Tim Blair

The only creature I hate worse than a terrorist is a pedophile.

Those who were inadvertantly caught up and are not guilty, I hope you win your case. Those who are guilty -- please follow the example of the first four and help clean up the environment.

yeah, hopefully they'll be a lot more of these self-convictions; save the good folk of australia a lot of time and money.

Four suspects - have committed suicide after being interviewed by police.

Self disposing trash. This should please the Greens.

They should offer free arsnic pills to all those charged. Talk about cleaning house!

I say we take all the pervs and ship them to Iran. After the MOO-lahs have imposed Islamic justice, like weeney-chopping, on them, we can just nuke the whole country. Then we'll have solved two problems at once.

The child molester is evil, and cannot be tolerated.

That having been said: according to the report, almost all of those accused merely possessed images, and are not accused of producing porn nor of ever contacting an actual child. I can't support imprisoning someone just for looking at a picture. That's just wrong!

The problem with "just looking a picture", Stuffed, is that some child had to pose to take said photo.

That means young children are being forced into pornography, or are being entreated into doing so. Unless you consider the age of conset to be about 3 years old or so.

Therefore, "merely possessing" the photos (which were probably purchased) directly supports the degrading of innocent children, one notch below enforced prostitution.

This is the same line of reasoning as buying clothing made in sweat shops supports slavery or near-slavery conditions.

Get it, fool?

As an Australian. this whole thing really makes me sick to my stomach. Look at the national anguish Belgium went through, and that was over rumours of a wider pedophile network.

In a country of just under 20 million, 500 people is an obscene proportion of the population to be involved in this most heinous of crimes.

I am not a religious man, but for people like this I hope there is a particularly excruciating corner of hell reserved for them.

Scum

Pure and simple.

"The problem with "just looking a picture", Stuffed, is that some child had to pose to take said photo."

What is the legal situation if the images are not photographs, videos and the like, but drawings or paintings produced not from live models, but the artists' imagination?

Does the anti-censorship brigade defend that sort of art?

You know, I lost my virginity to a girl under 18 years of age. Possessing a picture of her naked would make me a "pedophile" as well. So yeah, thanks for the comments about being worse than terrorists ...

Of course I loathe anyone who abuses children. Fucking hate them. But the definition of "child porn" is so wide - anyone under 18, basically. For fucks' sake, the age of consent in half the countries in the world is 14. It's OK to do it in person, but can't look at some naked pictures? Totally ludicrous.

I hate seeing my fellow, freedom-loving conservatives jumping on the same bandwagon as the "let's legislate to protect everyone from everything" middle aged woman brigade, but that's what you're doing here. "Child porn" is a powerfully negative label to be sure. But it's legally far, far too broad. I wonder how many of these cases you'd think, if you knew all the details, were actually fair? Sure, the teacher with the two way mirror - sick. But they weren't all like that, you can bet.

Some people think all pornography is "sick", too, by the way. Let's not get too carried away in our baying for blood here.

Sho

I was interested and concerned to see one Scot Thompson who had bought and operated 3 childcare centres since 2001. I wonder-is he one of those boasting of installing camera/video links via the internet, so parents can view their children to check on them?? I wondered at the time about how such technologiy could be abused. I was in the business for many years. Parents with children in my care or their delegates, were invited to drop by any time unannounced- that was the best security along with mature staff. I had wonderful staff whom stayed with me all the years of operation
Iknow a great deal about running a Childcare centres from very personal experience.
It was very hard building from 'cold' a new centre, paying the award wages and meeting parents expectations- a subject I could write on for hours.
However I would be interested if the taxation department have ever thought of doing a deep investigation of some of these millionaire business men who have in recent years entered this market. One from Queensland in 10 years has gone from a 'milk' round to multi millionaire in less than 10 years????????? Another former 'milkman' with an 18,000 000 home on the gold coast trying to sell his home and interviewed on TV recently.
I took 15 years to pay off my loan and worked 7 days a week and 2 jobs & that was when we could minimise our tax thru legal means. People are very misguided if they believe that with award wages, superannuation and INSURANCE, paying off principal and Interest that you can do other than break even, has to have rocks in their heads. Or they are exploiting children by many casuals each day- another story.
I knew of others who used child care centres as a tax break from some other enterprise and I have recently learned that it has become a great way to launder drug money since the introduction of the GST.
By chance I have become aware of someone who has been charged with drug trafficing and whom the police could not touch as the money was spread around companies/ business and in other names than his owm to evade detection.
I am not given to hate- but these scrapings from a cess pit - the best I can suggest is that we do a swap with the terrorist for all held hostages in exchange for these perverted creeps- we don't have to tell the terrorists or they would not touch then either

You know, I lost my virginity to a girl under 18 years of age. Possessing a picture of her naked would make me a "pedophile" as well. So yeah, thanks for the comments about being worse than terrorists ...

