This is tremendously disturbing, but according to the article pretty common. It's a tough line. On the one hand, nobody wants children to suffer. If at all possible, every child should be protected from abuse. I think the key, as the author elaborates on, is education. Knowing the difference between a crazy hippy family and pedophiles seems like common sense -- but if you, as an uneducated clerk at a crappy CVS in th…
In practice it just doesn't work very well sometimes. I think it's better to risk letting more child abusers off the hook, than potentially ruining the lives of decent parents like these.
How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
81–90 of 216 posts
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
(at best they were all "just doing their jobs", just like concentration camp guards) Quoted for truth. This is not an invocation of Godwin's law, but the closest possible analogy, as these bureaucrats make the exact same repugnant decisions someone like Eichmann made. They fully well know they ruin the lives of many innocent folks; at least half the cases turn out to have been nothing. The problem is not 'the governm…
Yes the hysteria in Europe is quite similar. I think that part of this has to do with the fact that whenever a case of child abuse arises, and it's shown that the social services did not do enough to protect the child from harm, there's a huge media circus, legal cases brought against the council, heads of department sacked and so on. So from the social services point of view false negatives can be prohibitively cost…
False reports out of revenge (for instance, between divorcees, jealous neighbours or oither idiots) are also very common, and the damage done to families because of that is significant.
The cure seems to be much worse than the disease here.
Friends of ours had a 'visit' of the dutch equivalent of the 'service' (I use the term lightly) who kept on suggesting that there must be something wrong. When the guy got up to make coffee the woman said 'you can tell me now', as though she was a victim too. Unbelievable, the way these people push their way in to peoples lives, guilty by default and if you are very very lucky you might get to keep your kids at their say-so.
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#83I had a similar run in with DCF, not for child pornography but for accusations of child abuse. I helped out a high school friend who had become a heroin addict (I had no idea what I was getting into), by letting his family and himself live with me while he tried to recover. It ended up that this was a common scam with him and his wife and they use a sob story to get friends to help them out and once they wear out the…
First off, I am so sorry for your experience that sounds completely terrible. Second, was there nothing your lawyer could do, such as file an injunction against the DCF? Is there any way you can be compensated (in any way) for your experience? If there was would you take it?
It's rare that I would advocate to just let it be but in this case that would seem to me to be the safest option. Pick your battles.
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#84America 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…
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#85Wait until some enterprising district attorney confiscates your hard drive, surmises you frequent HN, subpoenas your voting history from pg, finds this thread and examines which anti-governement/pro-common-sense comments you up voted. Everything you say (and/or write) may be used against you. Have a nice day :)
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's absurd; there is a distinct difference between seeing something that concerns you and becoming sexually aroused by said image. To suggest they are "consumers of child pornography" is just a bit rude... For the untrained eye such photo's as in this case may have shocked him/her and prompted the knee-jerk reaction of calling the police. You are right in part; I think the main problem is that, absurdly, any image…
>That's absurd; there is a distinct difference between seeing something that concerns you and becoming sexually aroused by said image. To suggest they are "consumers of child pornography" is just a bit rude... What is absurd is a situations where natural actions (taking photos of your children) become, randomly, life ruining [1]. You say my suggestion is rude but this is in fact exactly what happened to the author of…
No it isn't. You hear about some of these cases because, rightly, it occasionally hits the media but in general it is not happening a lot (comparatively anyway).
People are getting too cagey over child nudity and prudish in general; but I don't think it is a result of either being a pedophile or sex offender.
I would pick the clerk as he/she is actually exhibiting bizarre behavior.
Not to my mind. They are reacting irrationally to images that disturb him/her; it does not make them a sex offender.
I see what you are saying; but I don't think it comes as a result of people being abused or secretly being pedophiles; it is more a reflection of a society where we are slowly becoming terrified of the "bogeyman" pedophile at every turn.
