So a local pillar of the community pled guilty two days ago to ‘pandering’ in relation to child pornography. Get me, this is a president of Rotary, member of the United Way, President of the local electricity co-op kind of guy. Been active is all sorts of service organizations and non-profit boards and has been instrumental, in his role at the power company, in bringing green initiatives to the county.
In addition, I see him at Lady Chance’s church on a regular basis when I go with her.
And now he’s pled guilty to pandering. Specifically for two images of pre-teen boys engaging in sexual acts. But those are just the two he pled on. He had, literally, thousands of them on his home hard drive.
He’s out on bond pending his sentencing in a few weeks. He’s not exactly a friend but more like a happy acquaintance that is generally interesting and intelligent to speak with.
And I passed him on the street this morning. He gave me a fairly chipper ‘Hi! How’s things?’ and I said ‘How are you?’ right back. It wasn’t until I was about 20 feet past that I thought about it. I honestly have no ettiquette for speaking to such a man.
Here in my local government office [I’ve been on our town council and been a decently active member of our town for years] the Mayor was caught with the very same thing…
Also in other towns across America, what’s going on? I thought a mid-life crisis was getting a Corvette and taking frivilous vacations…when did it turn to looking at pre-teen boys to get your rox off.
Wow, he sounds pretty confident for someone who just pleaded guilty to child porn. Shouldn’t he stay locked inside his home for fear of an angry mob or something.
And, I meant to say, the man might still be a decent guy. I doubt he chose to have such a perverted sexual deviancy. Assuming he hasn’t molested anyone, there’s no need for the guy to have his life ruined. Of course, it very well could be.
I’m not saying the guy is innocent, not hardly. His viewing of child porn and thus tacit approval of the practice is very wrong, and very illegal. I guess I’m just trying to say that he’s not a monster, not necessarily anyway.
Well, the maximum for his plea bargain appears to be 3 years, plus some probation, registration as a sex offender and possible loss of access to the 'net for life (I shudder).
Yes, he’s
…
Jesus. I just got a call from his lawyer. Right this damn minute. I run the local newspaper and his lawyer called me. He regrets his actions and takes full responsibility for them and awaits whatever sentence the judge hands down with knowledge that he deserves his fate.
Christ, this is one hell of a thing. I’m actually sort of screwed up over this one.
I feel for you, bro’ – been there, published that, got boycotted for it. Just remember that you are in a unique position in your community. What you write and how you write it will affect Mr. Kidporn, you, and your readership for a long time. But also remember, in the eyes of the law, he’s just another guy who got caught with kid porn.
At least he’s owning up a lot better than here. Our local school board president got caught banging one of his former special ed students. She’d been in Special Olympics, the whole thing. The guy was a big-time volunteer of Special Olympics, elder in his church, had a wall filled with awards from a long and illustrious teaching career, everything. But he fought the charges every bitter step of the way. It was really ugly.
You should always be polite and kind to everyone regardless of their sin. He will receive his punishment, there’s no reason for that to break down your civility.
I know a guy who was into child porn. I used to work at a porn site and we got a lot of images through there via our spidering software. Our manager would tell us if we came across questionable material to send it to him and he would decide. We pretty much ignored that and deleted it and his manager said, “Hell no, delete that shit, we could all go to jail if he has it on his computer.”, I’m not talking about stuff that could be barely legal stuff, cuz we had a barely legal site, but stuff that was absolutely and positively child porn. If I saw the guy, I wouldn’t be uncivil to him, but he’s not the sort of person I’d want anything to do with.
Using that line of reasoning unless all of the news coverage of September 11th terrorist attacks you’ve seen was text based or animated you have abetted international terrorism? Having and viewing information is vastly different from paying for or distributing that information – the former does not affect supply nor demand for the creation of similar information. If all he did was possess and view then he did not abet child rape more than the evidence room where that picture is located is abetting it now.
Serious as a heart attack. I, personally, enjoy watching high speed chases. I have videos of high speed chases on my computer. In what way am I abetting high speed chases?
And you responded to a line by another poster that stated
which in no way implies that he paid anybody to engage in rape of a child. I would imagine that just like with movies, software, music and regular adult pornography there is plenty of freely available pirated child pornography on the Internet. You have no more reason to believe this individual paid for his private collection of child porn than you do for believing I paid people to engage in high speed chases.
I am not arguing paying for child pornography is not abetting child rape (which it is), I am arguing that “viewing and tacit approval” thereof is not (which it is not).
Raise your hand if you and a significant other took pictures and/or made movies when you were under 18?
I recall an NPR speaker at one point that made the not-startling-after-you-think-about-it remark that the primary producers and consumers of child pornography are children.
You know, why is that sort of remark only appropriate about middle aged white guys who look at child porn?
Having and viewing information is vastly different from paying for or distributing that information – the former does not affect supply nor demand for the creation of similar information. If all he did was possess and view then he did not abet child rape more than the evidence room where that picture is located is abetting it now.