John Grisham Tells The Truth: Watching Child Porn Doesn’t Make You A Paedophile
JOHN Grisham has rather surprised the usual people by telling the truth about child pornography. Yes, there is truly vile stuff out there and those who produce it and seek it should indeed be locked up. But that’s not quite the same as saying that everyone who looks at a pair of underage tits should be in jail:
The author of legal thrillers such as The Firm and A Time to Kill who has sold more than 275m books during his 25-year career, cited the case of a “good buddy from law school” who was caught up in a Canadian child porn sting operation a decade ago as an example of excessive sentencing.
“His drinking was out of control, and he went to a website. It was labelled ‘sixteen year old wannabee hookers or something like that’. And it said ’16-year-old girls’. So he went there. Downloaded some stuff – it was 16 year old girls who looked 30.
“He shouldn’t ’a done it. It was stupid, but it wasn’t 10-year-old boys. He didn’t touch anything. And God, a week later there was a knock on the door: ‘FBI!’ and it was sting set up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to catch people – sex offenders – and he went to prison for three years.”
That does seem somewhat excessive for having a look at a website. There’s a footballer coming out of jail for rape, today in fact, who has served less time than that.
The problem here is obvious: the definition of what is child porn is simply too widely drawn. It is actually a fact, no, really, that if a 17 year old girl sends a nude selfie, or herself you know, to the boyfriend she is entirely legally shagging each and every day then that’s child porn. And both of them could be jailed. And please don’t think that this is just a hypothetical: there are US cases where the 17 year old boyfriend of a 15 year old is on the sex offenders register for life for just such a happening.
It’s the standard hysteria all over again. Once it was Reefer Madness, before that it was the White Slave trade and now it’s child porn. And there’s a real problem at the heart of it all as Rotherham showed us. But gangs preying on 11 year olds is rather different from looking at 16 year old boobies (you do know that Sam Fox’s early career on Page 3 is now classified as child porn? And it’s illegal to actually posses her early photos?).
Sadly, the only way any society has ever dealt with these hysterias is to simply let them burn themselves out. However many people they damage along the way.
Posted: 16th, October 2014 | In: Celebrities, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
