Doe this seem strange to you? Doesn’t sound like he sought to distribute it. Are there any other crimes where you can be charged just for writing fiction about them?
Wasn’t a story about fictional kids either, but three kids who attended his church. Ewwww.
Wife says she caught him looking at child porn a year or so earlier, but he disposed of the computer. Not sure how all this holds up in the eyes of the law though.
As disgusting and vile as child porn is, assuming it’s just fiction and an outlet for his messed up mind I can’t exactly see the harm here.
I don’t think “the wife says she saw” would hold up in any court as allowed testimony. As for as the sick fiction, reprehensible should not equal illegal.
Why would we arrest people for the sort of thing that, perhaps, gives them an alternative to harming actual children?
Is this illegal because of the harm it does? Because this sounds like thought police dictating morality through the law.
These.
If this is something that he’s doing to provide an outlet for fantasies or desires that he knows he shouldn’t actually do, in other words that it is helping him avoid abusing actual children, I say let him do it. One of the things that I hear over and over about sex offenders is that they don’t understand proper boundaries with children. Here we may have someone who does understand what the expected boundaries are and is trying hard to protect children. That should be commended, not punished.
Didn’t the Supreme Court rule some time ago that “virtual” child porn that doesn’t actually involve the exploitation of real children isn’t prosecutable?
Not that I’m defending the man’s activities here, but I’m not sure this is a viable arrest.
That cite has to be leaving out a bunch of important information.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s commendable, but agree that there’s no basis here for legal punishment. He’ll be a pariah amongst his family and peers and publicly shamed for the rest of his life, which is probably adequate enough.
As far as I know, writing child erotica might be the first step into acting it out. But hell, if he’s not guilty of actually doing the deed, he’s got enough coming at him now that’ll do for punishment.
Yeah. Maybe it’s like, really bad writing.
According to the article, the charge wasn’t writing it but merely possessing it. I too am curious to know exactly what law he’s accused of breaking.
I’m also curious whose idea it was to illustrate the article with a photo of a stack of books. I guess it is Banned Books Week…
Yes, I agree. Pure Text pretty well have to be Protected. But maybe there’s a pic or two, even one would make this valid. Or maybe it a bogus arrest, they know it, and they just wanna “out” him.
Definately missing some relevent details in the article including exactly what law he was arrested under. Local or state?
I did some work in McAlester many years ago so finding that it’s a local ordinance wouldn’t surprise me in the least.
Based on the article the charge is “possessing obscene or indecent writings” rather than child porn although the latter can certainly be the former. I am afraid its going to come down to community standards and exactly who the judge and/or jury is.
And I predict a short revival of Tom Lehrer on the local morning zoo program.
h ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaHDBL7dVgs
I almost guarantee you that it would be legal in Charleston to buy, or offer for sale, “The 120 Days of Sodom” or “Hogg” or any number of other books that textually depict the sexual exploitation of children.
Seems to me that any defense attorney worth his salt could prove that “community standards” do not prohibit the possession of such writings, if that’s the tack they tried to take to prosecute him.
That’s not how I read it - YMMV.
Since the children in the story attended this guy’s former church, it sounds more to me like he wrote it.
Both the allegations in the article - that this ex-pastor had a dirty story about kids at his former church, and that he once was spotted surfing kiddie porn on a computer which he no longer owns, originally came from the pastor’s soon-to-be ex-wife. Which makes it sound like maybe they got a warrant to search based on her affidavit that he was in possession of kiddie porn, and this story was all they could find.
Maybe he is a kiddie diddler, in which case there is very little that is bad enough to happen to him. But maybe he ain’t.
Like Loach says, there is likely to be a good deal left out of the article, not only exculpatory either. Maybe this guy is the ex-pastor because of inappropriate behavior towards kids or someone else, or for dipping in the till, or just because they couldn’t stand his wife, or something else. Maybe she set him up. Maybe she knows more than she wants to about his sexual peccadilloes. Maybe he likes kids and has managed to keep his hands off them, and his ex-wife is using this against him in their upcoming divorce action. One does not know.
Regards,
Shodan
I wasn’t talking about what he did, but what he was charged with.
Could that be it? The fact that he wrote it about actual people, that he’s aquainted with?
It must be “Indecent Exposure - Indecent Exhibitions - Obscene or Indecent Writings, Pictures, Etc. - Solicitation of Minors” (Title 21, Chapter 39, section 1021 of the Oklahoma statutes), which reads in part
OK, but I was wondering why he would be charged at all, and I can’t think of a reason why possessing such a story would be illegal. IANAL but I don’t see how merely possessing the story violates bibliophage’s cited law.
I think it is time for a good conspiracy theory - the ex planted it on him. She is trying to get him to commit suicide so she can collect on a large insurance policy she took out on him, so she can run off with the choir director. Unfortunately, the choir director is simultaneously carrying on an affair with the second alto, who will blab all the sordid details to the police in the fury of a woman scorned. Then the choir director will wear a wire and record incriminating details the next time he and the ex get dressed up as Baptist furries and have deviant sexual relations.
Then after a heavily publicized trial, the ex-pastor will be vindicated, the alto will go on to a minor career in porn, the choir director resign in disgrace and run for Congress, while the ex, after a brief interlude of heavy drinking, will enter rehab and resurface in six weeks hawking her own brand of Colon Cleanse products on late-night infomercials.
Regards,
Shodan