back to article Child porn victims seek multimillion-dollar payouts

In December 2008, Virginia-based deputy sheriff Arthur Weston Staples III received a visit at home from police investigating claims he had traded child pornography images online. The former Vietnam vet, who had no previous offenses, was eventually sentenced to more than 17 years in prison after investigators found 400 to 600 …

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  1. Patrick R

    "...and played no role in the production of the images"

    I'm convinced every distribution of the images makes it worse as it makes people see their obsession a bit more like "mainstream", closer to normal than it should ever be. The more they consume, the more they get obsessed with it and the more likely some day, one of them will become his own hero, though it was never anyone's fault, or was it ?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Wrong abuse images

    @neb: "adults f**king children is wrong,"

    A child is defined as anyone under 18 years old, and it is legal for an 18 year old adult to have sex with a 16 year old child. The issue is not clear cut. The age of consent in Spain, for example, is 13. But we don't arrest all Spanish visitors because they may be breaking our laws.

    Pornographic images are also a difficult area, especially when kids can photograph themselves with a mobile phone, and send YOU the image without your consent.

    In America, nude photos of kids will get you a jail sentence, in Europe, nude photos of kids are a normal part of a family album.

    But rape a kid, and by all means throw away the key.

  3. The Other Steve

    On a practical note

    Where is a man serving a 17 year jail sentence going to get $3.68m ?

  4. ZenCoder

    Conflict of emotion and reason.

    Emotionally I want those who derived pleasure form picture of her abuse to be made to pay in every way possible. Rationally I know that there is great harm in abandoning all "semblance of reason, common sense and fairness" even when someone has committed or is accused of committing horrible crimes.

    I have great sympathy for this woman, but I agree with the judges who are rejecting these restitution claims.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    It does "seem" fair.

    On the face of it perhaps there is a range of offences perp'd?

    Some of these might be criminal and some civil.

    But it does seem reasonable to give consideration to any "marketing" that an image may go through whether or not the victim or image taker(s) knew about or had no ability to know about?

    So a range to consider seems to include:

    the victim as an sexually abused person

    the victim as a person in an image doing whatever

    the victim as a person whose image has been marketed or made commercially available or used by others for commercial gain.

    ?

  6. Pablo
    WTF?

    What a mess

    THE GOOD: I like that it's at least theoretically based on, and proportional to, harm suffered by the victim. Whether she actually gets three million or three dollars, it's done more to put things right than the 17-year prison sentence. And unlike criminal law, you will never see a 14-year-old girl on the wrong end of it for some pictures she took of herself. Criminal law is based on "it's wrong because I say so and you must be punished", whereas civil law is based on "it's wrong because you hurt someone... approximately *this* much, now make it right".

    THE BAD: Suing one guy who had one image for the whole amount of her suffering is frankly, insane. And the fact this this is on top of criminal liability doesn't sit quite right with me. If that figure of $3,680,000 is supposed to completely compensate Amy for her trauma, why should anyone have to go to jail for it too? (Not that I'm suggesting the original uncle at least doesn't belong there.)

    THE UGLY: James R. Marsh. I sort of assumed he was the pedophile at first.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Now that the former victim is an adult

    I think that she should not want to have to relive this every time a restitution check arrives with a memo field of: Restitution for violent child rape.

    But hey, you never know.

  8. heyrick Silver badge

    What I don't get...

    ...is why people that *possess* these images are being sued for oodles of cash. While I can sort-of understand the "mental suffering" that Amy may or may not be experiencing as a result of this, I don't believe that her degree of suffering changes depending on how many people have the images. Neither do I feel that once these images are tracked down and eradicated, her suffering will cease. For those messed-up people who do happen to have them, chase them using the usual methods for paedo types (and might I say "hear hear" to the poster who suggested two bricks), but for Amy, surely her complaint is directly with her Uncle, the person who set up and then distributed the images?

  9. heyrick Silver badge

    And another thought...

    ...of this $3.6m, how much goes in Amy's pocket and how much is "legal fees"?

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