14 ms·

How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer

• loewenskind 16y ago
  Why wasn't the Clerk investigated for child pornography/molestation? If you look at a picture of naked kids in non-sexual situations and think you're seeing something sexual then there is something wrong with you. Full stop. Either you've been abused, you're an abuser yourself or you've been horribly brain washed. Any of these possibilities makes you more of a risk than the person who shot the photos. Taking this a step further, people need to start filing scary "child pornography" charges at judges, lawyers and everyone else who participates in this kind of insanity. If the judge doesn't take one look at the photo, realize it's nothing and dismiss the case then he might well be a consumer of child pornography. Otherwise, why didn't he realize it was innocent? If a few people in power start getting their lives ruined by this nonsense maybe it would stop.
  • ErrantX 16y ago
    That's absurd; there is a distinct difference between seeing something that concerns you and becoming sexually aroused by said image. To suggest they are "consumers of child pornography" is just a bit rude... For the untrained eye such photo's as in this case may have shocked him/her and prompted the knee-jerk reaction of calling the police. You are right in part; I think the main problem is that, absurdly, any images of naked children are starting to worry people. Part of that is founded in fact; you will find people with thousands of images of different children running around naked on beaches/parks/camping trips. But, clearly, in this case it is just a family camping trip and the clerk has either refused or is unable to process that. I recall that a few years ago I was taking pics at a family wedding and happened, while taking shots of my cousins running round playing, to take a shot which included my youngest cousin doing a handstand with her skirt over her head. It was a completely innocent picture; and if I was ever investigated for CP it would never be flagged as CP - but my Aunt was absolutely insistent I should delete the photo. And that is the sort of society we live in.
    • loewenskind 16y ago
      >That's absurd; there is a distinct difference between seeing something that concerns you and becoming sexually aroused by said image. To suggest they are "consumers of child pornography" is just a bit rude... What is absurd is a situations where natural actions (taking photos of your children) become, randomly, life ruining [1]. You say my suggestion is rude but this is in fact exactly what happened to the author of the story. If one of these two people (the author or the clerk) had to have their life ruined because of the chance that they might be dangerous I would pick the clerk as he/she is actually exhibiting bizarre behavior. Further, having an extreme reaction to natural things indicates some kind of problem. I can't know if the clerk was sexually aroused by the photos, felt guilty and reacted extremely to fight against those feelings that he/she knew were wrong. I can only see the extreme action they took. I can't know what triggered it, but it's definitely a problem and more worthy of looking into than the random innocent by-stander who triggered this persons episode. [1] If this were isolated it might not be such a huge issue, but it's happening quite a lot (relatively). Remember the recent case where photos of a 17 year old girl in a bikini were investigated as child pornography? What about the guy who was naked in his house making breakfast and was accused of being an exhibitionist? Couple this with the insane "child abuser register" the US has and things look pretty alarming.
      • ErrantX 16y ago
        If this were isolated it might not be such a huge issue, but it's happening quite a lot (relatively). No it isn't. You hear about some of these cases because, rightly, it occasionally hits the media but in general it is not happening a lot (comparatively anyway). People are getting too cagey over child nudity and prudish in general; but I don't think it is a result of either being a pedophile or sex offender. I would pick the clerk as he/she is actually exhibiting bizarre behavior. Not to my mind. They are reacting irrationally to images that disturb him/her; it does not make them a sex offender. I see what you are saying; but I don't think it comes as a result of people being abused or secretly being pedophiles; it is more a reflection of a society where we are slowly becoming terrified of the "bogeyman" pedophile at every turn. To put your point another way; if you saw, through a living room window, someone strangling another person whilst having sex with them would you call the police? And would it be because you found it sexually arousing? or is because you were worried about the person? See the difference.
• georgecmu 16y ago
  "If we get down to the bottom line, there is no clear-cut definition," said Dean Tong, who wrote "Elusive Innocence: Survival Guide for the Falsely Accused," after being jailed and then spending 10 years and $150,000 to clear himself of abusing his young daughter. Now a forensic consultant in thousands of false-accusation cases across the country, Tong told me that even most police officers are not well enough trained to interpret the law, let alone photo lab employees. Tong said that when facing the slightest doubt, law enforcement officers "err on the side of the child," noting the potential results: "I see families stripped and ripped apart in the middle of the night."
• Jun8 16y ago
  America has one of the absurdly strictest set of laws for sex offenses against minors, Economist had a great cover story about this some weeks ago. Problem is, since politicians know proposals for stricter laws bring in votes and no sane politician would ever propose a relaxation in these laws, they get stricter every year. On the other hand, the US has one of the most sexualized tweens and teen-agers I have ever seen, go to the Mall or the local movie house on a Friday and you would be shocked at how girls dress (and how their parents let them dress like this). And if that doesn't shock you, watch the movie Thirteen.
  • jrockway 16y ago
    America has one of the absurdly strictest set of laws for sex offenses against minors no sane politician would ever propose a relaxation in these laws So what did the other countries, that have less-strict laws, do? (I agree that Americans are very afraid of anything sexual, but I'm not sure how this happened. Not everyone is a Puritan.)
    • btilly 16y ago
      Back in the 90s I ran across an interesting survey. In America more people were privately concerned about excessive violence on TV than excessive sex. But most thought that their neighbors were more concerned about sex than violence. And therefore found it easier to publicly express their concerns about sex than violence. As to your question, laws and solutions vary widely by country. And other countries have their own problems. (See, for instance, the Catholic abuse scandal in Ireland.) But in general other countries have laws which serve the same purpose as US laws, however with less draconian details. For instance England and Canada have copied US legislation for registered sex offenders. However they do not seem to have implemented the sort of geographic rules on where they can live that lead to the infamous tent city under a bridge in Miami.
