indirectly, replying to Ionus comment
I think a decent society must protect children from those who would do this to them.
Child rapist sentenced to life without parole
By Jennifer H. Svan
Stars and Stripes
November 5, 2010
AIR BASE, Germany — An Air Force staff sergeant who posed online as a trusted baby sitter to troll for victims was sentenced to life in prison without parole on Friday after pleading guilty to multiple counts of raping and molesting three girls, two of them preschool age.
Staff Sgt. Joshua Adam Smith, who had advertised baby-sitting services to the Kaiserslautern military community and proclaimed his compassion for children in an online forum, told the judge he had sexually assaulted the girls — then ages 3, 4 and 7 — over the last year.
Military judge Col. Dawn Eflein issued the sentence — the maximum possible punishment — after deliberating for one hour.
Military prosecutors had argued that life behind bars was the only way to stop Smith from sexually abusing young children.
In an unsworn statement before sentencing, Smith told the judge, “I am disgusted by myself” and he said he “didn’t know how to stop it” on his own.
Molesting his young victims became easier when the children didn’t tell on him, he said.
“It became easier to justify for the next time when nothing happened,” Smith said as he cried during his statement.
Eventually one of them did tell.
The mother of one victim, who was 7 years old when Smith began molesting her last year, tearfully testified that Smith baby-sat her daughter four times.
“She came to me one day in April while we were getting ready for a family outing and told me her concerns,” she said. They went directly to the military police.
Smith was apprehended April 30 and has been in custody since then.
“I want to say how very proud I am of my daughter for coming forward so he can be put away,” the mother said after the trial.
Smith was expected to be jailed immediately at the military’s confinement facility in Mannheim, until Air Force corrections system officials determine where he will serve the rest of his sentence, military officials said.
During Friday’s proceedings, the 27-year-old communications and navigation systems technician said he grew up in a military family, the second oldest of six children. He said his father, a career Navy man, was often absent from home and his mother had trouble managing the large family. Smith said that he became involved in “sex play” with his siblings at the age of 10. He has been “sexually obsessed with young children for a while,” he said. “I know I need to get help.”
Smith was painted as a study in contrasts. Forensics psychologist Rex Frank, who testified for the defense, said Smith was introverted and shy, yet was able to strike up a quick friendship with the victims’ mothers and earn their trust.
The mother of the 7-year-old testified that she first came into contact with Smith a year ago, when she posted an ad for a baby sitter on ramsteinyardsales.com. She initially ignored Smith’s reply offering his services.
“He was a guy, a single airman, I figured he had better things to do than baby-sit,” she said. Smith actually has two sons and is separated from his wife.
But then someone named “Yvonne” contacted her via an online “chat,” saying she should consider using her baby sitter — Joshua Smith. She took the advice, not knowing that Smith was using “Yvonne” as an alias to provide references for himself.
Statements in court revealed that “Yvonne” was Smith.
He also started a thread on ramsteinunderground.com about the benefits of using male baby sitters. He did this “to dupe parents, to groom parents, to bring them into his fold,” said lead trial counsel Capt. Christopher Goewert.
Smith also lied online about working at the child development center while he was stationed at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, according to prosecutors.
That false information helped sway the mother of Smith’s 3-year-old victim to hire him as a baby sitter, after she too placed an ad on ramsteinyardsales.com.
“It’s hard to find an adult baby sitter and someone who has a background in child care,” the mother testified Friday. She was pleased when Smith told her that he and her daughter “did a lot of reading, ABC’s, hide-n-seek.”
Two of the mothers and one of the fathers spoke in court of the effect that the sexual abuse has had on their daughters and their families.
“She will not go upstairs alone, she will not use the bathroom alone, even if I can see her,” said the mother of the 7-year-old. “She would rather wet her pants or the floor rather than be alone.”
“I worry that she’ll never be the same,” she said.
Parents of two of the victims exchanged a tearful hug in the courtroom after Smith was sentenced.
“That’s what I wanted,” said the mother of the 3-year-old. “There’s a chance he might have done it again.
“You’re just kind of standing back for the rest of your life hoping she won’t remember.”
Smith pleaded guilty to 18 criminal counts, including anal and genital penetration and penetrating the children with objects including a Sharpie marker and a plastic tube. He also pleaded guilty to photographing and videotaping his victims, while posing them in a sexual manner and performing sexual acts on them.
