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Friday, December 01, 2006

Being A Creep Now a Crime

In this ironical age, people often say "bad" when they mean "good." But this report from Declan McCullagh indicates that U.S. Attorney Alice Martin has taken irony to extremes. To her, "suggestive" or "provacative" actually means "sexually explicit." She has arrested three men whose "crime" was taking photographs of minor girls that were consciously and deliberately not sexually explicit. No sexual acts. No nudity.

Here's how the operation apparently worked. The Webe Web Corp. hosts "modeling" site of girl, ostensibly to get her started and give her exposure in the modeling industry. The "wink, wink, nudge nudge" aspect is that the actual customers of the site are not modeling agents, but pedophilic* men who buy memberships to the site in order to get access to an album full of photos of the often scantily-clad girl. The girl makes good money, the photographer makes good money, and Webe Web, who hosts dozens of these sites, makes a whole lot of money.

I suppose such sites are vehicles for men who a) don't want to stalk girls at playgrounds and malls, b) want to keep it all in the realm of fantasy and don't want any actual girls molested, and/or c) use these images of clothed girls instead of actual child porn precisely because they believe it is legal and not porn.

Condemn the customers, photographers and folks at Webe Web all you want. However, the firm has been heavily scrutinized over the years and must have been careful not to do anything in violation of federal law. But that doesn't stop this federal attorney. Nothing ever seems to stop U.S. attorneys, if they have an agenda.

I fear that these three men will be placed in front of a jury, with the prosecution focused more on the ethics and morals of the men, and not on any actual crime they committed (because they didn't commit any). "They deserve to be in jail because they are creeps, and spare me the technical details about how they didn't break any laws." Alleged pedophiles are no more likely to get a fair trial in a federal court than alleged drug dealers or alleged insider traders.

Yes, these three men may be creeps, but character flaws can't be criminalized. And Congress never did pass a law shutting down these child modeling sites. So the real crime here is that a U.S. attorney is prosecuting three men she knows are innocent.

*It's probably not accurate to use "pedophilic" to mean attraction to teenage (as opposed to younger) girls, and apparently many of the Webe girls were teenagers.