      • Kliment 16y ago
        I suppose you mean violence in your second sentence, not sex.
• btilly 16y ago
  It saddens me that for every ridiculous story like this, there is someone out there who really thought that trying to bring the case was a good idea. Some things have improved in recent years. The incidence of bad therapy leading to false memory syndrome has been reduced, and with it the rate of false accusations. (There are also now improved odds for abused kids to be able to get information on what abuse is actually like, rather than getting detailed, unrealistic fantasies.) Others are worse. For instance in Miami the rule that sex offenders have to live at least 2500 feet from any school means that about the only place they could live was under a particular bridge. (As of April this year they have been transferred elsewhere, but which elsewhere that is I'm not sure. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Tuttle_Causeway_sex_offender_colony http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Tuttle_Causeway_sex_offen... for more.) I would be the last to trivialize abuse or its very real problems. But there is a world of difference between 50 year olds going after prepubescent kids and 19 year olds who dated 16 year olds. And there is little to be gained from treating them all like lepers. Certainly less than could be gained if we, for instance, took some of the energy that goes into following up on almost certainly bogus reports and instead put it into improving the foster care system.
  • danbmil99 16y ago
    > there is someone out there who really thought that trying to bring the case was a good idea. Really? Sounds more like there's some cynical jerk with no sense of ethics or boundaries who gets their jollies by randomly victimizing normal families with the excessive powers bestowed upon them by paranoid CYA legislation and an army of deranged ideologues who see abuse everywhere.
    • jrockway 16y ago
      The truth is probably somewhere in the middle: "Someone who really doesn't understand what his job is does some work in an attempt to get a promotion."
      • ubernostrum 16y ago
        Most likely: someone whose continued employment depends on turning a certain minimum percentage of reports into criminal charges/convictions. Busting actual child abusers who have experience with the system is likely much harder than setting up innocent people who don't understand what's going on, so this would presumably be an easy case.
• midnightmonster 16y ago
  I'm very close to people who were saved from really horrible situations by state intervention. But then for them, foster care was hardly any better until they were adopted. The state taking my kids is actually my worst parental nightmare--even beyond all the accidental and criminal bad things that could happen. I'm a very good parent (you'll have to take my word, I guess), but I'm not conventional. And I know all it takes sometimes is a little misunderstanding.
  • Sukotto 16y ago
    For me it's the #2 nightmare. Leaving the baby in the car in the sun is #1.
    • infinite8s 16y ago
      As a new parent, I can't imagine how anyone would ever accidentally leave a child in their car.
      • asmithmd1 16y ago
        I think rear-facing car seats kill more infants than they save. How many children survive a car crash only because they were facing backwards should be weighed against the number of children who die each summer because the parents forgot them. If the child is front facing, your rear-view mirror will be filled with your child's face. But imagine the child falls asleep in a rear facing car seat after you have been up all night with them. It happens every summer to good parents.
      • MartinCron 16y ago
        The typical example given is that someone, in their sleep-deprived haze, forgets to take the sleeping infant to their daycare before going to work. I go the other extreme, every time I'm in the car by myself I have a few "Oh no! Where's the baby!" moments.
• mkramlich 16y ago
  Horrible story, and I totally empathize with their situation. yes, the US is practically insane sometimes in how they deal with sexuality and minors, and yes there's a history of witch hunts in this area. all horrible. That said, they did make 2 very big mistakes, and if they hadn't done either or both of them, none of the rest would have happened. first, they took pictures of the kids naked. two, they let those pictures get into the hands of strangers, ones who can then misinterpret and/or be legally obliged to do certain actions which could start a witch hunt. These people knew they were innocent, that's fine, but the problem is that from a stranger's POV, what they see is that two adult men went into the forest with some some kids, some of the kids got naked, they took photos of it. Connect the dots. It paints a bad picture. They were incredibly naive to have not realized this ahead of time. But yes, we have a horrible system, and we need to find some way to make it better so we can protect children while at the same time not persecuting innocent adults. I'm not quite sure how we can do that.
  • logic 16y ago
    My parents had childhood pictures of me, developed through the local grocery store, completely naked aside from a few layers of mud and a huge grin on my face. My teenage self might not have appreciated the opportunity to grandstand in such a manner quite as much. (I honestly thought I'd found and destroyed all of the copies. My parents were much sneakier than I gave them credit for.) My adult self thinks it's all rather funny. Almost every other child I grew up with had "nekkid pictures" of them, taken by their parents: bathing, having done something foolish or amusing, or just generally running around the house like kids do. Your post paints you as a reasonable person, and that actually terrifies me: a reasonable person shouldn't see an error in judgement here. These were parents doing what parents do, taking pictures of their kids doing what kids do. Proud parents, possibly thinking, "we'll embarrass the hell out of them when they're 16". (I may be projecting a bit of my father here.) We're shaping a society that's cynical and distrustful, and it starts with reasonable people associating behavior like this with phrases like "they should have known better".
    • mkramlich 16y ago
      I didn't say we want to live in a world like this. I'm saying this is the world we live in. A reasonable, non-naive person would think twice about taking pictures of a kid naked, if they had any knowledge of the current state of society & laws in the US. This position should not terrify you. If there's no upside to it, but a pretty significant downside, then don't do it. Exercise willpower. To put it another way, it's like running across a highway at rush hour. Why do it? Upside is a brief thrill (if you survive). Downside is you die horribly. Conclusion: don't do it.
• reader5000 16y ago
  This guy's anger is justified and I think his lawyer failed him.
  • kls 16y ago
    I think his lawyer failed him No he did not, this is not court, you have no right to due process. Your rights are considered secondary to the rights of the children given that you are in question you can not by nature be the child advocate. The DCF (whoever your states agency is) takes that role. So they get to decide if a lawyer is present or not for child questioning, etc. All you really can get from a lawyer in this situation is advice and legal counsel if they decide to bring charges as well as a agent to act on your (not your children) behalf. It is a nightmare where they have you and your lawyer over a barrel until you can catch them up and get them to relent.
