Police Chief Unable To Simply Do Nothing Over Reported Teen Sexting, Brings Child Porn Charges Against Four Minors
from the the-law-is-the-law,-dammit! dept
Good, old-fashioned "sexting" has netted more teens some child pornography charges. Despite the teens involved claiming the photographed behavior was consensual, Joliet's (IL) police chief still believes the only way to address a situation he and the laws he enforces aren't built to handle, is to handle it as poorly as possible. (via Ars Technica)
Joliet Police Chief Brian Benton said posting the video online made already risky behavior criminal.For underage? Or by underage? (To use Benton's clumsy phrasing…) Because while everything recorded involved teens between the ages of 14-16, it was also distributed by these same teens. What happened here was only technically "child porn" and it involved no exploitation.
“It’s a criminal offense, first of all, to post that type of material online, especially for underage,” Benton said.
Still, Benton seems to feel the only way to prevent teens from doing something regrettable that might affect them "for years to come" is to treat this all-too-common (and apparently very normal) situation in a way that ensures any teen involved in sexting will be saddled with criminal charges that will affect them for years to come.
“The child pornography offense that was charged is in place for a reason, because we don’t want to accept that type of behavior as a society,” Benton said. “It’s making a strong statement, and I think it’s important to do so, to send a message to others that kids shouldn’t be involved in this type of behavior, and hopefully this will serve as a deterrent.”No, it's in place to prevent the nonconsensual sexual exploitation of children. It is not in place to charge teens for consensual, normal behavior.
But, whatever. Now these teens who participated in activity that isn't explicitly illegal have been hit with charges for something that is very definitely illegal and that will likely affect them adversely until they hit the age of 21, if not for longer. It seems that if Chief Benton can't make the actual sexual acts illegal, he'll do all he can to criminalize depictions of the actual events, ignoring the logical dissonance of charging children for creating child porn.
Fun fact: these charges could possibly result in the forfeiture of property owned by the teens' parents.
In addition, any person convicted under this Section is subject to the property forfeiture provisions set forth in Article 124B of the Code of Criminal Procedure of 1963.Except for the parent who turned in all the teens…
(5) With respect to a property interest in existence at the time the illegal conduct giving rise to the forfeiture took place, he or she either:If the local PD is creative enough to charge teenagers for producing and starring in their own child porn, it might be willing to seize the property "involved" in this consensual activity.
(A) did not know of the conduct giving rise to the forfeiture; or
(B) upon learning of the conduct giving rise to the forfeiture, did all that reasonably could be expected under the circumstances to terminate that use of the property.
[...]
(b) For purposes of paragraph (5) of subsection (a), ways in which a person may show that he or she did all that reasonably could be expected include demonstrating that he or she, to the extent permitted by law, did either of the following:
(1) Gave timely notice to an appropriate law enforcement agency of information that led the person to know that the conduct giving rise to a forfeiture would occur or had occurred.
(2) In a timely fashion revoked or made a good faith attempt to revoke permission for those engaging in the conduct to use the property or took reasonable actions in consultation with a law enforcement agency to discourage or prevent the illegal use of the property.
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Filed Under: brian benton, child porn, illinois, joliet, police, sexting, teenagers
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While I don't think it's appropriate for teens to be involved in orgies, I also don't think that charging them with CP is appropriate for a first offense.
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Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius
Are you that kind of religious fanatic?
If not, well, they don't make 'em like they used to.
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Kill 'em all
let God sort 'em out
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Protect and Serve... YOURSELF.
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We can and do use the term "God" in relation to our Country, patriotism, etc..
In God We Trust.
One nation, under God.
God Bless America..
Hell, the military oath I had to swear as I went into the Army included "God and my Country".
What was that you said? I thought not.
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In today's world, I would guess that they would get a lot of backlash if they tried to use it in something new (and I think that's pretty dumb).
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America is not a theocratic state, or shouldn't be, and the direct support of a/any religion undermines that. I don't care how often the courts rule the other way in religious zeal or conservative fear, God Almighty is not supposed to be the commander and chief of this little club called The United States Of America.
The original Bellamy pledge:
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
This was edited at the behest of a KoC campaign and signed by a newly baptized president in an admitted flourish of religious zeal.
I personally prefer an edited version:
I pledge allegiance to the constitution of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
I like it for reasons made clear by magicians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukURt2TsEwY
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http://www.lapdonline.org/history_of_the_lapd/content_basic_view/1128
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Maybe oaths, mottos and mandates don't actually mean anything.
