Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

salon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 216 posts

Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

#171

Post by kls »

jvdh wrote: post #54

On the one hand I completely sympathize with the author. As a parent myself I would not wish this upon anyone. On the other hand, the author is a journalist, exactly the people who are the cause of this type of witch hunt. If you would leave out the prologue of the story, and make it into a story where the accusations actually were true. Then noone would have blinked about what happened. If they were treated any othe…

I would buy your argument if they would not have selectively chosen 6 photos to sent to DCF without the context of the other photos.

Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

#172

Post by mkramlich »

mkramlich wrote: post #6

Horrible 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…

the voting system is broken if my comment was brought to -2. just because someone may disagree with the comment doesn't mean my karma should be lowered. that just encourages groupthink and political correctness. not cool.

to fix i propose allowing only a small number of trusted admins to be able to bring a comment below 1.

Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

#173

Post by mkramlich »

Confusion wrote: post #39
mkramlich wrote: post #6

Horrible 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. They already got to you :(. 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. Comple…

nobody got to me

Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

#174

Post by jbooth »

kls wrote: post #138
blueberry wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what is with those brownie points? Do they transform into big buck$?

Increased budget next year.

These departments in every state have been getting slashed for the last 10 years, actually.

Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

#175

Post by jbooth »

cagey wrote: post #169
slantyyz wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neighbors can be the worst people. You think you bought your dream house, and someone moves in next door who is a total nightmare and makes you feel completely trapped and miserable.

And if they're there only because of "Section 8" funding you get to revel in the knowledge that it's your tax dollars "at work" subsidizing the mayhem next door! [BTDT] Hey, another bureaucracy at work!

Most likely, nosey NIMBY douchebags like the person described at very unequivocally not section 8.

Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

#176

Post by kls »

jbooth wrote: post #174
kls wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increased budget next year.

These departments in every state have been getting slashed for the last 10 years, actually.

Yes it was more of a guess than anything substantiated. Feel free to down-vote it. It deserves it.

Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

#177

Post by jbooth »

jacquesm wrote: post #79
kls wrote: post #13

I 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 guess that's proof positive that no good deed goes unpunished. What bothers me most about this story is that the organization that is nominally in charge of the welfare of children actually achieves the exact opposite by their behviour. These people ought to be summarily dismissed for gross incompetence. I'm happy it wasn't me under investigation if there is one thing that gets my dander up it is abuse of power lik…

Well, the plural of anecdote is not data.

Maybe we should reconsider the laws, rather than the organization. If we didn't have a different standard of "guilty until proven innocent" that immediately kicks in when someone's accused of child abuse, the organization might be much more effective. Or less effective. I don't know. Let's not overgeneralize from a few bad stories though.

Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

#178

Post by jbooth »

kls wrote: post #176
jbooth wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These departments in every state have been getting slashed for the last 10 years, actually.

Yes it was more of a guess than anything substantiated. Feel free to down-vote it. It deserves it.

Thanks. Big pet peeve of mine. Pretty much all state and local-run services have had a hatchet taken to them every single year for the last 10 years, and then people have the gall to get angry at the idea of paying people for public service, or advocate for cutting more teachers/cops/firefighters/social workers because quote "government is too big". Cut somewhere else, these people actually do things.

Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

#179

Post by cromulent »

The spectrum of human sexuality that is accepted by society is narrower than the human biological spectrum of sexuality. Rightfully, we reject behaviour that can damage children.

Wrongfully, many modern societies (until recently) fiercely rejected homosexuality, with often tragic results.

The current methods of dealing with pedophilia - by suspecting everyone, every man in a park taking photos of his children - are a blight.

At some point, society will have to stop trying to drive pedophilia into the ocean and find a different way to deal with it. Nobody chooses to be a pedophile, they can just choose to repress their behaviour. We should find them and help them instead of victimizing the innocent.

Re: How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

#180

Post by jacquesm »

jbooth wrote: post #177
jacquesm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that's proof positive that no good deed goes unpunished. What bothers me most about this story is that the organization that is nominally in charge of the welfare of children actually achieves the exact opposite by their behviour. These people ought to be summarily dismissed for gross incompetence. I'm happy it wasn't me under investigation if there is one thing that gets my dander up it is abuse of power lik…

Well, the plural of anecdote is not data. Maybe we should reconsider the laws, rather than the organization. If we didn't have a different standard of "guilty until proven innocent" that immediately kicks in when someone's accused of child abuse, the organization might be much more effective. Or less effective. I don't know. Let's not overgeneralize from a few bad stories though.

> Let's not overgeneralize from a few bad stories though.

The plural of anecdote may not be data, but if there is no data to support something and plenty to support the opposite you're allowed to draw your own conclusions. Not everybody approaches each and every issue in life as though it were a scientific experiment, and when your relationship with your kid(s) is at stake you're allowed to make some shortcuts that a respectable scientist would never make.

Using sentences like 'the plural of anecdote is not data' is an easy way to make it seem as though a discussion on a subject is not proper because, after all, all we have is anecdotes but the trick with such sentences is to apply them to the right subjects. This is not one of those subjects.

Being accused of child abuse, in the world that we live in is a thing with tons of consequences, the organizations are empowered by the laws that we've got. Reconsideration of those laws is a fine goal but for the time being very unlikely, unless there will be a dramatic shift in the politics of many countries.

Post reply on HN