I’ve remarked here before on how the paedo-craze leads to possession of ordinary images of children being deemed indecent, and hence their possession a serious crime, depending on who has them. Now comes an example where there were no children (nor, as the facts suggest, any young adults) involved at all, except in the imagination of the court speculating about the imagination of the defendant.
The Times reported yesterday:-
A COMPUTER expert who altered indecent images of naked women to make them look like children has been warned that he faces a prison sentence.
Stafford Sven Tudor-Miles scanned photographs of adult porn stars into his computer and used sophisticated digital equipment to reduce the size of their breasts.
The images, which Tudor-Miles also manipulated with graphics software so that the women were partially dressed in school uniforms, appeared to be of girls aged under 18.
For those who have not been keeping up with the intricacies of UK sexual offences legislation: Possession of, or (more seriously) making, indecent (not defined) photographs of children (defined as being or appearing to be under 16) became illegal a while ago. But it was extended to pseudo-photographs, i.e. digitally edited images, in 1994. And the age criterion was raised to 18 just a couple of years ago. And the courts have in their wisdom decided that copying an image to or within a computer counts as ‘making’ it.
So photoshopping or downloading a picture (which also counts as ‘making’ it) that appears (to the court) to represent someone under 18 and is indecent (as it appears to the court after hearing the evidence of prosecution experts that may relate as much to the nature of the defendant and the context in which it was found as that of the picture itself) is a crime bearing a prison sentence and registration as a sex offender – even if the defendant made absolutely certain that no-one under 18 was in any way involved.
You can screw your sixteen-year old girlfriend or boyfriend however you both like*, but snap them with their top off, or even leering suggestively, and use it as a screensaver, and you are a manufacturer of child pornography who could easily, given bad luck and a zealous prosecution, end up unemployable and/or be locked up to be tortured by career criminals. I don’t know how unlucky Mr Tudor-Miles was, but The Times also quotes Ray Savage, one of the professional experts involved in the case:
“I’ve seen it in only two previous cases,” he said. “To create an image of a child by altering an image of an adult is just as serious as downloading child porn, and probably more worrying in terms of the time taken and work involved to produce such images.
“In general terms, these images can be as crude as someone having pasted a cut-out of a child’s head on to an adult’s photo.
“At the other end of the scale, someone will use sophisticated computer image manipulation equipment to alter the size of the breasts and genitalia to make a very realistic image.”
More worrying? Mr Savage worries me more than Mr Tudor-Miles.
If our protectors wish to stamp out people having sexual fantasies about schoolgirls, then police raids and mass arrests here and here are clearly called for. Better still, lets deal with the problem at source and stop women going to school. It worked for the Taliban. I have it on good authority that you still can not buy a stripy tie or a navy-blue mini-skirt in Kabul.
[* But not, under the new Sexual Offences Act, wherever you like.]
It ocurs to me that many happy mothers and fathers snap pictures of their kids doing something adorable/cute etc. while they are less than fully clothed. Even ignoring naked baby photos, which just about every family has, I know of two families who have pictures of their youngish child completely naked (I’d guess aged about 4 or 5) and I would guess that there are plenty of others. If the police ever decide to seize the computers / picture CDs of these families they will have a clear case for prosecution not to mention getting social workers involved, packing the kids off to be abused in foster homes and so on.
Clearly any surviving members of the St Trinians cast and crew ought to be clapped in irons right away.
And the viewing of Britney Spears “Hit Me Baby One More Time” should be a criminal offence.
This goes right to the heart of the libertarian non-aggression principle”. Taking pornograghic photos of children is obviously a form of child sex abuse. Photoshopping pictures of adult women isn’t and is, in a very real sense, an exemplar of the victimless crime.
My girlfriend is 27 but she’s 5’1″ and looks a lot younger. (she sometimes gets IDed for cigarettes and offerred half-fare on the bus). Should I go to jail?
The best argument for the law against child pornography is that is creates a market. If a person downloads a photograph, particularly if he does it on payment of money, then a person at the other end is encouraged to create more images will will amost certainly involve the abuse of children.
The second argument, which is less strong, is that the images can be used by a predatory paedophile to groom his victims. A photograph can be shown to the victim in a attempt to persuade him that this sort of activity is normal and acceptible.
In the Tudor-Miles case the first clearly does not apply and there is no evidence of the second. Of course most people would regard his activities with revulsion but pure revulsion is no basis for sending someone to prison.
“My girlfriend is 27 but she’s 5’1″ and looks a lot younger. (she sometimes gets IDed for cigarettes and offerred half-fare on the bus). Should I go to jail?”
You sir, are worse than Hitler.
I’m still amazed that they’ve never locked up the Krankies!
Last time I went to the repressive totalitarian state of Belarus, little kids talked to me in the street, addressing me in the customary way as “dyadya” = uncle, and I talked to them, patted them on the head, pinched their cheeks and behaved towards them as one used to be able to in Britain 50 years ago. Their mothers seemed to regard this as normal behaviour.
What is worse, photoshopping a known 18+ or dressing up (or allowing) your 14 year old daughter to look a slutty 18?
Yeah, Michael Farris,
I am worse than Hitler. Much worse.
