My outrage meter was off the charts yesterday with something that wasn’t gun-related, but it is related to the issue of freedom and the out-of-control state.
In Northern Virginia, a teen boy’s girlfriend sent sexy pictures of herself and he sent one back. Now they want to charge the kid with felonies for child pornography and are trying to “prove” it’s him by creating their own collection of child pornography to compare it against. When the response by the prosecutor and the cops is to think, “hey, we should haul a 17-year-old boy to a hospital and give him a shot to force an erection so that we can take nudie pictures of him all hot and bothered,” it’s time they need to reconsider their choices in life.
I’d also like to point out that the fact that they aren’t bringing the same charges against the 15-year-old girlfriend appears to be a little sexist.
I’m just curious though why there isn’t someone in the life of DA Claiborne Richardson – a friend or family member – who hasn’t sat down with him and said, “Really? Really? Giving a teen boy a forced erection and taking naked pictures is how you want to be remembered for all of history? Making a kid a felon for showing his girlfriend a video of his d*** that she’s probably already seen in real life many times if she’s sending dirty pictures of herself is what you consider an effective use of the justice system? Don’t you think it’s time to reconsider your life and how out of touch you are with reality if you think this is a perfectly reasonable course of action?”
I guess Richardson just has a real hardon for crime.
Without government who will fluff the children?
From the Reason’s article on this they have already photographed his flaccid penis.
“Keep in mind that police have already taken photographs of the teen’s private parts after arresting him and holding him in juvenile jail to await charges. Good grief, how many pictures of a teenage boy’s penis does one police department need?”
http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/09/cops-want-to-give-teen-an-erection-and-p
I just want to say that Clairborne Richardson is NO kin of mine.
I guess I should be happy that my grandfather was born out of wedlock and adopted the last name of his step-father.
We had a case here in Utah a few years ago where a 13yr old boy got his 14yr old girlfriend pregnant. The DA was actually considering charging both with aggravated sexual abuse of a minor. After immense public pressure, charges were never filed. To my knowledge, the law was never changed to provide exceptions for this kind of incident.
If I ever had to face being on a sex offender registry for the rest of my life because some asshole prosecutor decided to push a non-issue like this, I would dedicate the rest of my existence to getting revenge against that prosecutor – at ALL costs.
Not for nothing, but he’s got both a linkedin page and a page at Avvo where you can leave reviews of him as a lawyer.
https://www.avvo.com/attorneys/claiborne-richardson-1829282/write_review.html
He’s not a member of the DC Bar, or I would have raised a bar complaint against him. He is a member of teh Virginia bar, but I will defer to other members of the Virginia bar as to whether this is actionable under the Rules of Professional Responsibilty there.
I’d have thought you were joking if you hadn’t included the source. WTF indeed.
We should bring back flogging and the pillory for public officials that conduct themselves this way.
This really wasn’t what the child porn laws were created for. Technically a violation, but more deserving of public humiliation than anything else.
“If you let loose a law, it will do as a dog does. It will obey its own nature, not yours. Such sense as you have put into the law (or the dog) will be fulfilled. But you will not be able to fulfill a fragment of anything you have forgotten to put into it.â€
We of all people should remember what kind of laws get created by hysteria, moral panics, and blind hate towards things and people the haters don’t understand.
The difficulty here is that the laws were passed to handle situations where adults were exploiting children, not situations where teenagers are behaving like hormone-crazed teenagers.
Then Virginia should do what Vermont proposed a few years ago and make acts between teenagers a matter to be left outside the legal system.
There’s also an element of changing technology here…possibly.
How many children had access to cameras and could develop pictures without their parent’s knowledge in the days of film?
How many children had unsupervised-by-parents access to movie-making, even in the age of camcorders-with-VHS-tapes?
I think the true change in technology today is the ease of distribution. Once upon a time cheap and disposable polaroid cameras were plentiful. But a polaroid only generates a single hard copy. Modern digital photography and the WWW allows worldwide distribution with the push of a button.
They were passed to hurt people, because constituents were howling for blood.
Who got hurt wasn’t nearly as important as how much.
Most of these laws date from the 1970s, when teenagers weren’t sexting each other.
Well said. We of all people should know how moral panics work.
THis.
Not only are the cops creating child porn, but by using it as evidence (and therefore entering it and the original sext into the public record) they are also distributing it.
There is going to be one epic civil lawsuit from this. Too bad the cops can’t be charged criminally, though.
Obviously you don’t know a lot of prosecutors. A lot of them are on a mission, more so if they have political ambitions.
The sad, disgusting and frightening part is a JUDGE approved the search warrant.
A Judge approved the warrant!
Are there no sane adults in northern VA or DC?
Judges approve warrants all the time that make you wonder on what planet they live.
Looks like they’ve backed off (at least for now).
http://hamptonroads.com/2014/07/va-police-back-plan-take-explicit-photo-teen
Only on the issue of forcibly giving him an injection to give him an erection so that they can take more photos beyond what they have already taken. They are still pursuing felony child porn charges.
If any good is to come from this monstrosity of ‘justice’, let it at least be the end of any political ambitions of the prosecutor Claiborne Richardson.
Considering what DA’s get away with, nothing seems quite so terrifying as the idea of a DA in high elective office. Eliot Spitzer, anyone? And now that Obama has stretched the Presidency completely outside the bounds of law, how about a President Christie to take advantage of that power?
Shouldn’t all the cops and their superiors as well as the prosecutor be charged with not only child pornography but contributing to the delinquency of minors, child endangerment, and anything else that applies to forcibly detaining and taking sexual images of a minor????
I don’t know if I’d call that “Northern Virginia.” More just like Virginia