Tag Archives: Topic: Child Pornography

How Appealing quotes and links to the AP and the earlier 5th Circuit opinion: A federal appeals court in New Orleans has agreed to rehear two cases in which a victim of child pornography sought restitution from men who viewed sexually explicit photographs of her on the Internet.” | In re: Amy Unknown.

News from The Associated Press: Police arrested 112 people in 22 countries after a yearlong investigation into child pornography, Europol said Friday, warning that technology is making combating the spread of child abuse images ever more difficult.

Christian Legal Fellowship: Last Thursday, the Government of Canada initiative to require mandatory reporting of internet child pornography by internet service providers came into force. Bill C-22 was an EFC-supported measure which received Royal Assent in March. Today, as a result, suppliers of internet services, electronic mail services and social networking sites operating in Canada are required to report any tips or concerns about the presence of child pornography on their service to the Canadian Centre for Child Protection.

News from The Associated Press: Only 1 percent of kids aged 10 to 17 have shared images of themselves or others that involve explicit nudity, a nationally representative study found

CBC News: Police are warning dozens of Nova Scotia teenagers that sharing nude photos of themselves could lead to criminal charges.

Federal courts have disagreed about how to enforce a law that requires people convicted of possessing child pornography to pay restitution to the victim, even if they didn’t know the victim. But the Supreme Court refused to take up the case Monday.

Carson Holloway at Public Discourse: The Supreme Court has helped to foster a culture that encourages the sexual exploitation of children.

Europa: Child abusers and viewers of child sex images on the web will face tough penalties in the EU, under new rules approved by Parliament on Thursday. The directive will also require EU countries to remove child porn web sites, or, should this prove impossible, allow them to block access to those pages within their territory. Studies suggest that between 10% and 20% of minors in Europe may be sexually assaulted during childhood.

News from The Associated Press: A Swedish court on Tuesday convicted 23 women and one man of child pornography offenses in what investigators called a unique case because of the number of female perpetrators.

KRMG.com: State lawmakers are looking into the possibility that the punishment for a crime may be too harsh.
A state prosecutor says sexting’ among teens is on the rise.

KMBC Kansas City: The complaint specifically alleges that Ratigan, while an employee of the diocese, created child porn involving the plaintiff in the case and many others. When the diocese became aware of Ratigan’s photographs, the diocese and Finn failed to report Ratigan to the police. Instead, they “aided and abetted” Ratigan over a six-month period by covering up his conduct, duplicating and distributing the images he created and collaborating to destroy evidence, the suit alleges.

Monsters and Critics: Proceedings opened Tuesday in a Swedish district court on charges against a man and 23 women over possession and distribution of child pornography.

Sentencing Law and Policy:: The Second Circuit has today issued an important new opinion in the on-going saga concerning whether and how the kids victimized by being featured in illegal child pornography can secure restitution awards from defendants who downloaded these pictures via the internet. The panel opinion in US v. Aumais, No. 10-3160 (2d Cir. Sept. 8, 2011) (available here), gets started this way . . .

Toledo Blade: How long can a computer hard drive be left behind before it is considered abandoned and subject to search by police without a warrant? That was the question before the Ohio Supreme Court Wednesday as it weighed the child rape, child pornography, and other convictions of Dennis Gould, 47 . . . | Hat tip: How Appealing for providing a link to the documents, summary of the case, and video of the arguments.

Patrick A. Trueman at Public Discourse: Ending child pornography is as much a matter of vigorously prosecuting those who distribute adult pornography as it is a matter of prosecuting child pornographers. Presidential candidates should pledge to initiate adult pornography criminal cases and fund research into the adult-child pornography link.

LifeSiteNews.com: Dr. Judith Reisman, a researcher on pedophilia and an expert on the insidious effects of pornography, told LSN that she is unsurprised that such a young man would be involved in child pornography. “Our government leaders allow pornography to pollute our once great nations and act surprised that we are breeding inhuman men, women and children unlike any that have existed before,” she said.

AP: Dutch police say they have uncovered huge caches of child pornography on “hidden” websites, including four based in the United States.

The Christian Institute: The parents of a teenage girl are suing a prominent clothing store in America for selling t-shirts showing a sexually suggestive picture of their daughter. It is the latest development in a series of controversies surrounding the sexualisation and commercialisation of childhood.