    • reader5000 16y ago
      I have no idea if this is settled law or not, but in this instance where the DCF is causing irreparable harm to both the children and the parents it seems a court's intervention could at least be asked for, i.e. file an injunction on the investigation or something to that effect. I'm not a lawyer but I don't think I would feel right just sitting back and being a passive message-passer for the DCF while they destroy my client's lives.
      • kls 16y ago
        It is complicated and I don't remember all the in's and outs, you can try to get in front of a judge and have him rule that you can provide funding for an independent 3rd party lawyer. He cannot be the same as your defense. But you have to show cause which I remember my lawyer saying that it was hard to do. My lawyer in the end was right you just have to show them that you are not easy to pick on and they will move on. They need to make their numbers and if they spend too much time on you, they miss other opportunities. It is a war of attrition in which you have a severe psychological disadvantage.
• megablast 16y ago
  Everyone should read Franz Kafka's The Trial. This story and The Trial depict the helplessness anyone can feel with our legal system, or any big bureaucracy.
  • billswift 16y ago
    ESR's got a new post up http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2122 about what he calls "Kafkatrapping", making unfalsifiable claims against people as a form of "moral" bullying.
  • eru 16y ago
    Yes. Although The Trial can also be read as a piece on his engagement. But Kafka was quite familiar with bureaucracy -- he worked for one.
• siculars 16y ago
  Wait until some enterprising district attorney confiscates your hard drive, surmises you frequent HN, subpoenas your voting history from pg, finds this thread and examines which anti-governement/pro-common-sense comments you up voted. Everything you say (and/or write) may be used against you. Have a nice day :)
  • scrod 16y ago
    >Wait until some enterprising district attorney confiscates your hard drive, surmises you frequent HN, subpoenas your voting history from pg, finds this thread and examines which anti-governement/pro-common-sense comments you up voted. But don't worry, because the web is the future of computing and one day all our information will be stored in giant central databases outside of our control. Isn't the cloud great? (And by the way, "common sense" is not always the same thing as "good sense".)
  • jacquesm 16y ago
    They wouldn't have to go through PG either, votes can be lifted from the URL log that your provider is required to keep.
    • Retric 16y ago
      Sadly, my privacy is probably slightly more protected from such things on this highly monitored Army owned machine running on a secured and monitored network, than on my home computer. The DoD actually seems to care more about PII (Personally Identifiable Information) more than most other organizations, I suspect in large part because the people setting the regulations are also susceptible to them.
  • deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
• elbrodeur 16y ago
  This is tremendously disturbing, but according to the article pretty common. It's a tough line. On the one hand, nobody wants children to suffer. If at all possible, every child should be protected from abuse. I think the key, as the author elaborates on, is education. Knowing the difference between a crazy hippy family and pedophiles seems like common sense -- but if you, as an uneducated clerk at a crappy CVS in the middle of nowhere, saw something that offended your sensibilities and seemed perverse... Without education things like this will happen again and again. Once something like this gets into the bureaucratic pipeline it becomes an unfortunate problem of due diligence.
  • barrkel 16y ago
    It's really common wrong-headed idea, and I suspect at its heart it's a fundamental flaw of democracy. The idea is that if A does bad thing B, all you have to do is pass a law against doing B, and A will stop doing B. But that's not how it works in practice. Instead, you introduce this third character C, who goes out looking for As who might be doing Bs, and potentially does a lot of damage in that search. That damage isn't taken into consideration by the people who simply want As to stop doing B. But people, as a collective electorate, are like a simple-minded 6-year-old, who are promised something by their parents, and they clap their hands in glee, unable to imagine the downsides.
  • sgt 16y ago
    In practice it just doesn't work very well sometimes. I think it's better to risk letting more child abusers off the hook, than potentially ruining the lives of decent parents like these.
    • ErrantX 16y ago
      This was a particularly clear cut case where the parents had done absolutely nothing wrong. That is unusual (at least in my experience) and, yes, we need to avoid these cases. But how do you treat the 8 year old who makes accusations about her father; how much do you have to believe before investigating him? How certain do you have to be that she may be lying before dropping the case? This is the main area of unjust investigations remaining (at least in the UK) and it is troublesome how to find the safe medium.
• cagey 16y ago
  We had "a run in" with Child Protective Services about 10 years ago. The charge: "Shaken Baby Syndrome" (symptoms medically caused; a long story). The "advocates" at CPS had me and my wife (in hospital having just delivered child #2) tried and convicted immediately. Only, I think, thru my self-advocacy directly to the head of pediatrics at the county hospital where my child was being held for examination, resulted in the case being resolved in our favor within a few days (in contrast, I could have talked to the bureaucrats until I died w/o making the slightest headway). Due process? What's that? Various lawyers I consulted advised me to not even hire a lawyer (imagine multiple lawyers saying _that_!) because the law was so stacked against parents, and so completely protective of the CPS bureaucrats, that it would be an utter waste of money with no hope of lawyer-aided "victory". Miraculously we got our kids back in very short order, however the bureaucrats wouldn't give us the slightest scrap of documentation that the event had ever taken place (and this remains true til now). And needless to say, we received no apology either (at best they were all "just doing their jobs", just like concentration camp guards). I have nothing good to say about the arbitrary, condescending, totalitarian bureaucrats/"advocates", or the (CA) legislators who wrote such one sided laws ("for the children", no doubt) giving these petty tyrants their obscene powers. I guess many reading this will think "necessary collateral damage by wonderful, diligent state employees pursuing the greater good"; all well and good until _you_ are the ones in their crosshairs: then we'll hear what kind of tune _you_ sing about the glories of the state when you are deprived of due process among other things.
