John Grisham is Wrong About Child Pornography

If you investigate child abuse for more than 20 years, you learn a few things. One thing you learn is just when you think you’ve seen and heard it all, you haven’t.

In what can only be termed a completely insane argument, John Grisham, author of such works as The Firm, and A Time To Kill, told the Telegraph that the U.S. is imprisoning too many people for viewing child pornography. Grisham draws from personal experience. He describes an old college friend whose drinking was “out of control” and he was on the internet and found himself looking at “16 year old girls who looked 30″ and downloaded it. He was later caught up in a child pornography sting and ended up serving three years in prison.

Grisham went on to say, “He shouldn’t ’a done it. It was stupid, but it wasn’t 10-year-old boys. He didn’t touch anything.” This lack of understanding of the horrors of child pornography is appalling. The child was touched by somebody, watching it over and over again is just as vile as doing it. He’s also apparently something of a homophobe as looking at 16 year old girls isn’t as bad as 10 year old boys.

Let’s set the record straight. Child pornography is in many ways the most pernicious form of child sexual abuse.  The children are abused on film, video tape, digital recordings and photos. Those different mediums make their way to the internet for the viewing pleasure of the slavering masses.

Since the internet is forever, the child victims, if they ever get away from their abuser, have to live with the fact that their abuse lives on. I’ve been to several conferences on child pornography and the internet run by the FBI and the postal inspectors. People who were abused and filmed or photographed as children in the 1950s and 1960s still find their pictures and videos on the internet.

Another fallacy that Grisham perpetuates is the “accidental” location and download of child pornography. This is laughably false. If you Google “child porn,” “Lolita,” “16 year old sex” or any other term, you get about 5 million hits of agencies working to prevent child porn — sites that have adult actors pretending to be minors and the actual book and movie Lolita.

The point is you can only find actual child porn if you go looking for it. In every child porn case I’ve investigated, the perpetrator has used some form of “it was an accident” I didn’t know it was in my history, on my hard drive etc. Every single one of them has been a liar.

Recently local police, the feds and the Illinois Attorney General’s office is prosecuting a child pornography case in which a five year-old child was being live streamed performing sex acts with adults and objects. Hundreds of hours of video were also confiscated.  A number of men were busted for watching via the live stream and viewing other videos.

That’s just one case. I defy Grisham to say that the people “who only look” and “don’t touch or hurt,” don’t deserve justice. I defy him to tell that five year-old that the people who were watching the abuse, as it happened, only did so by accident.

The attitude that Grisham revealed in his interview is all to familiar.  Many people think as he does that “looking” is not victimization.  That it’s only the filmmakers and people literally touching the child that are the real bad guys.

Child pornography victimizes children over and over again. In the age of the internet it makes the victimization eternal.  Grisham’s lament that his buddy was wronged is short sighted and ignorant of the facts. He’s made a career on writing with legal accuracy, too bad he didn’t research the facts about child pornography before he spoke to the Telegraph.

Yes, the Kid Who Had a Threesome with 2 Teachers is a Victim.

Today news broke that two teachers in Louisiana were arrested for allegedly having a threesome with a 16 year old boy. While the local authorities seem to be taking the high road regarding the boy and the crimes committed, there have been some people who don't seem to think the child in question was a victim at all. Its a common reaction that I've seen many times before. Being common doesn't make it correct.

Writing for the Daily Banter, Chez Pazienza was one of those who doesn't think that the 16 year old should be called a victim. It's an understandable, although outmoded way of thinking, that continues to frame cases like this one. The boy said it was consensual, he was bragging to friends, "he's a god".  All familiar refrains, that really don't hold up under scrutiny.

Sex crimes, and especially crimes committed against children are not about hot sexy time with a teacher or older woman.  Sex crimes and crimes against children are about power and control. In the Louisiana teacher case, the young man may have thought he was in control and he was consenting, but this is how predators work.

It may seem harsh to label Shelley Dufresne and Rachel Respess predators, but teachers who seek out sex with students, even teen aged students are exactly that.  Using a position of trust and authority IS predatory and it is wrong.  

In 2013, Montana Judge G. Todd Baugh came under fire, and rightfully so, for saying a 14 year old girl was older than her chronological age and "as much in control" of the situation as the teacher who was convicted of raping her.  That girl later committed suicide. 

Judge Baugh's comments were seen as cruel and insensitive to the victim, and they were.  The same can be said of comments regarding the young man in the Louisiana case.  He may be convinced that he's the greatest stud that walks the earth, but the fact is he was manipulated into having sex with those teachers just as surely as the girl in Montana. 

I've written numerous times in the past about the percentages of boys who are victims of sexual assault. One in ten boys report sexual assault.  The numbers are lower than that of girls (1 in 4) because of the stigma of reporting.  The sad truth is that the stigma isn't always shame of being abused, the stigma is not realizing that you were a victim in the first place.

One case that always comes back to haunt me, involved a teacher and child.  The teacher was well respected, the child was 16 and turned 17 during the course of the case.  The teacher seduced the child and had sexual contact with the child in his hot tub. The child was struggling with his sexuality and the teacher took full advantage of that. The child was convinced that it was consensual.

Despite a confession, the teacher was not prosecuted.  The child in question later committed suicide as a young adult.

I'm not saying that the boy in Louisiana is going to commit suicide. I understand that a 16 or 17 year old boy has crazy sexual desires, hell all men do no matter what their age.  The back slapping and locker room high fiving that a lot of people are doing, however, is ill informed and childish.

It may seem awesome to a guy in his 40's who once fantasized about his teachers, in some respects I understand why so many people think this kid is awesome, hell I had crushes on teachers.  Hot for Teacher was a ANTHEM for kids my age.

Just because many men have had teacher fantasies as children doesn't make what happened in Louisiana right.  Just because the boy in Louisiana thinks the sex was consensual doesn't make him "a god", it makes him naive and horny.  Ultimately, like thousands of children a year, it makes him a victim.

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