Recently a man sent an anonymous letter to the advice giving columnist about the trouble he was having: sexual fantasies about little girls. However, Abby turned him in to the cops, where they found 40 child porn pictures on his pc hard drive.
The question: Should Abby, a bastion of advice and anonymity, alerted the police before addressing the issue (i.e. contacting him privately to recommend a therapist or something). The man has no criminal record and never intended to act on these fantasies- to me he sounds like a confused individual in need of therapy (and punishment for the child porn). But should Abby have done this?
I couldn’t get the link to load, but I personally believe that children should be protected. If the letter was anonymous, I wonder how they found the sender. Is it illegal to have kiddie porn photos on a pc?
He probably had a return address on the envelope; I imagine he’d just want to be anonymous if he was published. And yes, child porn of any sort is illegal.
Potentially, yes. If you have a collection of child porn, organized in a directory structure, you can be convicted. Finding child porn on a PC hard drive, possibly in a browser cache, has not been tested in the courts (that I am aware of). But what’s the point? Simply being arrested and charged is quite a deterrent.
To the OP: I don’t know what was in the letter, if the man did not admit to any thing more than “thoughts”, no, she shouldn’t have turned him in.
If, however, he admitted some intent to harm (or had harmed) children, I have no problem with her actions.
I recently did a little research on pedophilia. The condition of pedophilia is the condition of fantasy of a sexual nature towards children for a duration of six months or more. There does not really have to be any actual molestation for him to be considered a pedophile. This could be important in determining if he was actual criminal by any statute that may be worded as such.
Asking Dear Abby for advice on pedophilia is like asking for Barney Fife’s opinion on the L.A. Riots. The guy’s too dumb to own and operate a computer. He got what he deserved.
What does the bill of rights have to do with this???
Maybe in some state, Dear Abbey is a therapist. But she’s not HIS therapist. There is no privileged communication. There is no expectation of privacy, She wites for a syndicated newspaper column, fer chrissakes. He may as well of called his local news, or told the cops hisself.
If he was looking for help, it was stupid place to turn to.
Personally I don’t think it should be illegal, or reason for the police to search your house, if you admit you have fantasies about having… ugh… sex with little girls. The thought repulses me, but yet, it’s just fantasies. If we arrested everyone in this country who had thoughts about illegal acts, we’d have to replace the Midwest with a gigantic jailhouse.
Mind you, child pornography should definitely be illegal. Definitely, definitely, definitely. But this guy’s child porn collection would never have been found out if they hadn’t searched his house simply based on the fact that he admitted to having these fantasies, and I think that’s wrong.
[five minutes later]
OK, I just went and read the story, and the guy confessed to having sex fantasies about SPECIFIC little girls, namely his girlfriend’s daughters. In my opinion, this changes things significantly and Abby totally did the right thing in reporting the guy. Maybe this is inconsistent of me, but I think he shouldn’t have been turned in for just fantasizing about random little girls who don’t actually exist in real life (like the tall muscular fireman who occasionally, ahem, makes appearances in my mental wanderings). But actual little girls that the guy knows and comes into regular contact with? Ergh.
That seems like a pretty silly statement. I don’t believe there’s any expectation of privacy when it comes to communication with an advice columnist. He wasn’t talking to his therapist, his priest, or his wife. What expectation of privacy did he have?
Why should she not have turned him in? Child porn is illegal. I think people are forgetting some of the reasons for which child porn is illegal in the first place.
One of those reasons is this: even if that guy hadn’t admitted to fantasies about specific children, other children posed or were forced to pose for the pictures on his computer (unless they were completely computer-generated, which I doubt). Those children were very likely damaged/are being damaged by whoever is making them do this. SOMEONE is having more than “thoughts” about these children. Someone is robbing their childhood from them (probably). Therefore, by having that stuff on his computer, even if he never does another thing with it, or actually rapes any kids, that guy is complicit in the abuse of these children. He is the market for that porn. Hardly anyone would make these kids do this if there weren’t a market for it.
Also, the bill of rights (specifically, 4th Amendment) has nothing to do with whether Abby should have turned him in or not. A constitutional rights violation has to include state action. Last I checked, Abby was not part of the government. I hope anyone and everyone would have alerted the authorities about him, in this specific fact situation.
Whether the cops were entitled to search his house IS a 4th amendment question. However, in the article it says the cops “asked to search the man’s computer and found a cache of 40 pornographic photographs of children,” ---- sounds to me like they asked him if they could search and he said yes. Consent is one of the main methods that cops use to conduct legal, constitutional searches. You can’t simultaneously consent to a search and claim it was an “unreasonable search and seizure.” If you consent, they don’t need a warrant or anything else. (It appears that) He consented. Too bad.