OneNewsNow.com: Residents of Asheville, North Carolina, are upset about a recent public topless event that is apparently legal. So a movement has been initiated to prevent it from happening again in the future.

Boston.com: The Massachusetts Appeals Court has ruled the Sex Offender Registry Board can’t require an individual to register as a “Level 2″ sex offender based solely on a conviction of possessing child pornography.

72 charged in online child porn ring – CBS News: Seventy-two people have been charged–of which 52 were arrested–in an worldwide online child pornography enterprise, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

Pole Dancing Class For 7-Year-Olds Slammed: Family campaigners have blasted a British fitness group for teaching pole dancing to girls aged seven — and putting pictures of them on the internet. The photos show youngsters upside down on poles dressed in shorts, crop tops and vests.

LifeSiteNews.com: America’s top pornography opponent is sponsoring a series of webcast events focusing on how pornography harms one of its most forgotten victims: children. Morality in Media’s (MIM) four-week “Be Aware: Porn Harms” National Awareness Campaign enters its second week on July 18th.

CNET News: Law enforcement representatives are planning to endorse a proposed federal law that would require Internet service providers to store logs about their customers for 18 months, CNET has learned.

The Blog of Legal Times: An assistant U.S. attorney spent time daily viewing pornography while on the job, and the prosecutor’s computer contained at least one image of child pornography, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said today, citing information from the U.S. Justice Department’s inspector general.

federal judge has blocked a state law meant to prevent the spread of child pornography, saying it violates the First Amendment and is too broad in its scope.

A Milpitas man who used a computer to paste photos of his 13-year-old daughter’s head onto bodies of women in graphic poses shouldn’t have been convicted of possessing child pornography because the pictures didn’t show minors engaging in sex acts, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday.

WSJ.com: New York state lawmakers are advancing a bill that would create an “educational reform program” for teenagers who get in trouble for creating and sharing pornographic images of minors.

PC World: The “Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011″ aims to amend Section 2703 of title 18 of the United States Code to make it compulsory for the provider of an electronic communication service keep IP address records for at least 18 months.

AP: Twenty-three women and a 43-year-old man were charged Friday with child pornography offenses in what investigators say is a unique case because of the number of female suspects.

KOB.com: The sexting case against Jacob Lawler has many parents worried. Fifth grade elementary school teacher Jacob Lawler’s ‘sexting’ case has caused a lot of parents to worry about their children and who they might be communicating with over their cell phones.

WPIX.com: Some local middle schoolers could face child pornography charges Thursday for texting sexually graphic images of themselves.

Christian Institute: The findings are based on research conducted by Dr Tim Jones, senior lecturer in Cognitive Psychology at Worcester University and top criminologist Professor David Wilson from Birmingham City University.

Hessick, Carissa Byrne, Disentangling Child Pornography from Child Sex Abuse (March 24, 2010). Washington University Law Review, Vol. 88, 2010. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1577961

Claudio J. Pavia, Constitutional Protection Of “Sexting” In The Wake Of Lawrence: The Rights Of Parents And Privacy, 16 Va. J.L. & Tech. 189 (2011)

Catholic Culture: The Holy See Press Office has issued a statement in response to the trial of Bishop Raymond Lahey. The Canadian bishop pled guilty to possession of child pornography and faces a sentence of at least one year in prison.

AP: A Canadian Roman Catholic bishop has pleaded guilty to importing child pornography . . . Police say they found hundreds of files and dozens of videos, many of them showing young males engaged in sexual acts.

Oregonian: In response to a Oregon Supreme Court ruling this year, the Oregon Senate voted today to make it a crime to view child pornography online for free. | Oregon v. Barger, No. CA A138678 (Ore. Jan 6, 2011) | Senate Bill 803

This appeal presents issues related to the amount of restitution that a district court may order a defendant convicted of possessing child pornography to pay to one of the children depicted in the images . . .

The appeals court said Kessler must “order restitution equal to the amount of harm the government proves the defendant caused the victim.”

Miami Herald: The lawsuit said school officials knew Hope was the victim of “extraordinary ridicule and harassment” because of the “sexting” incident in the fall of 2009 at Beth Shields Middle School.

Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the jury verdict, we conclude that the Government offered sufficient evidence such that a reasonable jury could (and did) find that Johnson attempted to use the minors to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of that conduct.

In less than 24 hours, the effect was as if Margarite, 14, had sauntered naked down the hallways of the four middle schools in this racially and economically diverse suburb of the state capital, Olympia. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of students had received her photo and forwarded it.

NY Times: In the last two years, legislators have been weighing graduated responses to sexting between minors. Some legal scholars refer to the images as “self-produced child pornography.”

Toronto Star: Police say they have arrested four people and seized millions of child sexual abuse images in New Brunswick as part of a targeted effort to reduce child pornography and the exploitation of children via the Internet.

AP: “Bosnian police say they have seized some 2 million child pornography pictures and 7,000 video clips in the arrest of an alleged member of an international online child pornography ring.”

Jennifer Rothman, Getting What They Are Owed: Restitution Fees for Victims of Child Pornography, 17 Cardozo J.L. & Gender 333 (2011)

In a decision released Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found that the video discovered on Alan Ray Steen’s camera was not sexually explicit and didn’t rise to the federal legal definitions that would have made the video warrant the charge.”

Torrent Freak: “The US Government has yet again shuttered several domain names this week. The Department of Justice and Homeland Security’s ICE office proudly announced that they had seized domains related to counterfeit goods and child pornography. What they failed to mention, however, is that one of the targeted domains belongs to a free DNS provider, and that 84,000 websites were wrongfully accused of links to child pornography crimes.”

One News Now: “Phil Burress, president of Citizens for Community Values (CCV), says child pornography and sexual abuse of children has escalated in the last 20 to 25 years. However, the federal government and the Justice Department have refused to crack down on hardcore pornography, he argues.”

Rebecca Hagelin writes at Townhall:  ”To appear nude on TV, for starters. Danny’s mother had a few qualms, apparently, about her son starring in a teen drama rife with explicit sexual scenes, drug abuse and alcohol. But, Danny assured her, it’s just a “job,” and besides, he’s “superstoked” about it. After all, he and his co-stars (some as young as 15) get to inhabit a teen world full of sexual duos and trios, gays and straights, “pill-poppers” and “nymphomaniacs,” with no moral repercussions—or even capable parents—in sight. Sounds like child exploitation to me.”

KDLT.com: “The Legislature will take up a bill that defines juvenile “sexting” and lists possible punishment for violators who electronically transmit sexually explicit or nude photos of themselves or others.”

AP: “A federal appeals court has ruled that two underage girls can keep their names under wraps in their lawsuit against “Girls Gone Wild” producer Joe Francis.” | Plaintiff B v. Francis, No. 10-10664 (11th Cir. Feb. 1, 2011)

The Local: “Sweden’s National Library has sought guidance from the government after determining that a portion of its magazine collection features child pornography.”

Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski writing in The American Spectator: “The child porn allegations made against MTV for its “Skins” show must be investigated by the Obama Justice Department. Child Pornography is not protected by the First Amendment, and producing child porn is a crime. Whether these allegations are true or not, even allegations of it are something most responsible businesses don’t want to be associated with, and they’re chasing advertisers away from this latest attempt to redefine what’s allowed on television.”

Boston.com (AP): “New Jersey teenagers caught texting or posting sexually explicit photos online could avoid prosecution under a measure that would give first-time offenders the chance to complete a diversionary program.”

Brent Bozell writing at Townhall: “Now those secular progressives at MTV have opened a new front. They feel one should enjoy a childhood stuffed with sex, drugs and alcoholism. That would be the message of their new teen drama ‘Skins.’ ”

Parents Television Council: “The Parents Television Council today called on the chairmen of the U.S. Senate and House Judiciary Committees and the Department of Justice to immediately open an investigation regarding child pornography and exploitation on MTV’s ‘Skins.’”

Hollywood Reporter: “Taco Bell has pulled its ads off Skins after the Parents Television Council urged people to contact the company to protest.”

