Man's life Over, Cops Decide He Watched Child Porn in First Class

It appears to be a high powered University of Utah Professor, who has a wife, a son, and an adopted daughter from his wife's earlier marriage.

http://www.eng.utah.edu/~gdsmith/

It will be interesting to see if I have this case right. If I do this is damn scary how easy it is still to get ruined by the state for alleged sex crimes.

If somebody could get not only arrested, but charged, arraigned, put on trial and found guilty just because (and only because) a fellow passenger and/or the police thought he was looking at child pornography, when in fact he wasn't, then something would have to be very wrong indeed.

If that same somebody's computer was seized and forensically examined in accordance with robust evidence procedures and it was found that images were present that contravened the local law, and that somebody were put on trial, then that wouldn't be wrong at all.

If the forensic examination proved negative, then possibly he could sue the passenger, the airline, the police, or all three. It is early days and much could change when he gets to court.

I remember a case of a well known (female) broadcaster, a TV newsreader on a national British network, who took some photos of her own daughter in the bath and took the 35mm film to be processed at a well known pharmacy chain. The printing technician decided they were suspect and called the police. The lady was cleared but the case left many parents casting an eye over their family albums, worrying just how far their pictures might be misunderstood if taken out of context.

I must say that the story you linked to looks very odd to British eyes. Here we have laws about reporting of events which led to arrests. The civil law of defamation and the criminal law to do with prejudicing of trials. News stories are generally written to comply with these. They would use words like "alleged" and "suspected" and would not say straight out that he actually was watching child pornography, as the Washington Post story appears to do. Maybe it was hastily written by a rookie working a weekend shift.

Unless he was addicted - and thought everyone else was asleep or something and he could just sneak himself a fix- you know sort of how people try to sneak a smoke in airplane bathrooms.

Why is it that you think a very successful guy who's addicted to child porn would be any more able to curb his addiction than someone who wasn't successful?

I agree with Contrex in that I don't think they'd have been so fast to push forward with the charges if the images had been at all questionable in terms of their content or intent.

It is obscene, it is very unlikely that I have the wrong guy and all I needed to use to find him was free internet sites sifted by Google, and I even refused to register. I could go to pay sites and find out for sure.

My first attempt seems to have errors though, as the house now seems to be his fathers and who I thought was his daughter is his wife. Still, report out name, age and city of a child predator and it is pretty damn easy to track down who they are....even easier then they are wealthy enough to fly First Class.

No, that is how we roll...we take it for granted that if the state is after someone for a sex crime then they must be guilty. That is how we know that he will be out of a job post haste. It is also an example of the thinking that I have been revolting against almost since the day I first showed up at A2K.

That is exactly the intent...to keep people guessing about what is illegal, and periodically lower the hammer on someone ruining their lives, so that people error on the side of caution out of self preservation . It is abuse of the citizen at the hands of the state. "Child porn" is now a lot like "rape" a nearly meaningless term...... I need to have a paragraph explanation on what he was watching before I even begin to consider that he might be guilty of a wrong.

If he had been watching real child porn he would not have a measly $15000 bail, they dont have squat on his computer (though they have certainly rummaged through his house by now looking for filth), this is an exercise in message sending to the rest of us that the state can and will ruin anyone who it decides is watching kids who dont have enough clothes on or who are acting in their opinion "erotic" or even just adult. But dont bother asking for a line that is not to be crossed, because the state has no intention of allowing you to see the guidelines that it uses to decide if they are going to destroy you or not. The state claims that we are a society ruled by law, but in reality we are ruled by a bully government.

At the time that the British newsreader was arrested, the body representing the photo processing industry had these guidelines:

1. Photographs of unclothed men or women in artistic [non-suggestive] poses may be returned to the customer without comment.

2. If both sexes are featured on a photograph without clothes, these may be passed provided they are not touching. If they are touching, return the negatives to the customer and destroy any prints.

3. If photographs focus unnecessarily on the genitalia, only the negatives should be returned to the customer, the prints should be destroyed and the customer requested not to submit any similar material.

4. If the pictures depict contact between nude people and could be considered of a sexual nature then destroy the prints, ensure the manager locks the negatives in a safe place and invite the customer to visit the laboratory and collect their negatives.

5. If children are featured on the photographs in an unclothed state, look to see if they are relaxed. If they appear unnatural or forced or are being touched or abused in any way, ask your local vice squad to come and advise you on your course of action. Do not return negatives or prints until they have been cleared.