  • Confusion 16y ago
    (at best they were all "just doing their jobs", just like concentration camp guards) Quoted for truth. This is not an invocation of Godwin's law, but the closest possible analogy, as these bureaucrats make the exact same repugnant decisions someone like Eichmann made. They fully well know they ruin the lives of many innocent folks; at least half the cases turn out to have been nothing. The problem is not 'the government' or 'society'. The problem is our neighbors: citizens like you and me, not realizing they have to question what they do in the light of each individual situation, not thinking for themselves or not having the moral fiber to act according to those thoughts. These horror stories are not solely an American problem: there are plenty of similar European stories. However, the American stories are by far more extreme, as both the punishment and the immediate social consequences are worse. Not only the bureaucrats are like concentration camp guards: the teachers that immediately distrust you and the neighbors that won't let their kid play with yours anymore are equally guilty of 'guilty until proven innocent'.
• kls 16y ago
  I had a similar run in with DCF, not for child pornography but for accusations of child abuse. I helped out a high school friend who had become a heroin addict (I had no idea what I was getting into), by letting his family and himself live with me while he tried to recover. It ended up that this was a common scam with him and his wife and they use a sob story to get friends to help them out and once they wear out their welcome they move on to the next friend. They would exploit their two girls to make you feel bad about putting two little girls out on the street. This worked very well on me. Anyways, we finally had had enough and we asked them to leave. I notified his brother of this an his brother had had enough as well, fearing for his two nieces the brother called DCF on them and started an investigation in an attempt to get the girls and provide them some stability (they where in and out of school, watched their father do drugs, and eventually watched him OD - more on that latter). So, after that the crazy wife calls DCF on every family, that had kids, that they stayed with. So we end up getting cops and a DCF agent knocking on our door, conveniently at 11PM, a time when any dirt bag would be doing their nightly supply of drugs and we get this condescending attitude while we are being read a list of charges being levied against us. My father is there, because he is helping me install a wood floor in my living room and the DCF agent gives me a condescending lecture about unsafe environment for children (I answer well that is why we are doing it while they are in bed). She looked at me and asked what is going on here like it was some illicit activity. They make us wake the kids up, and then they make them disrobe to see if they have any marks and take them on the back porch to ask them questions. Right before that, I asked if I needed a lawyer and the cop told me they are not needed in these situations. Anyway, they told us we had to be at the court house for a urine test at 8AM the next morning. To which we complied after calling a lawyer once they left the night before. In the mean time, I call the brother and tell him and his mother what happened. He, his sister and their mother calls the agent handling the case of his brother and tells her that their has been a false report that was used to victimize another person as a form of retaliation. He pretty much has to threaten the lady to contact the DCF agency in my town, which she finally does. So, pretty open and shut right, nope. I ask our agent if she has been in contact with the (now network) of agents investigation false reports on everyone that has ever let these people stay with them and she tells me that she cannot confirm or deny it due to the fact that she has to protect the anonymity of the reporter but that our case was in active investigation, because they found items of concern in our house (If they provided half the case work diligence that they do to protect the anonymity of a random caller, we would have never been in this mess). The items of concern was a pot pipe in the room that the family stayed in. I did not allow drugs to be used in my house and the brother clearly described the pot pipe to them as he had seen his brother pipe before, so there was no doubt that this pipe belonged to a known drug addict that lived in that room. Still no go, so now we are being investigated not for child abuse, as the original allegation claimed, but drug abuse, so they go through my medicine cabinet and catalog every pill bottle I have. Then the drug test come back, and I come back positive for a controlled substance, Alazopram, I have had panic attacks since I was about 10 years old and have been under a doctors care for that long. They know this but feign like they don't. They then decide to contact my doctor and volunteer the information that I am being investigated for drug abuse and then show up on my door to inform me that I will have to attend mandatory drug classes and enter a rehab facility or they will bring it before the judge. My lawyer called their bluff because they knew I had a prescription for the medication because they interviewed my doctor. Yet when they came to my house they acted like they must have missed the pill bottle with my name on it and asked to see it again. They looked at it for all of .2 seconds and then said well since you have a prescription it is probably best that we go ahead and close the case. DCF gets brownie points if they can get you entered into some social program if they cannot build a case to get a conviction. They will do everything in their power to do so. In my case they had a blatant case of their system being used to victimize someone else and instead of upholding justice they saw an opportunity to score a win due to poor circumstances (me not finding a pipe in the closet when we cleaned the room). They would have railroaded me if they could have with no concern as to right and wrong. I feel so bad for those who do not have the resources to retain a lawyer. Nevertheless like the article states the stain remains even after the case is closed. I always wonder if my doctor secretly thinks that I am a drug addict now. I was in a state of fear that my medicine for panic attacks would not be available to me due to the political risk of having me as a patient. I feared having my children taken away and believe that they had pushed me past the point of breaking. If they had taken my children I believe at that point I could have hurt myself or others. To be innocent with the truth so obvious and to have people ignore it makes you feel victimized and it makes you want to victimize the ones that are doing it to you. I think that is probably the one time in life that someone or some thing had driven me to the edge of sanity. I love my children more than anything in my life and I started to have crazy thought of having to protect my children at all costs. It was insane and they had no regard for the human wreckage they where leaving in their wake. Fortunately, I held it together, my lawyer, just like the one in the article, constantly reminded me that if I displayed aggression they would use it against me. If I snapped and went postal they would use it against my wife and I would no longer be here to help my wife and children navigate that mess. And if I just killed myself that I would be a coward that left my wife and kids to fend for themselves. It is hard for a man because he has a natural instinct to protect his family and to have to quell that instinct in times of extreme stress when people are truly trying to attack your family is difficult to say the least. In the end the case was closed, DCF thought they where going to get out quick and quite when they where rebuffed with my prescription, but my lawyer had one last volley with them, in which he insisted that it be noted on our file that the report be marked as a false report. They tried to resist but he threatened civil action against the agency and they relented. I requested the file and on the last line it states subjects request that this be labeled a false report. To the very end they cannot see the victimization that they did. Anyway, like the article said it fades into a bad memory but leaves you always looking over your shoulder. The part that I am most bitter about is that I asked the agent as she was leaving, are you guys going to bring charges against them for filing all of these false reports. To which she said well the agency dose not really do that, with the case load we don't have time to chase false reports. The man that we tried to help ended up overdosing 2 months later. The children where never taken from them because they complied with the mandated social programs that DCF required them to do so that DCF could get their check mark. They sent him to a welfare doctor that gave him methadone and klonopin (a stronger relative of the medicine that I take, which they had no issue with their doctor prescribing to a known drug addict), he took too much of both one night and died. His 8yr old and 5y old daughter found him the next day. EDIT: forgot to mention, wife was pregnant and had baby during the investigation to which they showed up at the hospital to decide whether we could take our new born child home or not.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• fobimmigrant 16y ago
  wow USA is really insane! I must earn tons of money and go to a better place like Scandinavian countries. day by day my doubt in power of USA is increasing, it seems to be headed on path of Britain or worse Japan
• dotBen 16y ago
  I read this story, and it's very sad. But I just feel the need to ask... why is this on Hacker News? Surely this is Reddit type content? I read loads of really interesting and eye-opening posts about all sorts of non-tech subjects... but I don't feel they should be on Hacker News to the detriment of other tech stories that could be on the front page.