Officials did not reveal whether they suspect Smith of having molested other children at Ramstein or on other bases where he has been stationed, including Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and Offutt.
Air Force records indicate that Smith joined the Air Force in 2001 and arrived at Ramstein in December 2007.
http://www.stripes.com/news/child-rapist-sentenced-to-life-without-parole-1.124419
No child has the ability to make a reasoned decision to pose for porn. I think a decent society must protect children from those who would do this to them.
Ya, and I would criminalize child porn as well. I would not however criminalize normal snap shots, nude child art, nor animation and adults acting as children. I cant think of anyone who has advocated legal child porn in this thread.
Ya, and I would criminalize child porn as well...I cant think of anyone who has advocated legal child porn in this thread.
It will never stop until we stop it, our mistake was allowing the criminalization of the viewing of Child Porn, from that point onwards it was desire that was criminal, no longer was it the violating of other peoples rights.
Leonard used cell phone to download child porn
November 11, 2010
PASCAGOULA -- Former Ocean Springs patrolman Lee John Leonard used a cell phone as a wireless router and tapped into public wireless Internet servers to download child pornography to his police-issued laptop, investigators said Wednesday.
By running the wireless servers thorough his phone first and not hooking directly from the computer to the service, Leonard most likely thought his co-workers would be unaware that he had saved imagines of young boys and girls in sexual situations on his police laptop, Sheriff's investigator Hope Thornton said.
"He though he could get away with it," Thornton said. "They all think they can get away with it. He would go to coffee shops and restaurants while he was working. Nothing went through the city servers. He was using public servers and during working hours."
The 46-year-old was arrested at his north Escatawpa home Tuesday afternoon by county investigators and charged with six counts of possession of child porn.
Other charges could follow as the investigation continues and his home computer is analyzed, detectives said in court.
Thornton said any other charges would be presented to a Jackson County grand jury.
Leonard's supervisors suspected misconduct about a month ago and launched an internal investigation.
Leonard resigned from the Ocean Springs force Oct. 14 abruptly and in the middle of the night amid the probe.
"Ocean Springs acted correctly," Thornton said. "Only he, and he alone, knew what he was doing."
Before his three-year employment with the Ocean Springs department, Leonard worked for the Sheriff's Department for about 15 years, Sheriff Mike Byrd said.
Byrd said shortly after Leonard resigned from Ocean Springs, he applied at the sheriff's department as a patrol deputy, but was denied.
Leonard was in court Wednesday morning and County Judge Larry Wilson set a total bail at $150,000, or $25,000 on each count.
Leonard looked away from media cameras and often covered his face with his hands or a piece of paper that listes his charges.
Byrd said Leonard spent Tuesday night in the Jackson County Adult Detention Center in protective custody, but would be transferred Wednesday following his court appearance to an undisclosed jail for safety reasons.
The images discovered on Leonard's police laptop were adult pornography photos and movies as well as child porn with children as young as two years old, Thornton said.
"It's heartbreaking," she said. "To know that someone of authority can do this to themselves, the agencies. It's a disgrace. So far, he's been very remorseful."
Byrd said Leonard's actions humiliated all of the law enforcement officials within the county.
"Today, all of our badges are tarnished," Byrd said.
http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2010/11/leonard_used_cell_phone_to_dow.html
Demeyer gets 120 years for rape, child pornography
FRANK WALLIS
• Bulletin Staff Writer •
November 11, 2010
A former Mountain Home man will likely spend the rest of his life in prison for rape and creating pornographic images of a child.
Federal judge Jimm Hendren sentenced Kirk Harry Demeyer, 52, formerly of Mountain Home, to four consecutive prison terms of 30 years each — 120 years total — following guilty pleas from Demeyer to four counts of production of child pornography, according to Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery, who attended the trial.
Demeyer was arrested by federal and local authorities May 8, 2009, at his residence. He was charged with four counts of raping a pre-pubescent girl.
Demeyer was already serving a 40-year sentence at Wednesday's bench trail in Harrison. Demeyer pleaded guilty to state charges parallel to federal counts that all stem from a search of Demeyer's residence at 298 Garden Terrace Drive.
Montgomery said the Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Baxter County Sheriff's Office collaborated in the case.
The search was part of an extensive child pornography investigation by the federal agencies. As a result of the search, videos of Demeyer engaging in four separate incidents of sexual activity with a young girl were seized.
