To feel completely gutted that one of my favourite authors said this (warning: child abuse) [titled edited by MNHQ]

[lougle]

Daily Mail

I've bought practically all his books. I love his writing. Yet I can't quite believe that I have read this. John Grisham has claimed that 'white guys his age' are being punished too harshly for downloading child pornography and it doesn't make them paedophiles.

The idea that it's possible to drunkenly press 'a few wrong buttons' and somehow end up with images of child abuse is just utterly ludicrous. And of course it's only middle aged white men who do this.

"Sixty-year-old white men in prison who've never harmed anybody, "

The presumption that sixty year old white men - as against what? 20 year old black men, or whatever the highest demography I in U.S prisons - should not be criminalised speaks volumes about his smug entitled complacency that 'men like him' should be somehow 'trusted' to 'accidentally' click on images of child abuse, and that we should all understand that them being 'out of control' on drink is not actually anything to worry about. After all, they are middle aged white men....

A repellent mindset through and through.

I have been drunk before (I know, I know ) and I have never, ever 'accidentally landed on sites featuring child sex abuse - maybe, possibly because I don't go looking for it?!

Idiot.
John Grisham, I mean.
So wrong on so many levels.
And his writing is predictable drivel too - sorry, OP.

I have just seen this about JG says a lot about him really. I remember hearing someone else (Radio 1 on bail) saying the same thing about the Savile thing when it first came to light, I forgot we are supposed to sweep it all under the carpet aren't we?

I do think that some people don't make the connection between "child pornography" and "watching images of child abuse" - I'm just surprised that JG is that stupid.

Its when he says the girls looked more like they were in their 30's. That must of been quite the disapointment for your pervert friend who expected 16 year olds.

I don't think his writing is predictable drivel, actually, I think he has tackled some very difficult subjects really well. 'A Time to Kill' was excellent and focused on whether it was 'ok' for a group of white men to abuse a black girl because, after all, she didn't matter. Then whether it was more inexcusable when her father killed a white man because, after all, he was black.

I think that's part of why I'm shocked - I had built an image of his character and principles in my mind over the years.

Another example is James Patterson. I stopped reading his work years ago because, largely, his books are about women tortured and killed by men. The more twisted the plots got, the more I realised that to write about it, you have to be able to think about it and I'm not sure I want to read a book by someone that willingly thinks about sexual murders all day long, all year long.

I don't give a shit, anyone who is looking at images of child abuse should be locked up.

Do they forget there are children, real children, who had to suffer for their pleasure.

Fuck them. Lock them up.

If John Grisham thinks child porn / abuse images are okay or that middleaged white men should be immune from behaving like civilised human beings, then that's unacceptable.

But I do think he's in a slightly different place as a writer. I mean, I only write for fun, but I still find myself every so often thinking "hold on, do I want to Google this?" (I write action/adventure - I've Googled all sorts of things related to serious injury, how bombs work, terrorist groups... and I've made the conscious decision not to download the manuals, even though seeing them might add to the realism of how I write about them.) He writes legal thrillers. I can absolutely imagine him needing to research how looking at online child porn / abuse images "works" and for it to be difficult for the authorities to distinguish that from someone looking for the images themselves.

Well paedophile means someone sexually attracted to children , so clearly if you like looking at child porn you are by definition a paedophile.

Of course being a paedophile is not illegal, but abusing a child is.Whilst using child porn is not directly abusingthe child, it could make that person an accessory after the fact I think.You are supplying the market for this kind of image.

What a vile idiot! 'Never hurt anybody'?! Does he not realise those vile things happened to a real child? I feel sick reading that. A lawyer too, even scarier.