New York Times: “In recent days, executives at the cable channel became concerned that some scenes from the provocative new show ‘Skins’ may violate federal child pornography statutes . . . for ‘Skins,’ the producers purposefully cast actors ages 15 to 19, most of whom had never acted before . . . With ads that feature groups of barely clothed teenagers, ‘Skins’ is surely one of the most sexually charged programs that MTV has featured.”

Doe v. Boland, No. 09-4281 (6th Cir. Jan. 19, 2011)

“Dean Boland downloaded images of children from a stock photo website, digitally ‘morphed’ them into pornography, then used the images to help his clients resist child pornography charges in federal and state courts . . . the parents of the depicted children found out about the exhibits, prompting them to sue Boland under the civil remedy provisions of the federal child pornography statute.”

Daily Iowan: “University of Iowa third-year law student Elizabeth Ryan is trying to prevent the life-altering destruction sexting can have on the lives of teens and young adults. Ryan hopes her article . . . will bring attention to an issue she said has become more prevalent as technology continues to develop. Her article suggests that states may benefit from creating new laws against sexting instead of relying on old laws regarding obscenity or pornography, which often come with harsh punishments.”

University of Gothenburg: “A national Swedish evaluation study has highlighted the need for a chain of interventions to offer children who have experienced violence against their mother the right level of support to work through their experiences. There is also frequently a lack of structured risk assessments for identifying children who are at continued risk of exposure to violence, reveal researchers from the universities of Gothenburg, Karlstad, Uppsala and Örebro.”

Grier Weeks writing at The Daily Caller: “A 2006 law that requires the U.S. Justice Department to deploy a high-tech system for catching child pornographers has identified hundreds of thousands of criminal suspects — and collected extensive evidence pointing to the locations of their child victims. Yet, despite knowledge of this evidence, Attorney General Eric Holder has refused calls to take serious action. Now, a Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee, and a government oversight panel on the warpath, could finally force Holder to explain two years of inaction that left thousands of children in danger.”

Associated Press: “The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a man who was convicted of child pornography charges based on the nude pictures he kept from his mid-1970s affair with his teenage sister-in-law.”

In the “Miscellaneous” section of today’s ADF Alliance Alert, we have covered numerous child pornography prosecutions around the country. All or nearly all of the reports are from today or yesterday. This is just a small sample of available media reports that evidence an overwhelming epidemic affecting every area of the country and all ages. The sample doesn’t begin to address other kinds of pornography which are degrading cultures around the world. It would overwhelm us to attempt to provide comprehensive coverage of these things on a daily basis.

CNSNews: “‘This is a child pornography case that does not involve a child,’ Peel’s lawyers told the court in their brief. They are claiming violations of the First Amendment and of the Constitution’s bar against ex post facto convictions for violating laws that were not in place when an alleged crime occurred.”

United States v. Peel, No. 07-3933 (7th Cir. Feb. 12, 2010)

WLTZ: “A LaGrange man is behind bars after police found out he was distributing child pornography.”

Gazette Extra: “Richard A. Granzow, 43, was sentenced in Rock County Court on five felony charges of possession of child pornography.”

Rapid City Journal: “Police have issued a felony arrest warrant for Jacob Lavern Whiting, 21, charging him with possession, manufacturing and distributing child pornography.”

KWTX: “Timothy Allen Gerholdt of Cedar Falls Iowa pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. District Court in Waco to distribution of child pornography charges stemming from an online undercover sting in 2010.”

MMD Newswire: “A Corpus Christi man has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for possessing child pornography announced United States Attorney José Angel Moreno on Wednesday. The investigation was conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).”

Democrat and Chronicle: “Stephen M. Smith of Elm Street, Le Roy, was charged Tuesday with possessing a sexual performance by a child, promoting a sexual performance by a child, and use of a child in a sexual performance, all felonies, said Le Roy Police Detective John Condidorio.”

Pioneer Press: “The 40-year-old Texas man was charged in Minneapolis with producing pornographic images of four girls on 17 occasions over a three-year period.”

Press of Atlantic City: “Anthony Giacoppo, 35, was arrested in September after Hammonton police saw child pornography on his cell phone, Atlantic County Prosecutor Ted Housel said.”

digtriad.com: “Joseph Ptacin, 63, of Trinity, was sentenced to 48 months in prison with 20 years of supervised probation to follow.”