"This is the worst case I have ever seen in more than 20 years in law enforcement," Montgomery said. "During the investigation, several of the federal officers involved commented they had not seen another case so horrible. It was very difficult and emotionally draining."
The sheriff said thousands of images and hundreds of videos of child pornography came to light during the investigation.
A Bulletinbackground check on Demeyer found he lived at two addresses prior to the place he was living when arrested — 1145 S. Church St., Apt. 4; and 6305 U.S. Highway 62 E., Apt. 3, Mountain Home. He apparently sought to connect with other Internet users through two Web pages that were still active Wednesday at myspace.com and netlog.com.
Steve Frazier, special agent and spokesman for the Little Rock offices of the FBI, told The Bulletin the agency places a high priority on catching purveyors of Internet child pornography. He said the Arkansas State Police and local sheriff's departments are becoming increasingly adept in managing technology used to catch perpetrators.
"There are no key indicators, no stereotypes for this kind of criminal," Frazier said. "The activity crosses all demographic lines."
An Internet news search Wednesday found more than 2,500 returns for news stories on the topic of child pornography, including hundreds less than 24 hours old.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan commenting on a case disclosed Wednesday from Peoria, Ill., told a reporter there the state had identified more than 6,100 computers, through each machine's unique Internet protocol address, as being involved in child pornography trading.
News outlets in New York were scurrying Wednesday to report news of a Fox News reporter's alleged involvement in molestation of a 4-year-old child and possession of child pornography.
Frazier said the Arkansas FBI does not disclose technological techniques in watching the Internet for child pornography traffickers.
"I can't comment on how we work for obvious reasons," Frazier said, "but we are abreast of the latest technology and we work daily partnering with state and local law enforcement agencies."
http://www.baxterbulletin.com/article/20101111/NEWS01/11110327
Fox TV reporter charged with child porn
Nov. 10, 2010
HACKENSACK, N.J., Nov. 10 (UPI) -- A New York Fox news reporter accused of sexual assault was charged with an additional count of possession of child pornography Tuesday, court records show.
Charles Leaf, 40, a general assignment and investigative reporter for WNYW-TV, New York, was arrested Oct. 8 at his Wyckoff, N.J., home on three counts of sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a child, WINS-AM, New York, reported.
The alleged victim was a 4-year-old girl he knew and assaulted inside his home.
Leaf's computer was seized at the time of his arrest, and a subsequent forensic analysis allegedly revealed images of child pornography, said Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Kenneth Ralph.
Leaf pleaded not guilty at a Superior Court hearing in Hackensack where his request for bail reduction, now standing at $270,000, was denied, The Record of Bergen County, N.J., reported.
One of the reasons Judge Liliana S. DeAvila-Silebi gave for not reducing Leaf's bail was her concern over Leaf holding driver's licenses in three different states, the fact that not one of his friends was willing to put up their house as collateral for bail, "and the fact that he could not find a friend to live with. I have to take all these factors into account," DeAvila-Silebi said.
A condition of release for the married, ex-Marine and father of two is he cannot live at home but he must have a firm address. The judge did not accept Leaf's plan to live in a local hotel, The Record said.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/11/10/Fox-TV-reporter-charged-with-child-porn/UPI-66931289433612/
You are advocating that possession of child porn should be legal, if you feel it was a mistake to criminalize its viewing
This Should Possession of Child Pornography Require Reparations to the Child?
By SHERRY F. COLB
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
At the age of eight, "Amy" (a pseudonym) suffered sexual assault at the hands of her uncle, a man who was subsequently convicted and sent to prison. Amy's ordeal is not entirely over, however. While molesting her, her uncle videotaped his crimes and distributed the pictures (both moving and still) to consumers of child pornography. As a result, images of Amy's molestation continue to circulate on the Internet, over a decade after the abuse took place, and the images regularly emerge when police arrest and search people who are in possession of child pornography.
Amy has sought restitution (a legal term for compensation) from people who have been found in possession of her images in 350 criminal cases nationwide. Because of the Crime Victims Rights Act, victims receive notification when child pornography containing their images comes to light, and that is how Amy learned about some of the people who have pleasured themselves by watching her being sexually abused.
In seeking restitution from those caught in possession of these materials, Amy claims that the defendants owe her money because they have contributed to her suffering through their possession of the videos. Some courts have been very receptive to her arguments and have awarded generous restitution, while others have refused to award anything at all.