Trofim,
You make a good point, but let’s take it a bit further. I ignore children completely. So does pretty much everyone else. We do this because interacting with a child that you’re not related to is risking being branded as a paedo (and in some of the rougher areas I’ve lived in, getting beaten-up). The very idea of random adults disciplining unrelated children in the streets is considered completely beyond the pale. Unfortunately these kids never get to appreciate the terms and conditions of civil society.
Once in a rough-end of Leeds 7 I walked on by past a little girl bewildered and crying in the street. Every fibre of my being wanted me to stoop down and hold her hand and say I’d help her find her mummy (afterall it couldn’t have been far). I didn’t do it because my mind kicked in and I knew there was a chance that some tattoed brute of a father would hove into view at that moment and treat me as Ian Huntley.
How sad that we can’t interact with neighbourhood kids without seeming like a pervert. How sad for them.
In the U.S. this issue was definitively resolved in ASHCROFT V. FREE SPEECH COALITION, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), which struck down the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 provisions covering “appears to be” and “conveys the impression” of child p0rn0graphy.
The reasoning in the U.S. is that child p0rn is directly harmful to the child. No child = no problem. Which is rather sensible, IMHO.
Nick M, of course you should be locked up! as should I, but not for any of this nonsense. What the hell has happened to the Law since I packed it in???
I agree with you 100% about ignoring kids and it’s so goddam sad!
There is a little park a short walk from me, that has a paddling pool in it for infants, the only one in Bristol. So it’s pretty busy, especially in the good weather we’ve been having.
There are heaps of infants, usually stark naked having a wail of a time, splashing about . It is a joyous sight.
I am keen on photography, and the sight would make some great pics, but my camera stays firmly in my bag.
I am not going to risk being chased down the Gloucester Road by a posse of angry used nappy wielding mothers!
Francis, there have in fact been cases in the US of parents being arrested for taking just such photos of their children after being ratted out to the cops by employees at the one-hour photo place.
someone will use sophisticated computer image manipulation equipment
This ‘expert’ clearly hasn’t been a member of the real world for the past ten years or so. A ten year-old could do what he describes using old software like Kai’s Power Goo, which assumes the user is an idiot and only has £20 to spend on software.
It can’t help when the judicial process relies on these ‘experts’ for honest advice and evidence, when they’re actually just the blind leading the blind.
Well the ‘experts’ have a considerable interest in the continuation of the paedo-panic. There is a more general problem with experts in criminal trials on that basis – the crown employs most of them and independent ones are hard to find. The structure of the expert testimony is conditioned by the crown’s categories and the emphasis driven by the prosecution.
Back in the late ‘90’s before I flew the coop for good, was doing this course at Oxford Brookes. Fellow student (young, gay, unmarried) had this story that the Plods raided his home and took away his computer. Seemed a “friend” had shopped him for making collage of Japanese porno manga. Oxford cops, clearly a little out of their league, held on to the computer for well over a year before returning it under a “No further action” advisory. Unfortunately, all his university work was also on the computer, and it took the intervention of his well-connected father to get it returned. But what would the Plods know about demands of higher education? No wonder the police so seldom pursue a “Wasting police time” charge. Any decent defence lawyer could cite numerous examples of the police wasting their own time (and public funds) and with media help, turn them into an even bigger laughing stock.
Here in Japan it is normal for fathers to bath with their young children and no one bats an eyelid. (Remember John Lennon?) In the gym I use kids of both sexes and adults change together, boys without a father’s supervision. As a Brit. I’m a little concerned. Still can’t quite shake off that UK paranoia. Little kids get in the elevator with you all the time. In other words, a far more normal society in that respect. The British totally OTT fixation with pedophilia has to make the top 10 of your “Reasons to Emigrate” list, because UK has clearly gone pedophile crazy.
Of course you can stand back and reason that this is just another way Authority can keep the public on the back foot. Namely, to have the justification to arrest and charge anyone at anytime.
This blog has great thoughts. I agree with all of you about how hard it’s become for men to interact with children. I’ve heard similar comments from men in the united states.
However, you can’t deny that there is obvious reason to be weary of men handling children not their own. There are far too many child abduction and sex slave abductions…with the media’s frequent covering of “freaks of the week” guilty of sadistic crimes against young people, one can’t help but become paranoid.
It’s a shame indeed. The fact that Nick M felt afraid to assist the crying girl, for fear of being pounded, that’s sad.
But the truth is, you never know who is out to harm your child and who isn’t. It’s better to err on the side of caution and protect children.
It’s definitely a different age.
Dont you think the world has gone mad!
I was abused as a boy and had cp on my comp, but the judge never jailed me, even after 50 charges of making the stuff were on my computer.
My life was stuffed from the age of ten, no relationships, drinking and addiction to porn.
People cannot understand the probs I suffered in my young years.
I got a life sentence from being abused, the judge knew that, but the cops really did hit me hard.
They could not believe it when I walked free.
There is no such thing as a fair trial, and I had to plead guilty to charges that I could not have even seen.
I had the stuff because my memory of childhood was gone and I needed to shock myself back.
The fact is that police need statistics, and now I am one, after being a good guy who did loads of charity work and never touched a kid, now I am marginalised by a police force that had no conscience, even though I told them the hurt I went through warts and all.
After living my child life in perceived fear for his life, his adult life is now put into danger by police who could not use discretion, case by case.
Dont even think of the horrors of child abuse, unless you have been there, they even tried to get me for distribution, or rather ‘intent’, intent to put the kids through the Hell I went through, I think not,
s