Where Do You Draw The Line On Pedophilia?

Posted on January 15, 2007 — The Monkey
Filed Under Injustice |

A 16 year old boy was charged with nine counts of child pornography possession and could have faced ten years consecutive jail time for each of those counts - ninety god damn years! Luckily the case was overturned because it was shown that his computer was hacked or something. He was forced to accept the lesser charge of no jail time for sharing a playboy magazine with friends at school. They even had the nerve to force him to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life, but luckily that was also overturned as well.

But what if he actually did have the child pornography on his computer? Is that such a bad thing?

Unfortunately the article does not specify the ages of the children pictured in the pornography, but if they had been say between 13 and 16 would it really be so bad for him to look at that? I’m not saying that child pornography is okay, its disgusting and the people responsible for creating the pornography should be sent to prison for a very long time, even the rest of their life. The point is, that it is entirely natural for a boy of his age to be looking at pornography, and if he somehow came across pornography of kids around his own age then it’s not his fault if he finds it arousing. But just to be clear, it was found that the boy had only obtained regular adult porn.

Pedophilia is such an interesting area of law because everything has been defined at a specific age. In the eyes of the law, there is no difference between a 15 year old with an 18 year old vs a 15 year old with a 50 year old. Something is not right there. I’m not sure of a perfect solution, but the law definitely needs to consider the ages of the two participants relative to each other, and also their maturity for their age as well. I see no legal issues with say a 13 year old and a 14 year old having sex, the only people who should be investigated are the parents.

The other interesting thing that came out of the article is the fact that the police polygraphed the boy and it was shown that he was telling the truth, but they chose to proceed with the charges because they claim polygraphs are not accurate. I have no idea on the accuracy of the various lie detecting machines, but if they are going to use the machine, then they have to accept the results even if they don’t agree with them. If it had shown that he was lying then I’m sure they would have no problem with the accuracy of the machine. Argh!






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