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How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
31–40 of 216 posts
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#32Sounds like the system worked. She was accused of a crime, an investigation was performed, the state realized they had no case and that nothing was wrong, and the charges were dropped.
I guess it's kind of a pain to be the target of an investigation, but nobody's life was ruined.
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#33It saddens me that for every ridiculous story like this, there is someone out there who really thought that trying to bring the case was a good idea. Some things have improved in recent years. The incidence of bad therapy leading to false memory syndrome has been reduced, and with it the rate of false accusations. (There are also now improved odds for abused kids to be able to get information on what abuse is actuall…
> there is someone out there who really thought that trying to bring the case was a good idea. Really? Sounds more like there's some cynical jerk with no sense of ethics or boundaries who gets their jollies by randomly victimizing normal families with the excessive powers bestowed upon them by paranoid CYA legislation and an army of deranged ideologues who see abuse everywhere.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle: "Someone who really doesn't understand what his job is does some work in an attempt to get a promotion."
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#34We had "a run in" with Child Protective Services about 10 years ago. The charge: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" (symptoms medically caused; a long story). The "advocates" at CPS had me and my wife (in hospital having just delivered child #2) tried and convicted immediately. Only, I think, thru my self-advocacy directly to the head of pediatrics at the county hospital where my child was being held for examination, resulted in…
(at best they were all "just doing their jobs", just like concentration camp
guards)
These horror stories are not solely an American problem: there are plenty of similar European stories. However, the American stories are by far more extreme, as both the punishment and the immediate social consequences are worse. Not only the bureaucrats are like concentration camp guards: the teachers that immediately distrust you and the neighbors that won't let their kid play with yours anymore are equally guilty of 'guilty until proven innocent'.
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#35Horrible story, and I totally empathize with their situation. yes, the US is practically insane sometimes in how they deal with sexuality and minors, and yes there's a history of witch hunts in this area. all horrible. That said, they did make 2 very big mistakes, and if they hadn't done either or both of them, none of the rest would have happened. first, they took pictures of the kids naked. two, they let those pict…
My parents had childhood pictures of me, developed through the local grocery store, completely naked aside from a few layers of mud and a huge grin on my face. My teenage self might not have appreciated the opportunity to grandstand in such a manner quite as much. (I honestly thought I'd found and destroyed all of the copies. My parents were much sneakier than I gave them credit for.) My adult self thinks it's all ra…
There are photos of my parents, sister and I when we were little on a beach in the middle of nowhere all in our Birthday suits. Living in a desert environment for the first half of my childhood meant my sibling and I viewed clothing as very much optional.
Nudity isn't inherently sexual, culturally we have made it so.
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#36America has one of the absurdly strictest set of laws for sex offenses against minors, Economist had a great cover story about this some weeks ago. Problem is, since politicians know proposals for stricter laws bring in votes and no sane politician would ever propose a relaxation in these laws, they get stricter every year. On the other hand, the US has one of the most sexualized tweens and teen-agers I have ever see…
America has one of the absurdly strictest set of laws for sex offenses against minors
no sane politician would ever propose a relaxation in these laws
So what did the other countries, that have less-strict laws, do?
(I agree that Americans are very afraid of anything sexual, but I'm not sure how this happened. Not everyone is a Puritan.)
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#37Everyone should read Franz Kafka's The Trial. This story and The Trial depict the helplessness anyone can feel with our legal system, or any big bureaucracy.
ESR's got a new post up http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122 about what he calls "Kafkatrapping", making unfalsifiable claims against people as a form of "moral" bullying.
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#38I read this story, and it's very sad. But I just feel the need to ask... why is this on Hacker News? Surely this is Reddit type content? I read loads of really interesting and eye-opening posts about all sorts of non-tech subjects... but I don't feel they should be on Hacker News to the detriment of other tech stories that could be on the front page.
Lots of hackers are parents. Where else can a discussion of parenting issues from a hacker perspective happen? Or law, for that matter? Just because the OP isn't specifically about tech doesn't mean that there is no value in a hacker-specific conversation.
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#39Horrible story, and I totally empathize with their situation. yes, the US is practically insane sometimes in how they deal with sexuality and minors, and yes there's a history of witch hunts in this area. all horrible. That said, they did make 2 very big mistakes, and if they hadn't done either or both of them, none of the rest would have happened. first, they took pictures of the kids naked. two, they let those pict…
Connect the dots. It paints a bad picture.
In other words: no it bloody doesn't paint a bad picture. It paints a picture that is completely regular in 999 out of a 1000 cases. If you think it paints a bad picture, then you've already been convinced by them to such an extent that you feel their reasoning is justified. It isn't. The clerk was wrong to suspect anything from the photos. Completely, utterly, wrong.
first, they took pictures of the kids naked. two, they let those pictures get
into the hands of strangers, ones who can then misinterpret and/or be
legally obliged to do certain actions which could start a witch hunt.
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#40I read this story, and it's very sad. But I just feel the need to ask... why is this on Hacker News? Surely this is Reddit type content? I read loads of really interesting and eye-opening posts about all sorts of non-tech subjects... but I don't feel they should be on Hacker News to the detriment of other tech stories that could be on the front page.
I suspect that an increasing number of hackers rely upon HN for the majority of their news, myself included. Since "hacking the system" is a popular subject on HN, personal interest stories that show how "the system" works, or doesn't work, are of interest to enough readers to bring those stories to the front page.