I think I am pretty jaded about humanity and usually not surprised when people do terrible things, but this story was so over the top creepy that it made me go “WTF?!” just from the headline. What an incredibly toxic person this guy is. Kudos to the mom for believing her daughter and taking action when the daughter spoke up about what was going on.
I would guess that the father not being around during the kid’s early years caused the Westermarck effect to fail (just trying to make sense of this guy’s creepiness, not in any way saying it’s okay or excusable).
The legal aspects of this case are certainly interesting too. In addition to the clear issues with depicting a minor, it makes me think about the ethical issues of creating porn depicting someone who never consented to be part of it.
Fantasizing about someone who doesn’t know it is clearly a common situation - but is writing a porn story or making a pornographic photo of a real person who never consented to it worse? I think a lot of people would be creeped out, even adults, if they found out that someone they know had pasted their head onto a porn model’s body without their consent. If such a photo gets distributed, it could potentially harm a person’s reputation (even if it isn’t really a picture of you, someone who sees it on a porn website may not be able to discern that it’s a bad photoshop).
(Pitted because I guess my reaction is one of recreational outrage more than anything)
Yeah, that pegs the Creep-O-Meter pretty well. I think the court made the right call on reversing the porn conviction, though. Too bad about the drug charges. It’s a bit fuzzy on what exactly happened to throw those convictions out.
Yea, I’m generally against laws that make it illegal to make fake child pornography, so I agree with the decision, even though the fathers obviously pretty skivy
Over here, there would be another option: not about freedom of expression vs. pornography, but damaging his child psychologically, esp. if we don’t if the photos were spread.
Fortunately they got this guy on other charges. If a person is twisted enough to give drugs to his daughter, and the other creepy stuff I don’t want to type, it probably isn’t that difficult to find charges. It is a shocking that he got away with two out of three drug charges. He was giving a 13 year old cocaine.
I am a little bothered by fact that the police found the pictures on his harddrive. If the police search your house, does that include the right to go through all of the documents on your computer?
WAG: Since he wanted to take pictures of her in her underwear, they start worrying he’s into child porn, and bingo, search warrant lets them check the computer.
I’m guessing it depends on what’s on the warrant. Considering the things he did, putting the hard drive on the warrant would seem to be, um, warranted.
Yes, assuming the warrant specifies that they are looking for something that could be stored on a hard drive. If the warrant says they are searching for a stolen cache of hand grenades, then no, no search of your hard drive would be permitted. But if they were searching for contraband pornography… yes.
Where this gets interesting is something called the “plain view doctrine.”
As the police search your house for the stolen hand grenades, pursuant to a valid warrant, they open a footlocker and discover child porn pictures. Even though they weren’t looking for them and knew nothing about them, they are nonetheless admissible against you, because they were in plain view of the police while the police were acting lawfully.
Now extend this to the computer – consider how much stuff you have on your computer… chat logs, pictures, blog drafts, financial information, movies. When the police search your computer, all of that is “plain view” under the current state of the law. Some legal commentators believe that the law should reflect the reality of the information age, and not extend the plain view doctrine to computer searches.
Hella skeevy, yes, but criminal, no. Child porn isn’t criminalized because it’s skeevy, but because it involves actual abuse and exploitation of real children.
The article also doesn’t say that he uploaded the images to the internet or anything, so I don’t see any kind other theoretical damages.
The net is filled with fake celebrity porn anyway, and i’ve never heard of any of it being charged as criminal. It may be distasteful in some cases (Emma Watson should never, ever go on the internet), but that’s the world we live in now.
This guy is clearly a sick bastard, but there’s no law against having sick fantasies, which is really all this amounts to. Giving the kid drugs is a crime. Having secret fake photos is not. Trying to get her to pose for pictures in her underwear might have started skirting the edge of criminality, though.
Wow. Officially right off the top of the ‘Creepy’ scale.
Even without allegations of child porn, the drugs themselves open a door: drug deals via computer, or storing records of such, are common enough that adding hard drives and storage media to a warrant isn’t far-fetched. I know - What idiot would store records of such transactions…? Well, often enough, that would be the kinds of idiots that use illegal drugs.
Fake child porn (putting kids faces on otherwise legal porn, drawings, 3d animations) is not illegal, and neither are nude photo’s real children (otherwise my mom is going to jail for that picture of 3 year old me being all cute handing over my towel- and nudists all over the world would be in hot water), correct?
I mean this guy is indeed one sick weirdo I wouldn’t want anywhere near my kid (tell me this woman left him!), but aside form the drug issue (glad they got him on that), he didn’t do anything illegal.
I think every person in this story acted correctly, except the dad, the trial judge, and maybe the jury.
The daughter told her mom.
The mom called the cops.
The cops got a search warrant and found the pics.
Arresting him? Honestly, if I was a cop and found those pictures, I would find it SO creepy, and be so concerned for the daughter’s safety, that I would arrest the guy and let the DA’s office decide whether or not they could make the charges stick. Oh, plus the drug charges – the arrest for those was perfectly legit.
The prosecutor certainly acted correctly about the drug charges, and without knowing the language of the law it’s hard for me to say whether the porn charges were an overreach. I would certainly level every charge I could to put the guy away.
The judge apparently fucked up pretty bad, giving wring instructions to the jury. And that’s why I have trouble deciding whether the jury fucked up – they may have been given bad information on which to base their verdict. I’d guess they probably were, because if the law is as clear as others have suggested, the judge would have dismissed the porn charge before the jury even git a chance to consider it.
But there was nothing to consider. It’s not illegal to what he did, anymore than it would be for me to write an erotic story of my sexual escapades at age 12.
Not that I had any sexual escapades at age 12. It would be a fiction book.