I only met the guy once and he seemed nice. He had a great wife, two kids, nice house in the suburbs, good job, everything. I’m sure none of them had any idea what was going on.
Something (I don’t know what) happened that caused a 5 year old friend of one of his kids to tell her parents something bad had happened. Police investigated and seized a computer that was found to have some child porn on it. GF’s uncle was arrested and is in jail awaiting trial. I’m guessing he is going to go away for a long time.
You read things like this in the paper but you don’t realize the extent of the damage until you see it first hand. It really affects a lot of people. The wife has basically lost her husband. They are going to be bankrupt from legal fees. I can only imagine what his kids are going through. They live in a small town and word travels fast.
I hope that little 5 year old girl is going to be OK. I don’t know what she went through, but I hope she gets help. She told someone, but what if there were others? The possibilities are sickening.
My uncle was found to have been visiting child porn sites last year. His wife, in typical Mormon fashion, turned to the bishop rather than the police.
It’s come out that he had molested at least one of my cousins (from another family, so his niece) and has been fired from at least one job specifically for child molestation when he was a counselor for the Mormon church.
It’s caused many, many problems.
When we grew up, he was the “cool” uncle, always paying attention to the kids. Last year (after this came out) when I went back home, I found a candid picture of him and my sister at a Thanksgiving dinner, and he was smiling at her. It really gives you the willies to realize that he was thinking at the time.
HE is unable to afford his own attorney. HE is incarcerated. At least in this jurisdiction, anyone who is incarcerated is presumed indigent as a matter of course. Sure, your family can choose to hire counsel, but they certainly aren’t required to bankrupt themselves because of someone else’s poor choices.
Since the couple is still married, wouldn’t that require that the couple’s money (or at least half of it) be used for his defense? I know nothing about this, fortunately never needing a reason to know, but assumed that was the case. Maybe the wife assumes so as well.
Speaking for me alone, that’s why I said “after finding kiddie porn.” I know that false charges of abuse can be and have been made, but finding child pornography (and it doesn’t sound like we’re talking about 17-year-olds here) is pretty damning.
Puhleeze. If it was just the child’s word I could see where thre might be the tiniest crack of a spot for doubt, but combined with the computer evidence?
Thank God he was caught, and that the Law Enforcement officers acted quickly and thoroughly.
This isn’t a court of law. And given the facts presented by the OP, why should we, as citizens playing no role in his interactions with the legal system, presume his innocence?
In our jurisdiction, the financial forms you fill out to get a public defender are pretty comprehensive. They ask for everything… do you own a car, home, property, bank accounts, trusts, all assets that could be liquidated, how many folks you support, etc… NO ONE is presumed indigent.
And the poverty line to qualify for a public defender is incredibly low… Something like under 18K/year for a family of five.
Do you expect tax payers to pay for this guy’s attorney, simply so that his family doesn’t pay for his mistakes? That is NOT the way it works, nor should it.
I don’t expect a woman who has done nothing wrong to go bankrupt because her husband was secretly a monster.
The wife of the BTK serial killer got an almost instantaneous divorce. I know of a couple here where the wife was able to divorce the husband in a couple of week’s time after he was arrested for stealing from his employer. Of course, her father, step-mother, and step-father were all law enforcement officers, so they probably knew exactly who to talk to to speed things up.
Do we have a family attorney around who can speculate on this?
I except the taxpayers to pay for his attorney if he can’t afford ones himself, I don’t what his family can afford is relevant. Especially given it’s unlikely his minor children have anything other than college funds. That his property his likely comingled with his wife (who it would seem is either deep in denial and/or convinced he’s innocent) is a complicating factor. Also if does end up being found not guilty I would expect the state to reimburse him his legal fees and possibly compensate him for any lost income (yes, I know we don’t do that in this country, but that’s for another thread).
And did the computer hacker coach the 5-year-old to claim he’s a molester too? Besides, I’m thinking the files’ dates/history can be checked - if a crapload of porn was put on the system in one go, then a “omg evil hacker made my computer into a kiddie porn hosting site” defense might have a teeny bit more credence than if it was carefully accumulated over time. Not to mention discovering an actual keylogger/Trojan/whatever instead of a nice clean computer filled with filth.
And we’re just bystanders; we don’t have to presume a damned thing. That’s for the legal system to deal with. It might be polite or decent of us to presume innocence, but I don’t know him from Adam and he doesn’t know me. I can live with the slight moral stain from that.
ISTR reading that there is malware that will put child porn, or any other type of images, on a computer without the owner’s knowledge. That kind of thing, as well as the actions of actual computer crackers, must be ruled out.