  • erikpukinskis 16y ago
    Lots of hackers are parents. Where else can a discussion of parenting issues from a hacker perspective happen? Or law, for that matter? Just because the OP isn't specifically about tech doesn't mean that there is no value in a hacker-specific conversation.
  • nitrogen 16y ago
    I suspect that an increasing number of hackers rely upon HN for the majority of their news, myself included. Since "hacking the system" is a popular subject on HN, personal interest stories that show how "the system" works, or doesn't work, are of interest to enough readers to bring those stories to the front page.
  • JeffL 16y ago
    Because it's very interesting and very high quality. Also, from the guidelines of this site: Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did.
• holdenc 16y ago
  This kind of story is indicting of our culture. Outside the US nudity is not so taboo. In my daughter's kindergarten (a nice private school in Southeast Asia) boys and girls share the same bathroom, with no private stalls, and no door on the entrance. Everyone sees everything -- passers-by included. Meanwhile, in the US, nudity is synonymous with sex, and good people have to worry about things like this.
  • c1sc0 16y ago
    I'll add to that by saying it's a sign of our times as well. I was educated with material from the 60's / 70's & having nudity in school textbooks was perfectly normal then, including shared nudity between adults & children.
    • pyre 16y ago
      I almost have a feeling that in the US we are building up to a Hilter-esque take-over of the government. It's just taking a lot longer than it took the Nazis because the times aren't as extreme, and our system of government was better designed to resist such things...
      • waivej 16y ago
        Let's just hope our economy holds out. It reminds me of a photo of a German shoveling money into a woodstove because it was so devalued...and the folks were ready to listen to someone promising a way to be a world power again.
      • bpyne 16y ago
        It's troubling that you make this observation. A friend of mine did his Ph.D. in East European studies before the Berlin Wall fell. He told me 15 years ago, over a few Newcastles, that "the US is ripe for fascism". I find the thought terrifying still. Let's hope the US political process keeps such a Dark Age from occurring. EDIT: Corrected typo: Lets -> Let's
        • 16y ago
• danbmil99 16y ago
  Thank god for digital cameras. I've avoided film since that Robin Williams movie about the crazy at the 1-hour place.
  • robryan 16y ago
    Not saying this applies to you but a lot of possibly questionable material that is bypassing the eyes of processing at a drug store is now being made available to many more than a couple of people online.
• noonespecial 16y ago
  I half expect these stories to end with: "He loved Big Brother." We use "Orwellian" a little too loosely but for the victims of this, it seems almost that bad.
• known 16y ago
  Changing your name may help.
• jrockway 16y ago
  Sounds like the system worked. She was accused of a crime, an investigation was performed, the state realized they had no case and that nothing was wrong, and the charges were dropped. I guess it's kind of a pain to be the target of an investigation, but nobody's life was ruined.
  • philk 16y ago
    That is entirely false: a) If the system worked, the initial photos would have been checked and then the complaint would have been disregarded. b) If the system worked, innocent parents who provided a loving and safe home for their children would not have been treated like criminals. c) If the system worked, the state would not have kept pushing in the hope of getting some sort of conviction in a case where it was manifestly clear that nothing had happened. d) If the system worked, the children in the case would not have been subjected to invasive and personal questioning by government functionaries. Accusations of pedophilia do ruin lives, and no one should ever have to go through the hell of proving their innocence in a case as flimsy as this.
    • pbhjpbhj 16y ago
      >b) If the system worked, innocent parents who provided a loving and safe home for their children would not have been treated like criminals. Your statements (a) and (c) seem sound to me. (b) and possibly (d) is a necessary part of the system. If guilt can not be ascertained without investigation then practically some innocent people will be treated like criminals by being investigated. (d) may be a necessary part of such investigation depending on the allegations. That said in the OP's case I don't think (d) should have happened and I'm concerned that the investigators could have effectively opened the door to improper sexual activity by asking the children questions like "did an adult touch you between your legs" or something that would lead the child to see this as a forbidden fruit that they had previously not regarded but now desired to explore.
