Okay, here’s the sitch:
Imagine you have a friend of long standing–twenty years or so. Let’s call him Al. Al has always been a good guy to you: reliable, intelligent, funny, all around good company. He once quite literally saved your life, in fact, and risked his own in doing so. If not your best friend, he’s in the top two.
If Al has a flaw, it’s that he doesn’t seem to like children. Oh, he doesn’t dislike them, but he refuses to be in their company, alone or with others. If you ask him to help paint your house, he’s there with bells on–unless kids are around. But he always insists on knowing first, and if they are, he’ll beg off. Likewise he refuses to babysit or pick up his nieces & nephews from school.
One day Al’s home is burgled. Among the items taken is his computer. A week later the police find the perpetrators, who, seeking a break, reveal that they discovered tons and tons of child pornography on Al’s hard drive. Said porn is of two types: written stories of the kidnap and rape of small children, and drawings/computer-generated images of same. There are no photographs, and the pictures are all stylized–like, say, this picture of Batgirl and Supergirl, but of younger girls.
[spoiler]
There is no nudity in this picture, nor are the images of children. I’m just putting it in the spoiler box to be anal.
http://www.patfullerton.com/superman/pix/supergirl/supergirl-batgirl.jpg[/spoiler]
The world being what it is, Al gets arrested. At his trial, he concedes that he is a pedophile. He has been aware of his urges since his late teens, and is horrified by them; that is why he avoids children. He can only find relief from his urges by masturbating to the stories and images. The majority of his stash is the stories, which he collected online; the pictures are all his own creation, and he has never shared them with anyone else. He is in therapy, and he waves his privilege so that his doctor can take the stand; the doctor says that Al has long since confessed to him his dark urges and has always seemed determined to restrain them. The prosecution offers no evidence that the pictures have been distributed to others, but says that their sheer volume points that way. Again, all the pictures are drawings & CGIs; there are no photos, and all the computer stuff is on the far side of the uncanny valley.
Okay, there’s our sitch. And now the questions. How will your feelings for Al change? What verdict do you predict, assuming the trial is taking place in your neck of the woods? And, lastly, what verdict do you HOPE for?