I don't understand the 16 year old bit (not too hot on child abuse law, luckily never had to be), but why did his 'friend' get three years for looking at pictures of 16 year olds? Do porn 'stars' have to be 18? And I completely agree, child 'porn' is not porn but sick abuse (not that non child porn isn't too but that's a different debate)

Hideous man on nick ferraris LBC programme this morning talking about this topic, aparently he is a 'sex crimes consultant' and he surprisingly (to me) was almost supporting JG in this bizarre view about men who are 'just curious' but not peodophiles? Apparently in America they seem to think lots of me are being jailed for too long for 'accidentally' looking at stuff online???
Personally I don't care how long they're being jailed for, nobody in my experience has ever been jailed for accessing child abuse images once or twice. Happy to be corrected if someone knows of a case where this has happened?

Either way, they're not being jailed for being peodophiles, they're being jailed for accessing images of child abuse, which is a crime in itself! Why so many people seem at pains to distinguish between the two, I don't know. Personally if you access/download these images you deserve jail for supporting and perpetuating the abuse of children, I honestly don't care if you never touch a child in RL, you're still scum in my eyes. Being a peodophile who abuses children is a separate and horrid crime in and of itself.

Disclaimer:- I don't usually listen to Nick Ferrari, but this morning was particularly horrible. He was also taking about judy finnigans comments and defending the 'there are different types and levels of rape' argument....urgh!

It's illegal, in the USA, for anyone to produce 'porn' if it involves a person under 18. Producers also must be able to prove that they checked the age of those involved.

Do porn 'stars' have to be 18

Yes

why did his 'friend' get three years for looking at pictures of 16 year olds?

Because 16 yr olds are under age of consent in the USA; imagine the images were of 14 yr olds in Britain.

I don't mind what JG said. Not sympathetic, but not outraged.

Ah thank you both, I was thinking of the age of consent did not realise it was different for porn.

Either way both he and his friend are grim. Love the way he says the 16 year olds looked '30', like that means rather than going to prison he should have got a refund utterly gross

It's illegal in almost all western countries to either produce, distribute or possess (access in the case of the internet) material which uses under 18's.

What I got from this was that he had a friend who was in prison for a crime that is revolting - but because he identified with his friend and didn't want to admit he had invested emotional time in a scumbag he tries to defend his friend by minimising what his friend did rather than actually admit he made a massive error of judgement and had been friends with a scum bag for years.

This is the start of people ignoring abuse despite massive evidence built up over the years - it is easier to want to believe a frankly pathetic lie than admit your friend is horrible.

My husband gets drunk every so often - he's never managed to "accidentally" land on a porn site - you have to look for these things and certainly for images of children you really have to look and type in criteria quite carefully. None of this is an "accident".

Sickening, not just the rationalising that child abuse is ok, but the comments about "sixty year old white men". What the hell has race or age got to do tith it?! He seems to imply that non-white men are far more likely to be paedophiles.

Someone asked why anyone would admit to thinking like this....because when you're as famous as he is, it's easy to fall into the trap of believing your word is Gospel and that you are untouchable

I do hope the police investigate him now.

Is the age of consent in America 18? Is it the same across all states? I didn't know that, I assumed it was 16.

From the telegraph article However the issue of sex-offender sentencing has sparked some debate in the US legal community after it emerged that in some cases those who viewed child porn online were at risk of receiving harsher sentences than those who committed physical acts against children.

That is a conversation to be had. Yes it is child abuse, yes it is wrong but is watching a picture of abuse worse than abusing and taking pictures? I can't tell you, but I do think it is a conversation to be had.

Also do alternatives work? Is it better to send someone to prison for 3 years or to put them on an 'offender programme' that addresses their behavior? Which works? Which is better for society?

He also talks about young people with drug convictions.

Mr Grisham, 59, argued America's judges had "gone crazy" over the past 30 years, locking up far too many people, from white collar criminals like the businesswoman Martha Stewart, to black teenagers on minor drugs charges and - he added - those who had viewed child porn online.

Again it is a conversation to be had. Why does America lock up so many people? Does it bring crime down?

In the UK you are not likely to be incarcerated for a first offence even if you have thousands of images. Does America have it right?

I am heartened that the comments on the Daily Mail site are at least in the main, sensibly outraged. He has effectively ruined his career I hope.