  • Batsu 16y ago
    > I guess it's kind of a pain to be the target of an investigation, but nobody's life was ruined. I'm sure you've met someone who did something stupid, and every time you come across them it springs to mind. How would you like it if that was you, and the something stupid was being accused of was child pornography? Everyone who heard about it didn't necessarily hear the resolution or the circumstances. ... This is the longer and cleaner version of the "you can build a thousand bridges" anecdote.
• Debugreality 16y ago
  I don't think the fact that false leads are investigated is really the problem. But that investigation should be resolved much more quickly and much more transparently. Really the harm seems to be in they way people are being treated not in trying to prevent child abuse etc...
• davidmurphy 16y ago
  Yikes!
• jvdh 16y ago
  On the one hand I completely sympathize with the author. As a parent myself I would not wish this upon anyone. On the other hand, the author is a journalist, exactly the people who are the cause of this type of witch hunt. If you would leave out the prologue of the story, and make it into a story where the accusations actually were true. Then noone would have blinked about what happened. If they were treated any other way, there would have been a public outrage. Think about the officers handling this case. There is absolutely zero incentive for them to handle this case differently. If the accused turn out to be guilty, then they better have handled this case with the utmost seriousness. Any leniency can possibly lead to a scandal. And media love childmolesting scandals, so the officers will be part of a nation if not worldwide scandal. They will be singled out, their mistake will be broadcasted for the whole world to see, and they effictively lose their job. If people turn out to be innocent, psyches have been damaged, it's bad but they'll get over it. More importantly, maybe a complaint will be filed, they will have done the right thing within the rules, and case is closed.
  • Tichy 16y ago
    "a journalist, exactly the people who are the cause of this type of witch hunt." And I am a software developer, exactly the kind of people who cause computer viri, identity theft, spams and scams?
    • run4yourlives 16y ago
      How many journalists are in jail for causing which hunts? How many have even uttered an apology? That's the difference.
    • jvdh 16y ago
      Your job as a software developer is to prevent viri, identity theft, spam and scams. Journalists are looking for scandals, stories that score lots of eyeballs.
  • djacobs 16y ago
    > If you would leave out the prologue of the story, and make it into a story where the accusations actually were true. Then noone would have blinked about what happened. If that's true, then we have a huge problem. Basically I'm hearing this in that comment: If someone is innocent, they are innocent until proved guilty. If someone is guilty, they are guilty until proved innocent. The problem with that idea is supremely obvious.
• Twisol 16y ago
  I've read just over 30 pages of the comments on Salon to this story, and undoubtedly I'll read many more. My main observation is that most of the commenters seem to be sensible people who do understand what parenting is like, and how kids really act. Thank _God_. But some of the other comments just make me facepalm terrifically. Legally, I'm going to be an adult within the month. I'm certainly not a parent, but I am a kid, and I haven't been so brainwashed as to lose sight of what pre-adolescence is like. I could go on and on about the funny, stupid, and downright embarrassing things I did, particularly before I turned "double-digits". Side-point: Giving these decidedly private photos to a public agency to develop was an absolutely stupid thing to do, but by no stretch of the imagination can I blame everything on him because of it. That's a lesson learned, for sure, but the idea that anything else he did was "wrong" just blows my mind. I'd like to say to some of the salon commenters... don't impose your personal morals on everyone else, please. I know there's a fantastic one-word term for people who do that, but it escapes me.
  • dhimes 16y ago
    Giving these decidedly private photos to a public agency to develop was an absolutely stupid thing to do But that's the way we used to live. Before digital, very few of us could develop our own film. Just like most of us buy our beer at a store rather than making it- and therefore some agency could get a handle on how much we consume. In the future this may look like a stupid thing to do, but now it's all we really have and nobody thinks about it twice. My parents had no alternative to developing the pictures of me at a store.
• impeachgod 16y ago
  I tend to hold the Thoreauvian point that one ought to resist unfair laws. As I noticed, Child Protective Services are state agencies. If someone was falsely accused of child abuse/child porn, with no hope of winning the case whatsoever, how effective would it be to run away with the family?
  • cookiecaper 16y ago
    IANAL, but in general, I think meritless cases like this one eventually get dismissed, though it's a lot of hassle and waste in the meantime. Even if your case doesn't get dismissed and your children are about to get taken away, running away with the children could only vastly, vastly aggravate the matter, as far as I am aware. In many cases you'll be able to get the children back. If you flee, that is much less likely. You'd be a fugitive and you'd be in serious, serious trouble, I think, even if the state's case was baseless to start out. I think the best option is to do as the person in the article did and deal with it in a cooperative and respectful manner, as much as we may resent it.
    • run4yourlives 16y ago
      While I agree with you, it's worth noting that your children are removed from you custody almost immediately, regardless of the outcome of the investigation. So, the "hassle and waste" you refer to can devastate a family.
    • lftl 16y ago
      I think it depends on what phase you're in with regards to leaving. If at the very beginning of the investigation, after the first visit from DFS, they had left for France I imagine this case would have simply been forgotten. They hadn't been charged with any crime, so they're not legal fugitives in any sense. They may never want to return to that particular state on the off chance someone from DFS who remembers the case notices them, but I imagine even that to be a very slim possibility. Even later in the case though, I'm troubled to think of a law they're breaking by simply moving to another state. If I'm ever in a situation similar to this, I will heavily weigh moving, or at least sending my wife and kids out of state, before entrusting my family to a random bureaucrat.
• ErrantX 16y ago
  Besharov also said that the current law should be amended to grant immunity to those who in good faith deem a situation not to be child abuse or pornography. That way, those who report cases of abuse of questionable merit, simply to err on the side of mandatory reporting laws, might feel less pressure to do so. In our case, maybe the responding officer, who initially commented that he didn't find the pictures pornographic, would have dismissed the case at the drugstore and not reported us to child services. This is the key takeway - and the thing that really needs to change. In this case, like some many others, the process really broke down at that point. But it is incredibly difficult, I imagine, to make such a call. If it later turns out you just let a child pornographer go free you will be proverbially screwed; both by the LE services and the media. We ask completely the wrong people to make these choices; inexperienced officers with a lot to lose if they make the wrong call.
