Thought Crimes: Man Persecuted For Tiger Sex Tape Was A Victim Of Furry Fury
THE police said they found footage of a tiger have sex with a women on Andrew Holland’s mobile phone. You read that right. A tiger and a woman having sex. That’s not something most of us will have contemplated. Some of us might even want to see what that involves. But take care because looking at the depraved and bizarre could be a criminal offence.
Mr Holland was arrested. The footage, which he had not directed not taken any part in, was deeemd extreme pornography, and that’s unlawful.
Something is classed as extreme porn “if it shows necrophilia or bestiality, threatens someone’s life or could cause serious injury to anus, breasts or genitals.” It’s also extreme porn if it is deemed to be “grossly offensive”.
He said friends had shared it with him, forwarding the tiger-female sex footage to his account. He had looked at the film for six seconds.
Mr Holland was bereft. He became ill, suffering a heart attack.
The right-minded sent him hate mail. They called him a paedophile.
Mr Holland, 51, spent six months on bail.
He was denied contact with his young daughter.
In December 2009, all charges were dropped. Those clever prosecutors had noticed that the tiger was a man in a tiger suit, a furry, if you will.
(…furries are people who have a fascination with anthropomorphic animals. These are animals that are given human traits, like walking and talking. They can be anything from cartoons characters like Bugs Bunny to computer game personalities like Pokemon. The scene has its own art, animation, comic books and literature, but activities are largely conducted online – where furries adopt “fursonas” for role playing.)
The Crown Prosecution Service noticed that when you turned the volume up the tiger was heard to roar “That’s grrrrrrreat”, like Tony the Tiger from the Frosties’ adverts. He adds: “That beats doing Frosties ads for a living!”
A mere nine months later, Mr Holland was found to have no case to answer for possessing a movie called The Pain Olympics. That video features “prosthetics, cocktail sausages and ketchup”.
The Indy notes:
Mr Holland’s legal team has now written to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to seek a change in the law to prevent “harmless but crude jokes” from ending in prosecution. If they are unsuccessful, they will go to the High Court to seek a judicial review.
You can read the plea here.
The whole thing is mad. First up, the footage was on Mr Holland’s private emails. They were not made for broadcast. He did not show them to strangers. They were private. They were none the police’s business. Mr Holland’s morals or turn-ons are not the State’s to police. The 17th-century English jurist Edward Coke noted: “No man, ecclesiastical or temporal, shall be examined upon the secret thoughts of his heart, or of his secret opinion.”
The films on Mr Holland’s phone were private. Anorak doesn’t care if he was excited by them or not. It’s none of our business. He committed no crime. His alleged offence was what the State thought he might be thinking depraved things.
Who’s the pervert now?
Jane Fae notes:
In the end, it may be that the current war on porn, like that on drugs, is fatally flawed. The Williams Committee said as much in the 70’s. When asked to advise government on the law on obscenity, it argued trenchantly that it “wouldn’t start from here”. Root and branch reform and a new framework was what was needed.
Sadly, such an answer was too much of a hot potato back then. It is likely just as hot now.
More at Backlash.
Posted: 27th, October 2014 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