That was in the 80s.
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So at least there's a consistency through all levels. Is like they've found the political equivalent of the grand unified theory.
If we can stop others doing potential harm by us doing definite harm, the answer is obvious
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That's standard operating procedure. Another common example is that of cops killing suicidal people to keep them from killing themselves.
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If we have a 17-year-old girl who takes a photo of herself naked *WHAM*, she's guilty of "making and possessing 'child' pornography."
But let's say she turns 18 the very next day and takes another photo of herself naked.
If we put those two photos right next to each other, nobody is going to tell the difference.
Yet one is "illegal," the other isn't.
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If you have a car drive 54.9999999 MPH and another car drive 55.0000001 MPH, one is speeding and one is not, but if they were side-by-side you wouldn't be able to notice the difference. (I know that cops don't generally pull people over for such miniscule violations, but still, at some speed there is a line between whether they will or will not pull someone over.) If one person steals something priced $99.99 and one person steals something priced $100, those are almost the same crime, yet one might be a felony and one might be a misdemeanor.
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As I recently ranted in another article comments forum...
That's because, like The Tick, our law enforcement is much more into beating up (alleged) criminals than it is about actually reducing suffering or keeping the peace or sustaining order.
One look at child welfare in the United States and it's clear we hate our kids, and resent them for not being discount laborers in our factories anymore.
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I don't see your point about rewriting the law here though; sexual exploitation of a minor already illegal, and photographing somebody who isn't considered able to consent to it is considered exploitation. Are you questioning whether that should be considered exploitative at all, or just whether it should be considered as exploitative as actually having sex with them?
Exploiting oneself wouldn't stand up in court, for sure, but that isn't the issue here. There are four people involved, each accused of harming the other three.
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The role of the court here is to punish and rehabilitate, so saying that any ruling would make things worse sounds akin to saying that all punishment is bad. But, the idea of punishment is that by making things (proportionally) worse temporarily, it actually makes things better in the long term by deterring behavior which is self-harmful. It's likely that a well-chosen punishment, whether given by the court or the parents, would actually make things better for them by inciting them to give more thought to their decisions in the future.
The court could simply order them to not use a camera-enabled phone for a number of months, which is no different to what most parents would do.
My main concerns in this situation would be the frankly criminal waste of public money that's gone into prosecuting this, and the fact that part of this basically comes down to legislating morality. My view has always been that juvenile courts should not get involved in behavior that harms only those involved, except in the most extreme of cases (parens patriae), and even then should do so without bringing morality into it.
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Our corrections system is about self-perpetuation first, containment second and rehabilitation third.
In the US our corrections facilities are not engineered to rehabilitate or assist in recovery, certainly not to provide a satisfactory habitat for inmates, but as a safe, secure place to contain them where they can be forgotten by the outside society. Our prisons our oubliettes in the truest sense of the word.
I'm not sure where in our justice system you intend to find rehabilitation. But the psychological consequences of corrections as temporary as you claim it to be drives innocent people to crime and outlawry. You don't go into to jail and come out of it a better person.
For that matter, that's true whether you're an inmate or an officer of the law.
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Re: Our corrections system is about self-perpetuation first, containment second and rehabilitation third.
But we're likely not talking about anything close to jail time here, if it even gets to court. It's simply wrong to say that any punishment the court might choose to give is necessarily going to be harmful.
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Re: Re: Our corrections system is about self-perpetuation first, containment second and rehabilitation third.
Spoken like a true apologist.
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Re: Re: Re: Our corrections system is about self-perpetuation first, containment second and rehabilitation third.
I maintain that I don't see how a short probation sentence would be in any way life ruining. I'm definitely not saying that prosecuting this was in any way reasonable, just that it's not necessarily going to end in disaster.
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Re: Re: Our corrections system is about self-perpetuation first, containment second and rehabilitation third.
Our schools are shit and are organized like prisons. What makes you think the punitive system for kids is going to somehow be better than that?
It's containment and it has the same amount of inmate-on-inmate and guard-on-inmate abuse as adult corrections. More so, since children are less experienced and can be convinced more easily to stay quiet, say, when the guards extort them for sex.
Frankly, the court case is going to be horrifying enough. You think a judge telling them how in exploring their sexualities they wound up inadvertently committing a serious crime is going to have negligible effects
And yeah, we don't know if the police are going to seize the assets of their parents and put the families on the street, which they evidently can legally do now.
I think you're pretending there's going to be a best case scenario, where the norm is far from that.