In this column, I will evaluate Amy's claims against those who have been criminally charged with possession of child pornography in which she appears.
Why Some Courts Resist Amy's Claims
Before seeking to understand why Amy might be entitled to restitution, it is useful to consider some of the arguments that opponents mobilize against a monetary award.
First, they say, the possession of child pornography does not itself inflict any harm on Amy. Rather, they contend, the harm began and ended with the sexual assault committed by Amy's uncle, and he is therefore, properly, subject to criminal punishment and whatever restitution she is able to exact from him. In other words, this argument goes, we have a perpetrator here, and that perpetrator is Amy's uncle, not the people who downloaded images of his crime.
Second, some argue in the same vein that those in possession of child pornography have no relationship to Amy or to any of the other victims who appear in child pornography. Those who endorse this argument suggest that one cannot owe money to someone with whom one has no relationship at all. An individual's possession of the images of Amy, on this approach, does not alter Amy's life for the worse at all.
Third, some have claimed that even if one believes restitution is, in theory, appropriate, it is impossible to calculate how much to award. As a result, they say, there will be wildly varying assessments of the proper amount of restitution by different judges – as, in fact, there have been up until this point. Two Florida judges, for example, each ordered convicts to pay her over three million dollars, while a California judge ordered a payment of only $5000, and a Texas judge refused to award anything. Awards will depend entirely on the subjective reaction of the criminal court judge, rather than on any predictable or uniform method for determining compensation. Given this inherent arbitrariness, some conclude, it does not make sense for the law to be involved in dispensing restitution.
And fourth, there are those who contend that any compensation should occur in the context of a civil lawsuit, rather than in criminal court. Criminal courts, they reason, are best suited to address factual determinations and penalties, and are far less able to determine issues of compensation than civil courts are.
Why We Criminalize Possession of Child Pornography
To respond to these arguments opposing Amy's claims, it is useful first to consider the reasons our society has for criminalizing the possession of child pornography at all. That is, if we are to understand the role of compensation in a criminal prosecution for possession, then we must first examine the "wrong" that we believe takes place when people possess the material at issue.
One reason to punish the possession of such material is that market demand (as evidenced by possession) drives at least some portion of the misconduct itself. If there were no market for watching child pornography, then those who commit acts of sexual molestation for the camera might not do so anymore (or might do so much less frequently than they do). Those who want to view the materials, and who act on that desire by downloading them, thus motivate the conduct that gives rise to the product that they possess. Accordingly, to the extent that criminalizing possession deters some people from demanding child pornography, this deterrence helps to reduce the acts of abuse that feed the supply as well.
A second reason to punish possession of child pornography is the invasion of privacy that watching someone being molested represents. As Amy describes it, the knowledge that people are watching her being sexually assaulted feels like an additional assault to her.
To appreciate the way in which possession indeed invades a victim's privacy, consider the pedophile who uses binoculars to peer into a child's bedroom across the street, through a break in the blinds, so that he can masturbate as he watches the child undress every night. In this situation, no one is physically molesting the child, and there is therefore no more salient perpetrator to distract us – in the way that there is in the case of Amy's uncle. Rather, the only culprit in this scenario is the pedophile who watches the child undress. The same is true when a Peeping Tom targets an adult male or female to watch with binoculars in this way.
The person in possession of child pornography does not watch Amy in real time, of course, as the Peeping Tom would, but the harm is of the same kind. Someone who has no legitimate business or permission to be looking at her body is doing so. That he is watching her being violated, rather than just observing her living her life, does not mitigate the invasion. To be raped or sexually abused is both a violent and a degrading crime, and no victim wants a prurient audience to witness such an act.
How Defenders of Restitution Might Respond to Its Detractors
Carrying over these ideas to the restitution area, we can identify how defenders of restitution might respond to its detractors.
First, proponents of restitution could point out that the consumer of child pornography is not innocent of the molestation that takes place to produce the product. As discussed above, the consumer motivates the producer to produce, and the production of child pornography generally involves the sexual violation of children. It was the large numbers of people already interested in possession of child pornography that assured Amy's uncle that he could make a profit by producing more. And consumers are surely aware that their consumption drives the creation of more images.