Well, not in Australia. I could get it on with a sixteen year old tomorrow and it would be perfectly legal.

....

...

And fun!

;)

To Sho
Whatever 'adults' do willingly, is their choice- for those so lacking in their own existence that they pay and download pictures of other humans who also are so degraded that they have to paricipate in such an 'industry ' to survive. I pity them all.
However when it comes to adult men/women who inflict this sub human treatmenT and perversion on children- I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THEM KEPT IN GAOL AT MY EXPENSE- TATTOO PEREVERT ON THEIR FOREHEAD AND LET THEM FREE- PROBLEM SOLVED QUICKLY

Has anyone seen HONEST MIKE SCRAFTON OF LATE AND HIS 1300 PORN DOWNLOADS

There is a big difference between looking at pictures of people plus 13-14-ish and those under that age.

There was some case where a man was beaten for being a pedophile, when in actual fact he had sex with a 15 year old when he was about 18 or 19.

Not exactly the worlds worst sex crime is it?

There is a web site http://www.ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm
which give the age of consent in most countries of the world.

Apparently in Holland, a girl can say "yes" at 12, but if you are paying for it, she must be 18.

And, names for jobs, Lee van Dyke, is a very anti-gay Dutch member of parliament.

Please investigate further. Start here: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_mcmar.htm
We in the US went through similar allegations in the 80's that proved to be unfounded. Now we have the Catholic Church scandal where pedophile priests were moved from diocese to diocese. It should be noted that most of them did not engage in sex with young children but young teenagers.
Wrong but not quite the same. My brother was victim of one priest. But the daycare abuse scandal was a complete witch hunt. And I do think that there are some innocent priests too who have nevertheless been accused. For the guilty yeah, suicide is fine by me.

The problem with "just looking a picture", Stuffed, is that some child had to pose to take said photo.

That means young children are being forced into pornography, or are being entreated into doing so. Unless you consider the age of conset(sic) to be about 3 years old or so.

Therefore, "merely possessing" the photos (which were probably purchased) directly supports the degrading of innocent children, one notch below enforced prostitution.

Bullwash!

Considered illegal child porn are paintings, drawings (even simple line drawings), Photoshopped images of adults and written stories. None of which require an actual child to produce.

A vast explosion of child porn is available over the internet and from the newsgroups without charge. Ranging from 50's era Nudist mags to the really bad stuff. It's really kinda hard to avoid stumbling across it. Not that I've tried, but it doesn't look like it would that long to amass a large collection of images and stories without any expense.

Go after the producers. Shut 'em down, jail 'em and throw away the keys. Shut down the purveyors. Make damn sure you rescue that child. But prosecuting a guy for sitting alone at home and downloading a scan from a 60's porn mag doesn't help one child. It's an easy cop, of course. No real police work involved. And no children saved.

The article does report that several school teacher were caught with photos and videos. They were producers. Put them away. Although in the USA, child rape by a teacher only gets you seven years, and that's with very bad behavior. How, then, do you justify stronger penalties for just looking at a picture?

A major problem is that governments don't make subtle distinctions. Photographers Sally Mann, Ann Geddes, and Jockes Sturges have had images seized. The images in question are of nude children, but aren't the least bit sexual (well... except to some neo-puritans with overactive imaginations). Maybe bad art, but should bad art be illegal?

Under the Meese Commission's definition of child porn, the Coppertone Girl would be illegal, as well as the movie in which a 17 year old Tom Cruise dances in his underwear. And, of course, a photo of your kid in the bathtub is worth 20 years! (Think I'm kidding? Try it yourself. Take the film to the local Wal-mart. They'll turn you over to the police asap. Company policy.)

Reminds me... I need to scrub my hard drive. Mom emailed a shot of my niece in the tub. Nasty little brat. But I've got to destroy the evidence.

"In a country of just under 20 million, 500 people is an obscene proportion of the population to be involved in this most heinous of crimes."

I'd rephrase that.

In a country of just under 20 million, 1 person is an obscene proportion of the population to be involved in this most heinous of crimes

(I think we broke 20m a few months back)

I've seen pictures from Japanese Anime and Japanese Comics that show (drawings of) preteens doing the most disgusting things. Legal in Japan, probably illegal here.

If they are only drawing or looking at pictures, and not hurting real children, what is the justification for locking them up?