Pupils find teacher's abuse images

still investigating

No way I am going to check out what constitutes "lowest level 1 category" from here at work, but I have a sneaking suspision that you wont be seeing much abuse at that level. In fact the suspended sentence sort of confirms it.

Well

Local papers says he downloaded them from torrent sites. Not sure how much mileage the police will get investigating that, but I'm sure unlimited resources are at their disposal to do so ...

Well I don't know what YOU learned...

So let me get this straight, your primary concern here is kids being nosey rather than, say, the child porn?

Hmmm.

I think what we learn from this is that at least one Judge seems to have a reasonable grasp of proportionate response. It was not so long ago you'd have seen this guy facing a jail sentence measured in years. I doubt this sentence sets any new trend (too much to hope for, frankly) towards common sense in future cases of this nature, but it does at least seem a much fairer response than we have been used to seeing from the courts.

One assumes the police aren't too happy about this, if their past form and comment on such cases is anything to go by.

I suppose the Judge took into account the the fact the defendant has now lost his career, is undoubtedly a fully-signed up member of the Sex Offender's Register and will have to suffer social exclusion and joblessness for the rest of his days. Some might think that punishment enough.

There was never any suggestion - in this story at least - that the man was a 'hands-on' child abuser. In the end, this catastrophe centres around his picture collection and it is for that - and, it appears, for that alone - that he has reaped the whirlwind.

Here is what The Copine Scale, used by UK Police, measures as 'Level 1 child pornography':

"...Non-erotic and non-sexualised pictures showing children in their underwear, swimming costumes from either commercial sources or family albums. Pictures of children playing in normal settings, in which the context or organisation of pictures by the collector indicates inappropriateness..."

Funny old world, ain't it?

Levels (courtesy of the Protection Of Children Act)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Children_Act_1978

from wikipedia

from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_pornography

"1 Indicative Non-erotic and non-sexualised pictures showing children in their underwear, swimming costumes from either commercial sources or family albums. Pictures of children playing in normal settings, in which the context or organisation of pictures by the collector indicates inappropriateness."

But the question still asks: why does he have 25,000 of them? I doubt they are from his family, I think thats what it means by "inappropriateness"

it means they aren't YOUR children, I can't imagine any law saying it's child porn that I have naked pictures of my own child in the bathtub, it would make practically every parent in the land a paedo

And if you want to know the other four as well...

...just visit the Sentencing Guidelines Council website and look up the Magistrates' Court Sentencing Guidelines for Indecent Photographs of Children. No pictures or anything (naturally), just a nice short list explaining the five levels. There may well be other material on the UK Government, Ministry of Justice or HM Courts Service websites that explains further.

And yes, I do have a legitimate reason to know all that.

Images of erotic posing, with no sexual activity

So a music video by one of these teenage girl nonsense groups? Or indeed, many photos on Facebook.

Erm...

There is NO law in the UK prohibiting paedophilia merely as a sexual orientation. If I'm wrong, please point me to the relevant legislation and I'll stand corrected.

If you mean by 'punished for being a paedo' that he is actually guilty of sexually abusing a child, I didn't read that bit in the story - in fact, I didn't see it at all.

I don't think the Judge did either.

And

Having a folder on his laptop named paedo.girl. I take it that we all agree that that's stupid.

Thought Crime, Pre-Crime, Prejudice

"Every crime has a first step. Had he taken that step, who knows?

He had the makings of a peodo, therefore he got what he deserved."

While in this case, he was, indeed, in possession of abusive images, and had crossed that line, the end of your comment sounds similar to a dangerous attitude that seems increasingly prevalent these days.

When it comes to paedophilia and sexual abuse of children, there is an increasing move towards pre-emptive criminalisation. The so-called cartoon porn law, Section 62 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009, is probably the clearest example yet.

Rather than criminalising people for what they've done or are setting about doing, we are increasingly criminalising people for what they might yet do. It's not even a case of criminalising people for what they're certainly going to do, but just for what other people believe they might do in the future.

Sometimes it is necessary to put up pre-emptive barriers, such as with drink-driving, where we criminalise people not for harm they're certainly going to do, but because of the risk they've chosen to make of themselves to other people. But there is always a need to justify such pre-emptive criminalisation: at the very least, it must be necessary, proportionate, and sufficiently clear for people to know how to avoid breaking such a law without being unduly inconvenienced. There must surely be a demonstrable, causal link between what it is that's being pre-emptively criminalised, and the related harm that such pre-emptive criminalisation is supposed to prevent.

In the case of pre-emptive criminalisation of paedophiles and ephebophiles, where paedophilia and ephebophilia are increasingly criminalised by criminalising harmless symptoms (such as possession of mere drawings), we are increasingly, pre-emptively criminalising people on the basis of desire. That's thoroughly in the realms of thought crime.

The first problem with this is that freedom of thought is - and absolutely must be - an absolute, unlimited right. Thought itself, including desire, should never be criminalised, whether directly or by proxy. We don't criminalise a wish to kill, a wish to steal, a wish to destroy, and we shouldn't be criminalising the wish to abuse - no matter how disgusting, how abhorrent, that wish might be to most of us.

The second problem is that paedophiles simply don't choose to be paedophiles, any more than heterosexuals choose to be heterosexual. (How many straight men could successfully choose to be gay instead? (Without already being bisexual, of course.)) Criminalising paedophilia, even indirectly, is criminalising someone for something about them that they never actually chose. It's totally unjust, just as criminalising someone for having naturally blue eyes would be unjust (even though having naturally blue eyes promotes Nazism (I'm joking!)).

The third problem is that proponents of such pre-emptive criminalisation seem to have difficulty demonstrating the efficacy of such laws. While it is claimed that potential abusers "feed" their early desires by using otherwise harmless material (such as non-indecent, non-abusive images of children), where "one thing leads to another", such claims seem to lack credible, supporting evidence that doesn't amount to abusers simply trying to put the blame elsewhere (such as by blaming pictures, and even blaming children themselves).

We shouldn't be criminalising paedophiles for being paedophiles. We should return back to the original purpose of such legislation, which was to protect real children from real abuse. We shouldn't be trying to pre-empt harm by criminalising thoughts. The ends do not justify such Orwellian means. And we shouldn't be pre-emptively criminalising people just because of what we think they they might possibly do in the future. We should only pre-emptively criminalise when it's necessary, proportionate, and of demonstrable efficacy.

So, while in this case he had indeed crossed the line by possessing abusive images, I do disagree with your final line, because of how it applies, prejudicially, to those who haven't crossed the line, and may well never cross the line.