truth and lies about sex offenders

You may have seen advertisements for companies who offer to help you find the sex offenders in your area. The information is freely available so it makes no sense to pay someone else to do it for you...so how do these companies get paying customers? By lying about the dangers presented by sex offenders, making sex offenders sound pretty darned scary. 

The Sex Offender Issues blog tackles some of the lies meant to frighten people into paying for free information. 

We understand trying to educate adults and children on the dangers of this world and cyber-world, but using fear to do it and making a profit off the backs of ex-sex offenders and children is disgusting!

The sex offender registry has opened up a wide world of opportunity for scumbags.

define "worst case of online exploitation"

In this case, the feds found over 200,000 child porn images on a man's computer. Six hundred of the images were of particularly vile crimes.

The Fremont Tribune says, 

“In numbers of images alone, this was the worst case of online child exploitation discovered by our investigators,” said Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning. “Coupled with the young age of the victims, it’s difficult to put into words the horror of this case. We appreciate U.S. Attorney Gilg’s office for its cooperation and expert prosecution that brought Mr. Sheldon to justice.”

 The worst case of online child exploitation? Really? Does this mean that law enforcement hasn't caught any of the evil people who actually abused those children or took the photos and videos? Because, to me, finding the people responsible for sexual abuse of children would be much worse than finding someone who collected photos and videos. Yes, even if the collection included many truly nasty images.

 "The horror of this case" seems to be a bit confused. Isn't the horror of this case the discovery that someone did something horrible to the children in the images? As far as I can tell, this man hasn't been accused of touching anyone.

Gilg expressed her appreciation to Bruning’s office for referring their investigation for federal prosecution. Gilg noted the mandatory minimum sentences and the sentencing guidelines for child pornography crimes makes the federal courts a favorable venue for prosecuting the most egregious child pornography offenders.

Yes, those mandatory minimum sentences and sentencing guidelines certainly are a stroke of luck for prosecutors.

long nights

The other night, I dreamed I was driving my husband to the prison where he'd been assigned. Something happened to the car and we were unable to continue our trip. The details are, well, dreamlike; all I remember is waking up in a sweat because I couldn't get him to the prison on time. No more sleep that night.

Other nights, I wake up thinking about the morning they searched the house and my anger will keep me awake.

Worry about his safety in prison, worry about his health, worry about whether he will get the medicine he needs.

I worry about what our children will be forced to deal with when the word is out about their father.

I go through cycles. This week has been one with little sleep. Maybe next week will be better.

let's hope they got this right

A Oregon couple has been arrested for producing child pornography. If this is true, I am glad that law enforcement caught up with them.

Given everything I have seen of law enforcement and how the justice system works, I am skeptical. Does anyone else automatically wonder what the real story is when a story like this is in the news?

protecting our children?

At one time, I would have thought a conference like this would be a good thing. Going after the bad guys...go get'em!

Now, I am not so sure. Many of the "bad guys" are just guys who clicked the wrong links and those guys end up with what is essentially a life sentence. Years of prison followed by years of supervision and years on the registry. I can't get too excited about supporting law enforcement efforts to go after more people like that--people who have children of their own, children who will have to endure years without a parent. Who protects those children?

One of the speakers on the schedule is Dave Pelzer, author of A Child Called It. Because there is so much controversy about whether the book is true or not, it surprises me that law enforcement would ask Pelzer to speak at their conference.

cache files

My husband and I have discussed his case with several attorneys, most of whom told us they are knowledgeable about internet crime. When discussing cache files (the temporary files left on your hard drive when your browser opens a web page), one attorney pronounced it KAYSH; another pronounced it cashAY. Anyone who knows anything about computers knows the word is pronounced CASH, so the missed pronunciation coming from someone reassuring us that he knows about the internet...this did not bode well.

When you open a webpage, your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, etc.) saves a temporary file for that page. Later, when you return to that webpage, your browser will pull up the file cached on your hard drive.

If you right-click a link on a webpage, you can decide where you want to save the file so you can find it again later. This is downloading. When you click an image on a webpage, a temporary file is saved in your cache. That is the same as downloading the image. 

True, most of us ignore our cache files but in a forensics search of your computer, law enforcement does not ignore the images found in your cache.

Simply looking at images on the Internet without right-clicking and consciously downloading the image does not protect you in a search of your computer. An image found on your hard drive, whether it is in a folder you created or in the cache files you ignore, is an image found on your hard drive. 

That is enough to put you in prison. 

what should happen when someone views child porn?

A comment on my post from last weekend:  

 You have lots of great points. I'm not sure I agree with you on some of them.  

 If you had to decide what happens when someone views child porn, what do you think should happen. What should the victim (the kids in the pictures) be told. What is going to help them if the people viewing the pictures don't go to prison? I'm not saying they should go, but I'd like to know what you think should happen.

Currently, it is against the law to possess, receive, distribute, or produce child porn. Curiously, the law doesn't say anything about whether you look at the images or not. The assumption, I suppose, is that you do look at it, but that alone isn't what gets you in trouble. After all, all kinds of people are allowed to look at the porn found on the defendant's computer. The investigators, the doctor who verifies the ages of the people in the images, the prosecutor, the judge, the defendant and his attorney, and the jury. I don't know if the courtroom is cleared when porn is shown in the courtroom or if the onlookers get to look.

Looking at images should not send someone to prison, even if society as a whole finds those images especially repugnant and even if those images are of a crime. We don't send people to prison because they look at pictures from the Nazi prison camps or from the rape of Nanking or from the massacres in Rwanda. All repulsive images; all images of crimes against children as well as adults. Why is child porn treated differently? Is it because we assume the viewer is sexually aroused by something he should not find arousing? Arousal is not illegal; neither is masturbation nor fantasy.

What should we do when someone looks at child porn? Let's assume a man enjoys child porn and masturbates while watching videos. Let's also assume that another man avoids child porn but masturbates while fantasizing about sex with children. Why is one worse than the other? Both are doing something wrong, perhaps something sick. Only one risks a prison sentence.

Do either of them pose a danger to children? I don't know. Will the discovery of child porn prove that one is a danger and the absence of child porn prove that one is not a danger? Of course not.

What should we tell the victims? I don't know. Do we really need the law to solve that problem?

I cannot imagine how it would feel to know that pictures of me as a child were floating around where someone could see them. I think the response to that knowledge must vary quite a bit among victims. I find it odd to believe that prosecuting someone for looking at porn will help the victims. Wouldn't it help them more to prosecute the sick bastard who victimized them in the first place?

I have heard people wonder why law enforcement doesn't remove the images when they find them. The logical answer is that the images, once loosed to the Internet, are irretrievable. There is no way to delete images from every hard drive that has a copy; there is also no way to identify every drive that has a copy. Sad but true.

More sad but true: Images deleted from a computer--because they were not what were expected, because they were gross or repulsive, because a mind was changed--can be found in a forensic examination of a hard drive. Forensics can identify those images but forensics has nothing to say about why the images were there or why they were deleted. Even when forensics can determine that the image was unopened, the image is still evidence of a crime.  The crime of clicking a link.

Do I think child pornography is harmless? Absolutely not. Pornography is abhorrent and child pornography especially so. I think someone who has trouble staying away from any kind of porn should probably find some help to break the habit. (Is that possible?)

My argument is about the law. It is wrong to send someone to prison because they downloaded or looked at the wrong images.

Do I think it should be against the law to look at child porn? Do those laws prohibiting child porn accomplish what we want them to do? Has the usage of child porn diminished? Has the number of images decreased? From what I can see, the law simply puts more people in prison.