Posted on 09/23/2009 5:55:17 AM PDT by big black dog
You go on vacation to San Diego and take more than 100 photos of your three daughters, ages 5, 4 and 18 months. You also take seven or eight shots of your girls playing together at bathtime. Then you return home to Peoria, Ariz., bring your memory stick into Walmart for processing, and lose custody of your children because an employee finds the photos, decides they are pornographic, and alerts the police.
That is what happened to Lisa and Anthony Demaree last year. Accused of sexual abuse, they were not allow to see their girls for several days, and did not regain custody for a month while the state conducted an investigation, their lawyer told Arizona Republic reporter Dustin Gardiner.
(Excerpt) Read more at parenting.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Self ping. This will probably be a hilarious thread.
crazy government officials
I have pictures of three 20 year old coeds in a tub, is that pornographic?
This case isn’t funny one bit. It’s terrifying!
Guess they’d better lock me up. I have bath photos of all of my kids...you know, soapy hair formed into fish fins, snorkling gear on, etc.
Yeesh! It USED to be called ‘good, clean FUN!’
Be afraid, very afraid.
If fact, it us Liberals who are killjoy puritans. No smoking, no meat, careful with the kiddie pictures (they could be porn!), etc. etc. The Liberals really want every one kept under strict control, with minimal fun (other than sex). It's the Conservatives who enjoy life and just try to live it without too many worries.
i hope so
The problem is that these are they types of photos the pedophiles live for... and the folks at WalMart, or Rite Aid, or wherever have been told to watch out for such pictures, and to alert someone to be on the safe side for those kids’ sake. Err on the side of caution...
Possibly. But here's the next question, are the parents keeping their eyes open when they change the diapers?
Parents who are simply in possession of photos of their own naked toddlers (no weird photos, just naked) aren't exactly what the law had in mind (we hope). A naked photo of a three year old in a family photo album and the same photo being sold on the street are completely different issues.
It's been written that the ultimate goal of big government is to make everyone a criminal, so they lose their rights. Why go after real criminals when ordinary citizens are such easy targets and most trust the system, when it's the system that proves itself to be the Enemy 90% of the time.
the fact the state ordered an investigation..they can’t even investigate themselves.
My mom has adorable pics of me and my sister in the bathtub. I think every photo album in America has pics of kids in the tub!
Only to a pornographic mind.
There is a video of three kids dancing to AC DC on you tube. One of the kids wears no underwear. Maybe about 2 or three years old...you see his butt and his goods many times.
Is that porn?
It doesn’t look like it was meant to be....but is it?
Good! I hope they have the best lawyer in the country and win. Good parents should not be afraid of their state, the power of government or Walmart. Too bad whatever judgment likely won't target the actual idiots who abused government power.
“Err on the side of caution...”
Those are scary words.
The real villains are the state workers who saw the pictures and then let this go further by ordering the kids be taken. They should have had common sense prevail and ended this.
Those state workers need to be jailed and flogged. I’m serious.
Well, are you gonna share with the class ?
The fault is the person who saw pictures of kids in the bath and thought they were pornographic.
Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, Part 2, Chapter 3, Page 404
And I wouldn't sue Wal-Mart, just the state. The state slandered and defamed them with those comments to the neighbors. And Wal-Mart may have been on the hook legally if the kids were later found to have been abused, knew about it and did nothing when they saw these pics.
[The gubmint (all levels) has gone after people for less.]
What this proves is "due process of law" is dead in this country. These people were punished without a trial. How unconstitutional is that.
I haven’t seen the photos, but I heard on the news that the photos that caused the most trouble visibly showed the girls’ genitals. I would find that troubling.
I have taken photos of my son in the bath, but I was careful to make sure his penis did not show up in the image. Even with that, I cropped the photos that I printed so that you couldn’t even see his bare hips.
Bare bottoms seem to be okay—I’ve seen photos of babies on rugs with bare bottoms for decades.
Those of you who have photos of your children or yourselves as children in the bath—do those photos include visible genitalia?
And God only knows what abuse happened to the children while they were in state custody.
We KNOW of course they suffered the abuse of being kidnapped from their parents, which will probably traumatize them for life.
Another case where we cause possibly irreparable harm to children in the guise of government salvation.
BTW, it’s not Walmart’s fault, despite the article claiming “because an employee finds the photos, decides they are pornographic, and alerts the police.”
The problem isn’t alerting police, we should all feel like it is OK to alert police if we think someone is being abused.
The problem is that the police and the government failed to react appropriately, because of the false belief that taking children from their parents is a non-abusive act, which therefore is deemed the best way to “freeze the harm” while they investigate.
Once we convince the legislators that taking the kids away is harmful, we can get the laws changed to favor leaving kids with their parents during investigations, unless there is clear signs of abuse.
In this case, even if you presumed the pictures were pornography, there was no evidence the children were being forced to do anything that wasn’t natural, and you could do the investigation without taking the kids from the parents.