And the US systems are worse to kids than they are to adults.
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No, the court couldn't. If the charges are sustained, they're a Class X felony, comparable with murder. The absolute minimum even a juvenile court could give is five years probation, plus lifetime sex offender registration -- including the parts about "no contact with anyone under 18" (goodbye school, friends, maybe even family!) and "no residing close to (a number of different places)" (hello apartment in the middle of nowhere!)
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Such a sentence applied to a minor would be open to an 8th amendment challenge too, I suspect (since the restrictions you mentioned were never intended to apply to age-appropriate peers, and restricting a child to only being able to interact with people inappropriate for their age would definitely be considered "cruel and unusual").
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Given how often we hear stories of exactly that, what makes you think it's not normal?
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In a population of billions, there will be lots of abnormal behavior going on all the time. Your statement does not prove anything. There's no way either of us could know how much teens are sexting, but do you suppose there are only a very small percentage of teens who have ever done it? I would guess it's not that rare at all. Most of them have digital cameras of one kind or another, most of them have fairly poor judgment, and they're almost all very horny and curious about sex. It would actually be pretty bizarre if this weren't going on regularly.
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Apparently, sexting among teens is their "normal" now days:
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I think we're trying to make an example of them, though.
Consider two scenarios:
A) Some teens take video of themselves in sexually explicit situations and publish it.
B) Adult enterprisers collaboration to court third party children and persuade them (by promises or threats or whatever) to engage in sexually explicit scenarios which are captured on video and sold for profit.
In this situation, we are equating these two scenarios. We're not only pushing to convict the teens from (A) as the adults from (B) but we are also implying (for future precedence that the adults from (B) are doing nothing worse than the mischief engaged in by teens from (A).
As a curious aside, I wonder if in cases where a youth is seriously injured by another youth in a classic bullying scenario (the second kid wants to kill something and finds the first kid a convenient target), if, when such incidents go to court the penalty suffered by the bully compares at all to pornographic teens in (A)?
You think?
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Absolutely, but the vast majority of people, including teens, have the good sense not to videotape themselves engaged in explicit sexual activity and posting the resulting video on the net for public distribution.
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Lack of good sense = Willful exploitation of children for profit.
Because that is exactly what is happening here.
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Re: Lack of good sense = Willful exploitation of children for profit.
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To the contrary...
Common practice is to lay on in excess, is to let people fall into the the corrections system to serve as part of the 90% occupancy quotas that private prisons typically require (with fines to the taxpayers to enforce them).
You may like to imagine a Department of Justice that has compassion, that actually takes measured consideration of its cases, but while that happens, that is the rare exception. The rule is that law enforcement lies to bolster its case and pad the list of charges, and keeps colleagues handy to lie and serve as witnesses. And judges give greater weight to police testimony than they do to video.
We know this is the norm because the police unions raise unholy Hellfire whenever a judge dares to question police testimony, as if doing so breaks sacrament.
You seem to be convinced that these kids are outright evil and that if the choice is to subject them to too much punishment than not enough. Maybe you're depending on a just-world hypothesis. I don't know. But your interest here seems to be towards annihilating that which you find abhorrent than matching the outcome as closely as possible to the crime -- or in this case, to the ill-advised but dubiously-criminal behavior.
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Oh wait...
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A) Some teens take video of themselves in sexually explicit situations and publish it.
B) Adult enterprisers collaboration to court third party children and persuade them (by promises or threats or whatever) to engage in sexually explicit scenarios which are captured on video and sold for profit.
You left out a scenario:
C) Some teens take video of themselves in sexually explicit situations and sell it for their own profit.
Now what do you think?
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Not that it matters, but prostitution is legal in some places even in America, and making money off sex is done across all sorts of websites.
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How often does it happen?
And scenario (B) happens all the time, and is one we can (probably) agree we want to discourage or prevent, but our policies are not very effective. Instead Law Enforcement goes after the consumers.
Scenario (C) is probably not very common. I might imagine we might see an increase of it in the future by some enterprising teens but probably not on a grand or organized scale.
And even then, my point remains the same: the laws we have to disincentivize scenario (B) (and fail) have no business being applied to scenarios (A) or (C).
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More so than you apparently realize.
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Playstation 4 Share Play has demonstrated differently.
And it was on the first day after release that end-users were humping in front of their PS4 and sharing it to the PSN network, much to the chagrin of Sony (who's had issues with sex since Betamax) and much to the bemusement of everyone else.
