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.

differentname
That does seem to explain the 3 year sentence. I would have been surprised if it had been 3 years just for clicking on a site.

If you do read the article about the actual prosecution we're talking about - then a) some of the children were under 12 b) he was sharing the images, not just accidentally looking at them.

From my understanding, then the children are generally aged by looking at them - obviously they do not necessarily know who the children are, and even if they did they wouldn't know when the images were taken. So it's sensible to assume that, having found images of children under 12 being raped, he didn't report this, but offered to share them with someone he thought was interested in seeing images of child abuse.

Presumably the friend had a lawyer who would have argued all these points in court if they were relevant.

Some laws and penalties are written to deter. Whether or not he is a pedophile is less relevant than whether he was breaking the law. I don't think ignorance of the law is a defence in most cases, but again I am sure that point would have been argued if it was strong enough.

An undercover agent who asked for some of Holleman's pictures over the Internet earlier this year received 13 images, all of children under 18, some under 12. They depicted children during sexually explicit conduct, including intercourse,"

Holleman being JG's friend, whom he happily defends.

The whole 16 being the age of consent : The article alludes to the Canadian police force being involved, so if he was in Canada, then yes, 16 IS the age of consent,

When sexual activity involves exploitation such as prostitution, pornography or where there is a relationship of trust, authority or dependency the age of consent is 18 years.

16 is NOT the legal age of consent for filming 'porn'!

And regardless of some being 16, they were being RAPED!!

The site that JG mentioned in the original Telegraph article was a "sting" site (which perhaps explained why the sixteen year olds looked older) - as per the articles others have linked, this was the first step in an investigation which led to Holleman sharing images of much younger children with an undercover agent .

For JG to represent this in an interview as " he looked at a naked 16 year old and got 3 years, wah!" is disingenuous to say the very least.

Oh, I see it was in fact an 18 month sentence, he served 15 months and is now practicing law again.

He doesn't seem that hard done by to me!

I suppose it's possible that JG was told that by his friend/friend's wife and didn't dig further?

Having said that, I'd dig!

It seems he wrote the guy a character reference as part of the case, though. If he didn't enquire about the details of the legal case when he's made a career out of describing details of legal cases, then I'm a best selling US novelist ...

I'm with cote and morris on the 16 year old thing. Man looking at sexual images of 16 year olds on the Internet:

Is it wrong? Yes.
Is it illegal? Yes.
Should it be punished? Yes.
Is it as bad a crime as looking at 10 year olds? No.
Does it make them a paedophile? No.

I know that the age of consent for filming these things is 18, but the very fact that a 16 year old is perfectly legally able to consent to sexual acts with people of any age does make it different to looking at a 10 year old who is still over half a lifetime away from being that age.

Anyway, that's a moot point now it seems, as this guy was looking at very young girls anyway.

Grim.

Is it as bad a crime as looking at 10 year olds? No. Even though they were being RAPED???

And the age to consent to "pornography" is 18? So it was still child abuse images that he viewed.

How is that not as bad as all the rest? Is it because rape is OK as long as the victim is the legal age of consent?

Fucking hell...why can't people get that this CHILD (because that is what a 16yr old is, a CHILD) is being raped & degraded & exploited!!!

This is exactly what JG set out to do. Pick an example that horrifies everyone and set another example against it to make that seem like barely a crime.

This is like Judy Finnegan and Sarah Vine on Ched Evans - well, it wasn't a bad rape, what if she'd been held at knife point, etc.

Well, look at that.

First page of the thread, I thought, "hmm, Grisham's friend says he's receiving a punitive one-size-fits-all sentence that doesn't take account of what he actually looked at. Yeah right!"

And look, now a journalist has checked up on those claims and been quoted here before I got to page 6. And I was entirely right.

People convicted of downloading and sharing abuse images (and their families) seem to follow a script: they take the least severe offence, admit to that and that only, and claim that their conviction and sentencing was just for that bit and totally unjust. In this case, Grisham's friend, and now Grisham, are insisting that he only looked for images of girls two years too young to be legally capable of consenting to appear in pornography. The reference to the idea they looked thirty is a subtle way of ridiculing the age of consent laws for pornography: the men are saying that if the girls looked older, they should have been treated as having the maturity to consent.

Except that it looks like the laws don't work like that- they do take the actual details of your offence into account, and he was actually sentenced extremely lightly for offences involving much younger children. Perhaps it wasn't ten year old boys. Sounds like maybe it was ten year old girls, instead.

"why can't people get that this CHILD (because that is what a 16yr old is, a CHILD)"

I have a DD and I do understand your outrage, but no, a 16-year-old is not a child - not legally and definitely not physically.

On a similar note, Michael Crichton was one of my favourite authors until I read his autobiography.
In it he describes a trip to Thailand with a friend and a situation where they renter a room with VERY underage children. Crichton backs out of the situation and waits for his friend by the car. He was a child rapist enabler, and used the situation to make money in his autobiography

Cote

Sixteen-year-olds in England and Wales cannot legally purchase cigarettes, alcohol, vote, or marry without parental consent. They can no longer leave education completely- it's 18 from next September, not 16. They also can't appear in pornography.