The pics in the Walmart case were tame enough to be shown on the newscast. No one in their right mind would consider them pornographic. The idiots who took the kids out of the home should be fired.
I am guilty of the same thing too.
Nudism and naturalist web sites are full of pictures, free to the public, of naked kids.
So here’s a question. The kids go off to some social worker, maybe to a foster home, maybe a group home.
They need to take a bath at some point. Some adult who isn’t their parent has to give them baths, which means both seeing them naked, and touching them.
Isn’t that a lot more harmful than pictures taken by a parent?
Imagine though if they did nothing, and 6 months later the police were busting a child porn ring, and said the pictures were all being developed at the local Walmart.
I think we have pretty much made it so that Walmart had no choice but to tell authorities. We expect the authorities to act in a sensible manner.
Much like we force doctors to report any signs of injury to children, if it might in any way be abuse. We think the government can be trusted to handle the information appropriately, but mostly they just take kids away to prove they are “doing something”.
There was also a video on youtube...I believe there was a link to it on a FR thread...of some young black girl (about age 6) dancing to some funkie beat, the real “get down-n-dirty” type of girating ALL OVER THE PLACE. Frankly it’s disgusting...definitely leaning to the porno side. But hey! In America...that’s okay...just some kid “expressing” herself...by the way, while other teens and (supposed) young adults looked on and cheered. Anyway...just felt the need to add my 2-cents worth.
heh. nice!
Of course, the state workers are protected by law.
And in fact, they will suffer nothing. Whereas, if they ever just once decided to err on the side of some parents, and it turned out the parents were abusing kids, they would get fired and the state would get attacked by the news media.
We need to make sure the state feels just as much heat when they abuse kids by taking them away from their parents. Unfortunately, too often the people we need to get most upset actually approve of the kidnapping of children, “for the good of the children”.
IMO, anyone who looks at these photos and sees them as pornographic has a dirty mind and should be investigated as a potential pervert himself.
Another example of this country putting the few above the many. 99.9% of normal people can’t enjoy a family photo because of the .1% degenerates who would seek to make something filthy out of something precious.
were you a minor at the time/ lol
No, this was three white kids..two of them boys..can’t remember the other..I think it was three kids.
the boy had on a long shirt..but he was dancing and jumping around innocently enough.
It was an innnocent video taken probably by a parent who thought what his kids were doing was cute...but one comment said..that boy has on no diaper or underwear.
I was kind of shocked that youtube allowed it but probably no one complained. I found it while looking for that skinny kid who dances to AcDc...why parents put up stuff like that is amazing to me..that skinny kid looked like a dork..and will probably get teased about it.
What a nation of mental cases. Half the population sends their
children off to day care where they have their diapers changed by total strangers. And yet these photos cause this kind of
outrage by the nanny state!
okay here is the video..not as bad as I remembered..mostly you just see his butt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlUkHElU848
What makes you think liberal sex is fun? As far as I can tell, it's filled with discussions about power and consent and lots of paperwork. Feminists hate porn and environmentalists think you're having too many kids. Condoms are always necessary, even if you've been married for 5 billion years and rigorously faithful.
Guess they better lock me up. I’ve got nudie shots of all four of my boys. That’s what I threaten with. Tell them when they get engaged, the photos of them come out for the new fiancee to see.
But seriously, little kids like to run around starkers. And its the only chance they’ll have in life to do so. Why does everything have to be turned into perverted sex.
(BTW, I teach computer crime classes, so I know all about pedophiles & child porn. Personal family photo ain’t kiddie porn)
The parents could have avoided all of this if they printed out the photos themselves, at home, on their home computer / printer. That’s one way to avoid the nanny state fascists.
Let’s all make a mental note to ourselves.....
I think I see where your problem is.
FWIW - Per United States Code - the definition of child porn
(From Cornell Law on line, one I use for my classes, http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00002256——000-.html)
Title 18
§ 2256. Definitions for chapter
For the purposes of this chapter, the term—
(1) “minor” means any person under the age of eighteen years;
(2)
(A) Except as provided in subparagraph
(B), “sexually explicit conduct” means actual or simulated—
(i) sexual intercourse, including genital-genital, oral-genital, anal-genital, or oral-anal, whether between persons of the same or opposite sex;
(ii) bestiality;
(iii) masturbation;
(iv) sadistic or masochistic abuse; or
(v) lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person;
(v) lascivious exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of any person;
of the code.
And yet Republicans get the reputation for being stodgy. I think we have all the fun.
Just don’t take the memory stick to WalMart.
Then, there’s this:
With Child Sex Sites on the Run, Nearly Nude Photos Hit the Web - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/business/20model.html
By covering the child’s genitalia with just a bit of cloth, some parents are making money by showing web cam shots of their kids bathing to subscribers. Yet THIS is legal!!
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