainer's idolization by youth, their publication would destigmatize and "encourage voluntary display by youngsters," leading to an increase in child pornography.
[39] Reisman postulated a physical mechanism to account for the dangers she ascribed to pornography: when viewed, an addictive mixture of chemicals (such as glucose[40][41][42]) which she dubbed "erototoxins", floods the brain, causing harmful influences to it.
"[43][44][45][46][47][48] Endorphins are substances produced by the brain as a result of various things including sexual arousal, physical exercise, strong pain, laughter, etc.
[citation needed] The 2002–2011 Proceedings of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences state about her public statements about erototoxins: "facts stood in the way of her opinion and testimony.
[50] During the 1990 obscenity trial of Dennis Barrie, then director of the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, for displaying controversial photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe, Reisman was called as the only expert witness for the prosecution.
[51] Among her credentials as a media specialist she listed: "preparation of educational videotapes and slide presentations for the Smithsonian Institution as well as having worked for Scholastic magazine, created audio-visual segments for television's Captain Kangaroo show, and did research for Attorney General Edwin Meese's commission on pornography and for the conservative American Family Association.
[56][57] During cross-examination by the defense on her views of homosexuality, Reisman testified that "anal sodomy is traumatically dysfunctional and is definitely associated with AIDS.
[62] She received praise from the John Birch Society, which stated "[...] Judith Reisman repeatedly, over the past several decades, strode into many hostile enemy camps around the world — colleges, universities, legislative bodies, media outlets — to speak truth to power and to expose vile works of darkness.
"[63] Robert Knight said in The Washington Times that "she was cast as a careless, right-wing fanatic", was scorned even by "conservatives who were afraid of guilt by association", and that she had converted to Christianity.