  • pstuart 16y ago
    I think that such a call should be relatively straightforward. A picture of a naked child is not pornography unless there is explicit sexual context, i.e., touching of genitals, etc. Otherwise, a naked child in a bathtub, pool or such activity is the picture of innocence itself. If there was doubt, bring it before a jury of one's peers as opposed to some back-room morality police.
  • flostre 16y ago
    If it later turns out you just let a child pornographer go free you will be proverbially screwed; both by the LE services and the media. Not to mention your conscience.
• dan00 16y ago
  Sometimes I'm pretty scared of the missing of common sense and disgusted by the people who are "just" doing their job, without compunction what this might imply for other people. It's a confession of failure for a society, if the determinant of acting is fear.
• DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  Welcome to Child Protective Services, where folks with sociology degrees, sometimes poor cognitivie abilities, and questionable work ethics who want to be on a mission to save the world are given powers that would make the local police chief blush. I hated to write that. Snarky it was. Of course most of the cases these folks work are really sad -- I have family that work there. But it's a blunt instrument, and politicians have decided that anything to do with kids gets "special" treatment. I know of about a dozen good people who have had run-ins with these guys. None of them were guilty of anything bad, yet all of them went through hell. (this list includes me) I also know (from my family members who work there) of really bad people who keep their kids through atrocity after atrocity. Very sad. EDIT: Just guessing, but it's almost like the closer to upper-middle class you are, the more likely you are to be a victim of CPS-gone-wild. The really poor crackheads don't give a shit, so CPS charges them and shuffles them through the system. Nobody has resources for these kids, so they go back to mom and/or dad. The really rich have a platoon of lawyers descend on CPS (and they have political connections). It's the poor schmucks who have the energy and wherewithal to screw around with CPS (probably in a useless attempt to save their reputation) that get dragged through the dirt.
  • DanielBMarkham 16y ago
    I'm just guessing the following numbers for effect, but I believe them to be true within an order of magnitude. We have a thousand political systems that can punish people. Each one has at least a 1% false-positive rate over our lifetime. That means that each of us will get screwed over many times by government. Hopefully when we get screwed over it won't be like this guy.
  • akeefer 16y ago
    Sigh . . . I get that CPS doesn't always do the best job, and plenty of the people that work there are on a power trip and got into social work because they like telling other people what to do. The world would certainly be a better place if they were able to do their job better and if some of their officers were more courteous. But as you probably know, working for CPS is an incredibly difficult job. It's very demanding on your time, it's immensely stressful emotionally, everyone hates you, and it can put you in physical danger (you often have to be accompanied by a police officer). Unsurprisingly, in many places they have trouble finding enough qualified applications to fill the necessary positions. I know that I sure as hell wouldn't want to do that job. I guess I just get tired of the vitriol directed their direction as if the world would be a better place if CPS wasn't around, or as if they intentionally make life hard on people just because, or as if they're somehow more lenient on poor people. Your additional comment there is, in my experience, pretty wildly off-base: my wife is a social worker who works with plenty of poor clients who have had children taken away and never managed to get them back because they're unable to support them financially or have ongoing drug or alcohol problems. The kids are put in group or foster homes basically permanently, not sent back to their parents. And it's not like the "poor crackheads," as you so respectfully put it, don't care: they care just as much as anyone else does. What I'd like to see is some more level-headed analysis of what the "false positive" or "false negative" rates are. For every family innocently harrassed, how many families are quickly cleared of any wrongdoing and how many children are removed from abusive situations? It makes a big difference if 60% of the claims CPS investigates result in putting an innocent family through hell or if 1% of the investigations do. Again . . . would the world be better if CPS was able to do a better job? Sure. Would the world be a better place if we reverted back to treating children like property with no rights and allowing parents complete free rein over their children? No.
• troubledwine 16y ago
  "I took a few of my youngest daughter, Eliza, then age 3, skinny-dipping in the lake, and my son, Noah, then age 8, swimming in the lake in his underwear, and another of Noah naked, hamming it up while using a long stick to hold his underwear over the fire to dry. Finally, I took a photo of everyone, as was our camping tradition, peeing on the ashes of the fire to put it out for the last time."
• hga 16y ago
  Recently I've noticed a ... crystallization of a meme about America's ruling class and this is the most trenchant essay on the subject ... and one that just happens to explain a whole lot of what's going on here at the broad level. Highly recommended: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-class-and-the/print http://spectator.org/archives/2010/07/16/americas-ruling-cla...