I don’t know if she was right to turn him in, but I can’t be upset with the end result. I agree wholly with tesseract
I’ve plenty of fantasies (none involving children - well, maybe one or two involving my own actually listening to me for once); however, I’ve no intention on writing a letter to Jeanne Phillips (Dear Abby) detailing them.
I believe this man was troubled by his fantasies, which prompted him to write to Abby. I hope he gets help; however, I don’t know if there is a cure for pedophilia, and I would be very wary of this individual forever more.
I would suspect that the officers somehow got (non-physically coerced?) consent to search; I don’t know if a letter to Dear Abby is enough to obtain a warrant.
Abby is not in any way constrained in contacting the authorities. The current Abby (daughter of the original) may or may not be properly trained (Mom wasn’t), but she isn’t anyones doctor, psychologist, lawyer or priest. No one should assume the same level of anonymity when writing an advice columnist.
My first reaction is that she should not have turned him in. But as MsWhatsit pointed out, the fact that he was having specific fantasies about specific little girls puts a whole new spin on things. And I fully agree that we need to take whatever steps we can to protect the children who are exploited and abused in the making of child porn. So, yes, she was right in turning him in.
As Ms.Whatsit said, Abby was absolutely right to call the cops. She feared for the safety of the little girls–worst of all, girls that this man probably had unsupervised access to. Yeek.
No rights were violated (according to the evidence in the article). The cops asked if he wrote the letter, and if they could look on his computer. He assented to the search.
BUT… there’s no indication from the article that Abby knew he had any child porn. She turned him in solely because she feared for the safety of the kids in his/his girlfriend’s home. So AZ Cowboy’s argument is ill-founded.
We can all be thankful that he was found out and one less customer for child porn now exists … but Abby did not turn him in because he was looking at child porn.
Hypothetical situation–if the cops had NOT found any child porn on his computer, I think they’d be SOL and would have been unable to charge the man with anything at all. He committed no other crime.
My question: Could the court compel him to seek psychiatric help if he hadn’t been charged with a crime?
As has been noted, Dear Abby is not at all a licensed therapist, and communication w/her is no more privelged than writing on a billboard. In fact, it’s pretty similar to writting on a billboard.
I do believe that people can have fantasy w/o acting on them in any way. If, however, some one had fantasies about something totally inappropriate, illegal and damaging (as this is), I’d recommend strongly seeking professional guidance so that there wouldn’t be a potential for wandering into the illegal behavior.
Since when is an admission of thoughts sufficient ‘just cause’ to obtain a search warrent?
This last point really bothers me. The potential for folks to abuse this is really too disturbing. Some one goes to the police and says “John Smith has dirty thoughts” and they can get a search warrent based on that? what if, in the course of their search for child porn etc (which would allow them to search every single inch of the house, including computer files), they came across information/evidence of drug use, sales, stolen property etc. Since these items would be admissable (if found while in the proper exectution of a valid search warrent), any one could ‘turn in’ anyone else they disliked, had suspicions of etc by claiming that the person had fantasies??? (even if it was in writing - how did they determine that it was his letter)
oops. he admitted he wrote the letter and consented to the search???
Ok, then he deserves what he got. But, let me draw it out a bit more. Cop comes to your door, ask if you wrote this letter, you say ‘nope’, can they search ‘nope’, then what? would the cops then try other avenues?
That’s troubling to me, also. I would suspect that a call from Dear Abby’s office about a (presumably) out-of-state potential problem might warrant more attention than my trying to tweak my neighbor because he didn’t clean up his sidewalk. Still, if this guy doesn’t admit to anything, I would hope that he would not be harassed further - not because I don’t want to see pedophiles put somewhere far, far away where they will never again see or hear a child, but because I’ll begin to wonder what’s to stop the police when they decide it’s my turn? I’m really hoping police procedure on this case didn’t enter into any grey areas.
I would wager that they would take the letter to a judge, request a search warrant, and quickly be granted it.
Is that fair? Probably not. But I think they’d get their warrant easily.
Similarly, if I was a school janitor and wrote to Abby saying that I had fantasies about going on a shooting spree at my high school and killing all those damn sloppy kids, the cops would undoubtedly be granted a warrant to search my house for illegal firearms and ammunition. Also not fair, IMO.
I don’t think that the police went into any grey areas. They had a tip from an indentified informant. Police are allowed to use this to begin an investigation.
They carried out their investigation by talking to the man. He identified himself as the author of the letter. This makes the information that started the investigation more credible. They continue their investigation by getting his consent to a search. This, again, doesn’t push any limits.