The Crown Prosecution Service has this publicly available legal guidance:

http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/h_to_k/indecent_photographs_of_children/



The 2002 case of Regina v. Oliver in the Court of Appeal established a scale by which indecent images of children could be "graded". The five point scale, established by UK's Sentencing Advisory Panel and adopted in 2002, is known as the SAP scale.

1 Nudity or erotic posing with no sexual activity
2 Sexual activity between children, or solo masturbation by a child
3 Non-penetrative sexual activity between adult(s) and child(ren)
4 Penetrative sexual activity between child(ren) and adult(s)
5 Sadism or bestiality

So a little research would tell anyone who was interested whether a particular image was likely to fall within the definition of illegality.

I would be surprised if state legal administrations in the US did not provide such guidance.

Oh they do Contrrx. Hawk's just pissed he's legally barred from looking a kiddie porn. He thinks he's speaking for the down trodden masses when he brings up these issues.
He thinks he's a child advocate because he thinks children should be allowed to pose for dirty old men such as himself. He believes we, the collective, are stomping on his and childrens rights when we put age limits on what people can do with their bodies. He believes we are the problem. Imagine that?

That is a common mental trick employed by paedophiles. I notice he was greatly exercised (mentally, at least - I don't know if his arm got tired) by a recent picture of Dakota Fanning in a short skirt that was featured in a controversial advertising campaign. He must trawl the net for stuff related to the topic under discussion.

It's a peculiar mindset, it's a lot easier to think of yourself as a radical freedom fighter than a sick perve. Gary Glitter probably thinks of himself in the same way.

Like burglars blaming their victims for leaving their windows open.



Bravely fighting for the right of 11 year old girls to have relationships with 60 year old guys? Ignoring the fact that there must be something wrong with the 60 year old guy if he agreed?

If someone is suspected of something like that in a public place, there is little time for someone to clear their computer of any traces of evidence before it is removed from them.
Even a simple history delete will NOT get rid of all traces of what you were viewing. Nor will deleting all content on your memory disk or hard drive.
There are free programs for simple searching that let you " disk dig" and retrieve any information EVER saved on a disk in a certain amount of time no matter how it was deleted or reformatted.

If this guy were actually innocent there would not have been the need to arrest him, the security would have checked and found nothing pretty quickly. They would not have to forcibly seize his computer either... he would have handed it over. This would have been over and done with quickly.

To back up such an allegation to the point of imprisonment means there was hard evidence.

Is it possible it was his own kids? Like the example of the news caster? ...sure. But I would think there would be a statement FROM him about that and or a mention of him having a lawyer immediately with talks of breech of privacy. That is a HUGE allegation and not one an innocent person would take quietly. Granted...that may all come out later... but right now it seems pretty open and shut.

Having seeing people have things taken on an airplane, there is NO warning, and NO time .... they descend on you immediately . I can only imagine that is how this was done as well.

When I say that the state does not have squat as evidenced by the extremely low bail I did not mean to imply that there was no evidence...I meant to imply that the alleged offense is extremely mild. No matter, his life is over.

All those who don't know possessing child porn is illegal, please raise your hand. All those who don't know what happens to child pornographers raise your hand...
Yup, I won't be losing any sleep over this successful man being caught with child porn. What does concern me is all the children victimized by men like this, who I noticed once again have your sympathies. I find it odd you continue to think you speak for boys. When it's obvious your only interest is far more insidious.

You get an F for comprehension today....my argument is that out of control and abusive government is the problem.

And mine is, you're a twisted f*ck. I'll be an advocate against monsters who would abuse kids and I'll wait for the day you get caught. Kay?

I am only as free as is the most despised man in America....I look at how the state treats the most hated not because I am one of them, but so that I might know how real my alleged freedom is.

The answer currently is "not much".

Oh, he's not a weirdo who drools over Dakota Fanning's legs and advocates the freedom to view kiddie porn; he's actually Jesus! How obtuse of me not to have realised.

Sounds to me like your destination with that argument is to put all females over a certain young age in burka's....or locked up at home by the men in the family.

OH Wait, are you holding out for the new technology solution to human desire that you find politically offensive....the much discussed mind probe?? Are we all going to have to go through bi-yearly screening from the government to make sure that our hormones are only released in state approved situations and in acceptable levels?? What is to become of the defects among us under your plan, can they be saved? Maybe the re-imagination of the Gulag system is just the ticket.

No, nothing about burkas. He's saying adult men who get sexually aroused by very young girls have a problem and are clueless as to why it is a problem.

And this

is obviously your perverted fantasy.