What if this pedophile admits to having been a pedophile since adolescence, but also denies ever having been even tempted to molest a child, as the moral implications were always more powerful than the sexual arousal? (This is the case for most pedophiles.) What if he’s also elderly, say, 75 years old?
Should this person, in the absence of any evidence of danger to anyone, be forced into therapy?
I also don’t think people should waste other peoples time with terrible analogies.
Who is the victim here? Find me a victim and I might agree the state has a role.
merely?
What are we trading it for? Your peace of mind?
In the US, the treatment of manga has been varied. From Wikipedia
2005 Virginia case
In Richmond, Virginia, in December 2005, Dwight Whorley was convicted under 18 U.S.C. 1466A for using a Virginia Employment Commission computer to receive “obscene Japanese anime cartoons that graphically depicted prepubescent female children being forced to engage in genital-genital and oral-genital intercourse with adult males.”[59][60][61] On December 18, 2008, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction.[62] The court stated:
Thus, regardless of whether §1466A(a)(1) requires an actual minor, it
is nonetheless a valid restriction on obscene speech under Miller, not a
restriction on non-obscene pornography of the type permitted by Ferber.
We thus find Whorley’s as-applied constitutional challenge to
§1466A(a)(1) to be without merit.[63]
Attorneys for Mr. Whorley have said that they would appeal to the Supreme Court.[64][65] The request for rehearing was denied on June 15, 2009, and the petition for his case to be reviewed by the Supreme Court was denied on January 11, 2010.[66] A major part of the case was that Whorley also received real child pornography.[citation needed]
2008 Iowa case
In October 2008, a 38-year-old Iowa
comic collector named Christopher Handley was prosecuted for possession
of explicit lolicon manga. The judge ruled that two parts of the
PROTECT Act criminalizing “a visual depiction of any kind, including a
drawing, cartoon, sculpture, or painting” were unconstitutional, but
Handley still faced an obscenity charge.[67]
Handley was convicted in May 2009 as the result of entering a guilty
plea bargain at the recommendation his lawyer, under the belief that the
jury chosen to judge him would not acquit him of the obscenity charges
if they were shown the images of question.[68]
2010 Idaho case
In October 2010, 33-year-old Idaho man Steven Kutzner entered into a
plea agreement concerning images of child characters from the American
animated television show The Simpsons engaged in sexual acts.[69][70]
In January 2011, Kutzner was sentenced to serve 15 months in federal
prison for downloading, receiving, and viewing sexually explicit images
of actual children for at least eight years.[71]
2011 Maine case
In November 2011, Joseph Audette, a 30-year-old computer network administrator from Surry, Maine,
was arrested after his username was linked to child pornography sites. A
search inside Audette’s home did not result in any real child
pornography, but did result in the findings of “anime child
pornography”. Much unlike previous cases (and likely due to the results
of the Handley ruling), the charges were quickly dismissed under Maine law and dropped under federal law.[72]
2012 Missouri case
In October 2012, after being reported August 2011 by his wife, a 36 year old man named Christian Bee in Monett, Missouri
entered a plea bargain to “possession of cartoons depicting child
pornography”, with the US attorney’s office for the Western District of
Missouri recommending a 3 year prison sentence without parole. The
office in conjunction with the Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task
Force argued that the “Incest Comics” on Bee’s computer “clearly lack
any literary, artistic, political or scientific value”.[73][74][75]
It’s precisely because of the “varied” treatment that I worry about these laws. Laws that are so arbitrarily applied are not good (although I hear the US has a very large problem with those laws, something about three felonies a day).
Identified how and by whom? I can’t help but think of the Soviet Union’s use of psychiatry to punish dissidents.
But who would he admit that to? A therapist, I would imagine.
thought crime paraphernalia
Well, he could be identified by others, like his own family, or by himself. Issues of surveillance are a different, though I admit related, topic.
What I meant to say is that, once authorities have become aware (through whatever means) that someone is a pedophile, they should require him to attend therapy or a support group, at least for a few sessions.
There’s a lot of ‘slippery slope’ arguments in this thread against this sort of action. I can understand them. Once you involve the government a lot of things can go wrong. But I don’t think you can use that argument to dismiss anything outright, just to point out the dangers involved.
Not to mention child exploitation. How is it that children can work for (delayed) wages in the movie business, but you can’t put the tykes to work in the coalmine with a bank account to be released when they’re of age?
The man who was convicted said that you can find similar images on UK sites, but tellingly he doesn’t say you can find them in regular manga. So anything on the level of fanservice is probably legal (“probably” is an iffy thing to base your defence on though). Most anime heroes and heroines are under 18 and sometimes they are depicted in the nude, but regular manga will rarely depict more than t&a and a blank space in the crotch. He was ultimately only convicted of ten pictures, so I suspect these pictures went beyond fanservice, showing copulation and/or masturbation with little to no censorship.
He could admit it to his wife of 40 years, who decides to divorce him because of it, and then mentions it to her lawyer. So, the question still stands: should a person like that be forced into therapy, without any evidence whatsoever to suggest he’s a danger to anyone?
I think he should, yes. From everything I’ve read, pedophilia is something terribly difficult to deal with. Having a person that suffers from it visit a therapist or a support group doesn’t seem to me like an overreaction, even if you have no reason to believe that he has harmed anyone.
I can see how this might criminalize people who haven’t committed any crime, and that would be a cause for concern. It could also ensure that more people receive proper care. I would be interested in seeing how it actually plays out.
I think not. “Therapy” is a placebo and a way to make people feel better about ‘treating’ someone.
Replace the word “pedophilia” with “homosexuality” then read that back to yourself.
I’m not equating “practicing” pedophiles to active homosexuals, the issue of power balance and capacity to consent makes the two apples and oranges.
I’m pointing out that attitudes about who it is acceptable to be attracted to have changed over time as we have come to realize that people don’t choose their attractions.
Then, remember that the point of this thread is that a man was convicted of possession of child pornography based on possession of drawings that were not taken from life and did not depict a real child. So again, he thought about something bad.
And you want to force him into therapy for that?
Statistics say that between 3 and 9 percent of the population are pedophiles. That means that in the US alone there are between 9 and 27 million pedophiles. How many of them are acting on their desires? 10,000? 100,000? Whatever the number, it’s a small minority. Harmful, poisonous, evil — but still a tiny minority. The rest are victims of nature. They thankfully suppress their sexuality through a constant day to day fight.
…We need to be able to have a dialogue with them because shame and embarrassment lead to alienation and introversion, and both make it less likely that somebody will be successful in combating inner demons.
Aside from the fear-based authoritarianism involved, forcing pedophiles into therapy merely because of how they were born is not likely to increase the chances of having a constructive dialogue with them, which means we learn less about how they avoid victimizing children.
And the cartoon faces applied to those amphipods (or whatever they are) are clearly underage!
Thought Police, arrest that artist!
In addition to Beschizza’s points, gamergate does absolutely nothing to support your premise. It has nothing to do with the contents of games - it’s a bunch of incredibly entitled asshats raging because they only just realized that girls are in “their” clubhouse.
The English courts should go after all the Christians next.
Why their holy book, the Bible, has depictions of murder, rape, genocide, even human sacrifice, and what’s worse, based on actual events where real people were harmed in the making of the text.
Since having a depiction is apparently now the equivalent to doing the crime, I expect no less than the death penalty.
Maybe they should lock a picture of him up for nine months.