• jgoewert 16y ago
  I remember reading this when it first came out and reminded me of my own run in with DFS right around the same time. Stopping real child abuse is important, but the system is so lopsided that merely being accused makes you the criminal. People spread the rumor of you being investigated by DFS, they don't spread the rumor of you being cleared. My run-in was no where near as large of scale, but aggrivating, humiliating, time wasting, and ridiculous. I'm no hippy journalist letting my kids run free, basically just your run of the mill suburbanite developer 8-to-5 schmoe and my wife is a Special Ed teacher . One day, we come home from work to find that DFS had tried to visit and that we must call back with a time we can be interviewed. At the time, we had a six year old and a less than 1 year old. Someone had reported us for child abuse. It was like a record scratch. What? I don't hit my kids. My oldest went to a private school. I spent plenty of time with them. Our #1 fear is leaving them somewhere so my wife watches them like a hawk. It made no sense. We called back and an agent came by the next day. We tried to leave our oldest at school because at that age, he would babble about what was happening and other parents would find out and the stigma would be set. But she demanded to see him, so my wife went and got him while I got the 5th degree. We were accused of some stuff that seemed hilariously lame. * We made our son pee in a dollhouse toilet and just left it there full. --- Uh, yeah, one day we found it in the back of his room behind the shelf. We think he did it and hid it. Kids do weird things. * We let our oldest run around screaming and being reckless and has untreated ADHD. -- Yeah, he has ADHD, he's took Ritalin since he was 5 and is now on Adderall. * Our home is unsafe with rotten food all over. -- Yes, my wife is messy, but not to the level of fire hazard or health violation. Rotten food? You mean like having cans from last night's dinner still next to the stove? * And numerous other things like this... After being checked out, she said that it was most likely a false report and that it would most likely be dropped, but the file stays around permanently and that we can't find out who made the report. Of course, our son blabbed about the experience, and now even 5 years later, none of his school friend's parents let their kids come over to our house because the original rumor. No one makes false claims, right? I figured out who made the report through the neighborhood network. Some old guy across the street who was mad that I left the trashcans out on the front of my home instead of the side and one time when I had let our grass grow too long because every night that I got home from work and all weekend for 3 weeks it had rained a crap-ton. I still catch him taking pictures of our house to call the Neighborhood Preservation office with when I let the slightest thing go wrong. (ie, a storm gutter fell off over the night and I didn't notice until I got home from work that evening) The worst part is, there is little you can do. Everything is "anonymous". You can't hire a lawyer to go and tell this guy to piss off. Retaliation would be stupid. You are just "stuck".
• waterhouse 16y ago
  Story in comic form: http://www.pbfcomics.com/archive_b/PBF215-Kitty_Photographer.jpg http://www.pbfcomics.com/archive_b/PBF215-Kitty_Photographer...
• Dove 16y ago
  It makes a mockery of the life, liberty and property clause that family can be threatened so lightly. In my opinion, it is a fundamental right to raise your children according to your standards. Parents should be in control of the risks, ideas, and experiences their children are exposed to. Minority views on what is appropriate should be protected as rigorously as minority political or religious views. I would like to see limits on state intervention in families. I'd like to see CPS investigations require probable cause, warrants, and time limits. I'd like to see a clear standard for circumstances under which the state can take action. Personally, I think the standard for any enforced separation should be clear and convincing evidence before a jury of gross neglect (lack of life necessities, repeated serious reckless injury, serious risk of death) or malicious, repetitive physical abuse. And even in those cases, I'd prefer the first conviction to result in parole, not immediate action. Child abuse is serious business, but separating families is serious business too.
  • chc 16y ago
    First of all, there's no such thing as the "life, liberty and property clause" in American law. Second, what if my standards for raising children are similar to Josef Fritzl's? Is that a fundamental right? You'd probably say no, but now the black-and-white rule is turning gray, and we're heading back toward the maddening uncertainty that our society has developed.
    • Dove 16y ago
      Well, I was thinking of the piece of the 5th amendment that says "No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". I don't know what you call that clause, but there is definitely such a thing. In my opinion, it's intended to protect against government oppression in the form of taking away things you value. But if you were to include "access to family" on that list, I'd put it about where I'd put "avoidance of bodily injury". Here: "Life, family, liberty, property". That government institutions can so casually disrupt family bonds, either temporarily, permanently, or during a long investigation? It makes a mockery of the protection against government we are supposed to have. They can't search your car without a warrant, but keep your head down or someone might call the CPS and they might arbitrarily decide to TAKE YOU FROM YOUR PARENTS. (And it's silly to bring up a seriously abusive case like Josef Fritzl. The right to exercise your parenting philosophy is like the right to exercise your religion. I want to defend it against busybodies. I even want to defend your ability to hurt people, up to a degree. But there's a limit; we don't tolerate sexual assault in the context of cults, and we shouldn't tolerate it in the context of parenting either. With that said, would I want to limit the state's ability to ACT IMMEDIATELY to separate kids and parents in a seriously and clearly abusive case, in order to offer normal people the protection of due process? Yes, I think I would make that tradeoff. Abuse is rare, and the kid who's lived with the problem for years can manage another six hours while you get your expedited, emergency warrant.)
• mattmaroon 16y ago
  Taking pictures of naked 8 year old boys and groups peeing on a fire is really weird. If I were the random drug store employee processing that film (for $8/hr) I'd report that without hesitation. If I worked for the government agency tasked with such things, I'd investigate it too. I know this won't be a popular sentiment here because there's so much loathing of government in general. It's hard to make a judgment about how well the situation was handled from one side of the story, but that he was investigated seems about right.
• cromulent 16y ago
  The spectrum of human sexuality that is accepted by society is narrower than the human biological spectrum of sexuality. Rightfully, we reject behaviour that can damage children. Wrongfully, many modern societies (until recently) fiercely rejected homosexuality, with often tragic results. The current methods of dealing with pedophilia - by suspecting everyone, every man in a park taking photos of his children - are a blight. At some point, society will have to stop trying to drive pedophilia into the ocean and find a different way to deal with it. Nobody chooses to be a pedophile, they can just choose to repress their behaviour. We should find them and help them instead of victimizing the innocent.
  • derefr 16y ago
    What can we really do to "help" pedophiles, though? Chemically castrate them, like we did to homosexuals (e.g. Alan Turing)? Teach them how to go through life having desires but not acting on them (which is what 99% of them already do successfully)?
    • cromulent 16y ago
      I don't know, but I think we need to accept that they do exist, now and in the future, and find a way to deal with it. This is not the way.
• sdh 16y ago
  Sickening. It seems like the best way to handle something like this is to bring public scrutiny to bear on the insanity. Make a politician answer for it and the case will probably disappear.
• VladRussian 16y ago
  The DCFS/CPS employees are your wives, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, uncles, ..., basically they are _you_. So stop whining and just think for a second whose life you're going to make miserable today.