The laws vary across countries, but it's not particularly unusual to have a difference between the age at which it's judged an individual will be capable of having a non-exploitative sexual relationship, and the age at which it's judged you're capable of considering the ramifications of working in the sex industry.

"children are generally aged by looking at them"

If so, that is a very dubious way of accusing, charging, and sentencing people of a serious crime.

A boy in DD's class (9) is exactly the same height as DS (5) and looks much younger than the other boys in the class. And that is in an age group where you can generally tell children's ages (more or less) by looking at them.

Assuming fully-developed bodies and liberal application of makeup, there is really no reliable way to tell 12-year-olds from 16-year-olds.

A 60-year old lecher looking at sexual images of a teenage girl is disgusting, and there is a crime committed there if it is illegal for under-18s to work in pornography, but this is not pedophilia and it is not "child pornography" since a 16-year-old is not a child in any sense of the word.

If the same man could have legally had sex with a 16-year-old girl, I can't really get outraged at the idea of him looking at pictures of one.

And if those girls weren't 16 but website said they were, then I don't see how it's possible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the man in question was aware of that deception.

Whether or not men should look at 16 year old girls isn't really relevant to this case. This was not somebody coming across a picture of Sam Fox in the Sun in 1983.

People are not sent to prison for 'being a pedophile'. They are sent to prison for carrying out an act that is against the law.

Cote
Read the detail that have come out about the case. His "friend" then passed further pictures to a police officer that included abuse of children who estimated to be under 12.

I saw this and was v dissaspointed.

List of things I have never done drunk -

Accidentally clicked on images of child sex abuse.
Accidentally downloaded images of child sex abuse.
Made anti semitic comments in public.
Thought anti semitic thoughts.
Thought racist thoughts.
Spoken racist thoughts.
Spoken or thought disabilist ideas.
Spoken or thought homophobic or discriminatory ideas.
Googled violent or abusive sites.

I might have eaten the odd tub (or two) of ice cream, woken up my husband to tell him I really really luffs him, stumbled on the stairs and been sick in the bath BUT the other stuff.....nope.

I'm not sure I follow your logic, cote - are you saying that people shouldn't be prosecuted for viewing images of child abuse unless the images are date stamped, the child located, and a birth certificate made available? Because that's the logical consequence (as far as I can see it) of your argument.

You seem to be very keen to find ways in which the inexcusable can be excused - it may have been a 16 year old that looks like a 12 year old. Therefore it's ok to view images of child abuse, and therefore it's not pedophilia... For me, this is taking plausible deniability too far.

I think I'm getting confused about if you're arguing about this particular case (which follows the script predicted by Queen Tilly) or if you are arguing that there may be theoretical cases where someone may be charged for doing something that could be argued to be innocuous by some people.

I'd find it constructive to know which of these lines your taking:

a) Gresham was correct, it was silly that his friend was prosecuted given what Gresham stated was the case

b) Despite the further knowledge of the case we now have, Gresham was still correct, his friend shouldn't have been prosecuted

c) His friend should have been prosecuted, but given guidelines on how to avoid downloading and distributing images of child abuse

d) There is some theoretical possibility that someone could possibly fall foul of the law by mistake.

The thing is, that in most western democracies, the judicial system interprets the law, so if you are arguing d), I'd say it's a hollow argument unless you've evidence of someone who has been prosecuted under these circumstances.

My child could throw a snowball, which bounces off a tree, hits a car windscreen, causing the driver to swerve into a pedestrian, and be charged with manslaughter. But let's face it, despite it being a theoretically possible outcome - it just wouldn't fly in the actual courts...

And really, even assuming that there are loads of 12-14 year olds who look 30 and are just incredibly mature; what kind of images and videos would they be in? Is it really credible that there is a whole sector of the industry that is just really unlucky and keeps getting duped by 12-14 year old girls anxious to join the porn industry?

LilAnnieAmphetamine Fri 17-Oct-14 13:46:55

Yes.

All the talk about the exact ages of the girls makes me really uncomfortable: yes, some kids look older than their years, just as some look younger than they are.
The law still needs to be upheld - so of course producers of images of sexual abuse of underage children should be hit hard with everything the law has to offer, but equally consumers of such images need to be punished to in the hope that something can reduce the market for such images.

Tbh, legal side aside I am just as uncomfortable about an 18 year old 'starring' in a porn movie as a 17 1/2 year old - but the law makes a difference and that is absolutely correct.

Getting sidetracked by the exact age and what they looked like question is a distraction from the frigging entitlement some men seem to have to have access to abusive pictures - really, really pisses me of that there is anything ok about this whether the child in question was 10, 15 or 17 1/2. Really beside the point IMO.