Journal twitter's Journal: 15 year old charged with sexual abuse of herself. 1
A teenager has been charged with sexual abuse of children, possession of child pornography and dissemination of child pornography after taking and posting pictures of herself to chat rooms. While investigation may have been justified, the continued possesion and presentation of evidence required by prosecution reeks of hypocrisy. How can they justify further abuse of the victim? How can they simultaneously hold the child criminally responsible and without adequate judgment to make such decisions?
If the US Government knows what it's doing, the whole crusade against porn is wrong to begin with. Cases like this demonstrate clearly, the goal is not to protect children:
the Crimes Against Children Research Center, funded in part by the Department of Justice, completed a study that revealed that rates of reported child sex abuse in the US have dropped by 30 percent in the past 10 years. The center's director, David Finkelhor, attributes this to effective public education, a general improvement in such child-welfare indicators as teen pregnancy and child poverty, and aggressive prosecution and treatment of those who abuse. Although he expresses concern that in certain people easy access to child porn might help develop the proclivity to abuse, or reduce the inhibitions against acting on those impulses, he says flatly, "There is no evidence that the Internet is fueling an explosion of child sexual abuse." He adds that "pornography is not one of the major causal factors" in the abuse of kids.
and the pendulum swings (Score:2)