Given an available camera and a venue for sex, it appears to be really rather normal for human beings to sext the world. Just because our society has hang-ups due to fifteen-hundred years of Abrahamic prudishness doesn't make sexual expression, even a certain degree of perversity, normal and healthy.
So yeah. These teens did nothing wrong. And the system is revealing it's incompetence in persecuting them.
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Re: Playstation 4 Share Play has demonstrated differently.
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Ugh
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The internet is a sea of pornography
And that people over the age of, say 40, didn't grow up with the Internet, and that influences their thinking.
But stop and have a look at reality. The internet is a ocean of pornography. Is ANYONE going to even notice a few more drops in that ocean?
I'm 100% fine with laws that prevent adults from coercing minors into sex. But are photographs really going to do any harm in themselves?
Is photographing a naked minor (or a minor having sex) really worse for anybody than the very fact of the minor being naked in front of an adult, or having sex with same? Are the photographs going to steal their soul or something? [Rhetorical question. No.]
If it weren't for the Streisand Effect of publicity for child porn prosecutions, who would even notice a few more porno pics on -ferGodsSake- the Internet?
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Why do we expect anything different from a police state?
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Root cause
That is the root cause. A law designed to protect children is used to destroy children's futures. Why? Because those kids had sex, and they must be shamed for it, with the full force of the law.
Our puritan ancestors saddled us with a deep-seeded hangups about sex, and we've never completely put it behind us. Women are still fighting for rights that were kept from them because of the original sin. Gays and lesbians are fighting for rights because everyone is so obsessed about other peoples sex that they happen to find distasteful. And then we have these kids. It's not fair.
The root cause is that sex equals shame. Make no mistake. This is an honor killing. Their sex brought them shame, and it must be cleansed with sacrifice. The only difference is that there's no blood involved. Well, not yet anyway. When you criminalize normal behavior, all you get is more criminals. These kids will be back as adults, shaped by a criminal system into the kinds of people that the criminal system needs to stay in business.
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Re: Root cause
But it raises the question, if consensual 'sexting' between 2 underage people is bad, shouldn't actual sex be treated much worse? You're getting everything involved in sexting there, and much more! Which in the eyes of this police chief must mean the 'children' are being victimized even worse then they are in sexting.
Yet I do believe that most states have laws far worse on kids for consensually distributing 'child pornography' of themselves then they do on two under age kids having consensual sex. (the laws are still messed up in a lot places with 1 slightly under age and one slightly over age kid having consensual sex however)
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This is exceedingly messed up, but at least it's relatively consistent: sexting is not considered as harshly as that.
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Romeo and Juliet laws
Less common are R&J laws that cover sexual activity with same-sex couples.
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Re: Romeo and Juliet laws
Also, since the charge is a felony, the parents of the kids have no say about whether or not the kids will be prosecuted.
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Re: Re: Re: Root cause
If the “Romeo and Juliet” exception applies, sexual abuse is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in jail, up to two years of probation, and a fine of up to $2,500.
So, in this case the police did have the option to charge all the children with statutory rape. Child porn charges though, have more severe penalties for them.
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Actually, I believe they were having sex with *gasp* THEMSELVES! Oh, the horror!
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The police chief in this case has actually outright said he sees underage sexuality as something we shouldn't "accept as a society", so there's no inconsistency there (whether that's a good thing or not). As for why he's not pursuing rape charges, God knows. Perhaps in his twisted mind he believes that would be excessive, yet filing equally bogus charges and wasting considerable amounts of public money is not; people this clueless are hard to predict and interpret, since they don't have the intellect to act consistently.
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And so the police chief also regards himself as a jurist.
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What about the next step for the photos?
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Except by government officials. They're free to exploit the children any way they like.
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So the mother of one of the kids...
Congratulations parental unit, you're doing it wrong.
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Re: So the mother of one of the kids...
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Criticizing the mother for ruining lives.
Until then, I can't imagine any, so her status as a total fuckwit is sustained.
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Correction...
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Re: So the mother of one of the kids...
Unfortunately for her, not only did things shake out that it apparently was consensual, but the police are puritan idiots who will now criminally charge her daughter for making a sex tape.
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"Calling in the police to sort it out makes a certain amount of sense."
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Re: So the mother of one of the kids...
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Isn't there a rule somewhere that says punishment against one person cannot be used as an example to another?
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I believe the Supreme Court has so ruled. I don't recall if it's based on the eight amendment or something else.
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This is a much more effective way to terrorize the children
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How many times viewed?