By analogy, as I have discussed elsewhere, people who consume animal products are participants in the suffering and death of the animals who are tortured and killed to make the products. By eating eggs, the consumer motivates the producer to breed more egg-layers and to kill the male chicks born of the egg-layers (and to kill the egg-layers themselves, once they are "spent"), all of which is part of how a supplier can meet demand. By eating dairy cheese, the consumer motivates the farmer to impregnate the cow (or sheep or goat) and then take her baby away from her and kill him for veal or another "delicacy." And the same is true for consumers of fish, chickens, turkeys, and other sentient creatures. By reducing and ultimately eliminating the demand for animal products – that is, by being vegan – we can eliminate the producers' incentive to commit this violence against animals in the first place.
In the case of child pornography, there is a second reason to require the consumer to pay restitution to the particular victim who appears in the film that he possesses (as opposed to paying some other victim of the same sort of offense). The consumer of child pornography has a direct relationship with the victim of molestation depicted in the film: He is her Peeping Tom. Quite apart from the causal connection between consumption and production (or, in economic terms, "demand" and "supply"), then, the relationship is specific to the child or children being watched: By watching Amy getting sexual abused, the viewer invades Amy's privacy (in addition to motivating other child pornographers to victimize and film her and other child victims). In that sense, it is appropriate to ask the possessor of child pornography to compensate Amy (and any other victims who might appear in his films), because he violated her particular privacy by watching her being molested.
How Much Restitution Should Victims Like Amy Receive?
Some of the above objections to restitution have more to do with practicality than they do with justice. Closely examined, such arguments are unpersuasive. They say, for instance, that it is difficult to calculate precisely how much money Amy should receive, and therefore, that we should simply get out of the business of awarding monetary restitution.
To the extent that we agree, however, that Amy and those like her are owed something rather than nothing, we replace uncertainty and some arbitrariness with certain injustice when we eliminate the option of recovering restitution altogether. In other areas of law, we have rightly settled for estimation when perfect calculation seems impossible, as discretionary awards for pain and suffering attest.
Another argument of those who oppose restitution for victims like Amy is in tension with the "impossible to estimate" point. This argument holds that Amy should bring a civil suit, rather than ask for restitution in criminal court. However, if it is indeed impossible to calculate the "right" number to assign to the harm committed by a possessor of child pornography, then in what sense could we expect a civil jury to do a "better" job of accomplishing the calculation than a criminal court judge would?
Restitution Is a Win-Win Proposition
From the perspective of the victim of child pornography – the child and the adult that she later becomes, if she survives the assault – her assailant and every viewer have robbed her of something profound. They have all participated in her suffering and degradation, and they continue to do so as long as the material circulates. Because the Internet works as it does, this can mean the rest of a victim's life.
Though money cannot completely restore any victim to what she would have been in the absence of trauma, its award – whether through civil damages or restitution – represents a recognition of what has been unjustly taken from her. And that acknowledgement can, in and of itself, be a source of validation and comfort for a victim. The amounts will necessarily be indeterminate (as we have seen in the great disparities between awards granted in criminal courtrooms across the nation). Yet that indeterminacy does not negate the substantial benefits to victims of requiring perpetrators to pay them reparations.
In one sense, reparations also help to remind the perpetrator – in this case, the violator of a child's intimate privacy – that what he did harmed an individual – that his conduct was not simply a private, "victimless" transaction. In another sense, the availability of reparations expresses society's interest – as captured by the criminal court's involvement – in both protecting victims and redistributing wealth from those who have stolen what was never theirs to take, to those who represent the very real, individual victims of that theft.
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Sherry F. Colb, a FindLaw columnist, is Professor of Law and Charles Evans Hughes Scholar at Cornell Law School. Her book, When Sex Counts: Making Babies and Making Law, is currently available on Amazon.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/colb/20100217.html
You are invading the privacy of that child, without consent.
You have no "right" to sexually stimulate yourself by viewing images of a child being sexually exploited and sexually abused. You also have no right to invade that child's privacy, by viewing sexual images of that child, any more than you have a "right" to peep into your neighbor's windows to view their sexual behaviors.
This police officer obviously thought he could conceal the child pornography he downloaded--he was wrong. It is a disgrace when a police officer is found to possess this sort of material--and, even more outrageously, he was doing it while on the job.
in the news not long ago - that led to the incarceration of a black kid who had consensual sex with a white kid a year or so younger than him... (In Georgia, I think)