To put your point another way; if you saw, through a living room window, someone strangling another person whilst having sex with them would you call the police? And would it be because you found it sexually arousing? or is because you were worried about the person? See the difference.
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#87I had a similar run in with DCF, not for child pornography but for accusations of child abuse. I helped out a high school friend who had become a heroin addict (I had no idea what I was getting into), by letting his family and himself live with me while he tried to recover. It ended up that this was a common scam with him and his wife and they use a sob story to get friends to help them out and once they wear out the…
I wonder what is with those brownie points? Do they transform into big buck$?
This evaluation method is of course as disastrous as lines of codes are for programmers. As a result, 1% of the French population has been arrested at least once last year. And this number is increasing.
Another example would be the number of American citizens that are on the Terrorist Watch List (I recall 4% [citation needed]). Official may get brownie points for putting one in, but never for putting one out. (Plus, there's might be an almost non-null chance that the guy might be, or know, a terrorist. Perhaps.)
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#88This kind of story is indicting of our culture. Outside the US nudity is not so taboo. In my daughter's kindergarten (a nice private school in Southeast Asia) boys and girls share the same bathroom, with no private stalls, and no door on the entrance. Everyone sees everything -- passers-by included. Meanwhile, in the US, nudity is synonymous with sex, and good people have to worry about things like this.
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#89America 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…
I think a good part of that is the fundamentalist Christian ('reborn') element in the United States which commands a fair portion of the vote.
Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
>That's absurd; there is a distinct difference between seeing something that concerns you and becoming sexually aroused by said image. To suggest they are "consumers of child pornography" is just a bit rude... What is absurd is a situations where natural actions (taking photos of your children) become, randomly, life ruining [1]. You say my suggestion is rude but this is in fact exactly what happened to the author of…
If this were isolated it might not be such a huge issue, but it's happening quite a lot (relatively). No it isn't. You hear about some of these cases because, rightly, it occasionally hits the media but in general it is not happening a lot (comparatively anyway). People are getting too cagey over child nudity and prudish in general; but I don't think it is a result of either being a pedophile or sex offender. I would…
I put on the relatively tag for a reason. I heard of about 7 cases in one year, each one of them completely insane. That's a lot relative to where I'm living in Europe where I've heard of zero such cases. It's also a lot relative to how many should have happened, also zero.
>but I don't think it is a result of either being a pedophile or sex offender.
No, most people behave this way because they've been horribly and dangerously brain washed into behaving this way. So how do you "fix" them?
Imagine some less extreme behaviors that people could do and how it would be greeted. Imagine some intimate situation like a young man proposing to a young lady in a restaurant. Suddenly some jerk walks up and loudly farts in his face. How would this be reacted to? I can think of a lot of potential reactions, all of which would be extreme enough to let the drive by farter know that this kind of behavior is not acceptable.
Now lets step it up a notch. Someone urinates on the floor in the middle of a semi-crowded area. Now we're talking jail time, right? Maybe the person grew up in a culture where this was acceptable or even expected. Doesn't matter, they did something more extreme than the last example and will be greeted with a more extreme result.
Now back to our clerk. This person looked at some normal family photos and reacted by ruining someone's life. I think this person finding themselves the subject of such an investigation would be appropriate and effective at teaching people that this kind of bizarre behavior is not acceptable and will not be tolerated.
>Not to my mind. They are reacting irrationally to images that disturb him/her; it does not make them a sex offender.
Neither did the person taking the photos. Remember, my statement was if I had to pick between the two of them. Would you seriously pick the author in that situation? Then I have some bad news for you...
>if you saw, through a living room window, someone strangling another person whilst having sex with them would you call the police?
Bad example. Enough people are into such behavior that I absolutely would not call the police. Further, if I did I would fully expect to find myself on the business end of a peeping Tom case.
But if we changed your example to me just seeing someone being strangled then I would call the police. Because I saw something extreme happening. I would not call the police if I saw two people hugging. See the difference?