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This won't hold up in court for a multitude of reasons, assuming it even gets that far (I suspect the DA's office might not even bother pursuing this case).
However, I'm suspecting there's more to this than meets the eye. I strongly doubt that all four people involved had equal say in this being posted on Twitter, and I also doubt anybody's parents would have called the cops unless they felt that their daughter had been wronged by one or more of the others involved; parents may well be overprotective, but people generally don't call the police unless somebody has been harmed, which if this news article really was correct, wouldn't be the case here. If this is the case, then juvenile charges (for the appropriate offense, mind) and probation don't seem excessive.
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The only this that might hold it back is media attention. Otherwise, it most certainly would.
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All other things failing there's always the absurdity doctrine, which has been successfully used in the past to toss out statutory rape cases where all parties involved were considered the victims of the offence they were charged with.
And if Illinois allows jury trials in juvenile courts, good luck finding one that'll convict, unless you hand-pick the most overly religious zealots you can find.
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I imagine very few cops have any understanding of any legislative history. They generally don't even have to have a college degree, let alone any legal training.
which itself isn't ideal for someone tasked with selecting what sort of behavior is worthy of prosecution
The prosecutor decides that, not the police. He can decide it's worthy of arrest, but if the prosecutor decides not to prosecute, the police can do nothing else. If I understand correctly, I am not a lawyer, etc. Do correct me if I'm wrong.
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Wait. .
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I think parents need to do a better job with their kids! Pound it into your kids brain that taking pictures or Video of your Naked self can come back to hurt you later in ways you can't imagine. Or anything you post or comment on and come back to hurt you also. Watch what you do.
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Re:
The acts may well have been mutually consensual, but I have a strong feeling the filming and/or publication of the video was not.
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This is actually where it becomes abundantly clear that as the apologist you are, you are are starting to make stuff up.
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He asked why the police got involved, which we don't actually know exactly, so I'm answering with an educated guess about things that we haven't (yet) been told about based on the information we do know. Key word here is "guess"; notice I never once said I was *certain* about what I said, just that I *suspected* it was possible. People don't generally go through the hassle of getting the police involved unless they feel they've been wronged. Now it could be that I'm wrong. Maybe the girl's mother decided to call the police because she disapproved of he daughter's friends; for all we know maybe the girl herself did it to place the blame on the others during a guilt trip or as part of some twisted joke. I just don't think that's as likely.
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My little snowflake would never do anything like this unless she was forced into it somehow! Many parents are willing to go to great lengths to avoid confronting the idea that their children do things they wouldn't approve of.
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As the father, I can tell you with 100% certainty that if I really believed that someone had actually had actually been harming my daughter and the only response to that was charges about naked selfies, I would be raising a very loud and public ruckus about the whole thing. I doubt that I'm exceptional in this regard, yet I'm not seeing the parents doing this.
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As a father. Ack. I'm not the father of anyone involved in this case.
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"child porn, its porn for children! nothing wrong here."
hilarious
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Wanted sex hurts no one, this is what you get America
In the upcoming revolution, can we please finally agree that sexual rights should be protected for everyone, and only make actual rape and things that are actually detrimental to someone's mental or physical health illegal?
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I think you're onto something.
And amongst those in authority, we aren't seeing anyone who recognizes the consequences of presuming delinquency and initiating containment.
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Americans have become complacent
The Constitution laid out a fairly decent list of rights, but it didn't lay out things like sexual rights, or the right to wear what one wishes to wear including nothing. In the upcoming revolution, I hope things like this are corrected.
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We need some folks, maybe on Reddit, working on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights 2.0
Otherwise the new boss is the same as the old boss.
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Re: We need some folks, maybe on Reddit, working on the US Constitution and Bill of Rights 2.0
My best guess as to what would create a better system is democracy (since even if the masses are dumb, they need to be educated and become smarter by debating everything for a good long period of time until there is a wide consensus on what to do, as opposed to the idea of the dumb masses electing a smart leader which just doesn't work. Also, no secret laws, obviously.), transparency (those who are elected to positions to perform work for the community are open about everything that happens), and respecting a balance in freedoms between everyone (the current America only respects the freedom of the rich to steal wealth from everyone else).
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Re: Americans have become complacent
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Re: Re: Americans have become complacent
Regardless, the system has been slowly configured over time to have the perverse incentive structures that those in power like it to have which is why it would be a lot quicker at this point to pull the whole thing out by the roots and start over with a more intelligently set-up system.
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