Jon Benet Ramsey in Daisy Dukes

In the nearly ten years since Jon Benet Ramsey’s death, I’ve spent little time pondering the identity of that little girl’s murderer. I’ve known the answer to that question for years. And so have you. But one time several years ago - during the height of the media coverage of the case - I did hear one interesting assertion about the parents of Jon Benet Ramsey; namely, that there was absolutely no evidence they had ever sexually abused their little girl.

When I heard the assertion that there was “absolutely no evidence” of sexual abuse of Jon Benet Ramsey, I immediately recalled a picture of the little girl when she was around the age of four. She was wearing a brightly colored strapless dress that matched her brightly colored lipstick. Her makeup was as heavy as that of any hooker or drag queen in San Francisco.

This begs a fundamental question: Are we sexually abusing our little girls when we dress them up to look like prostitutes? Of course, I would submit that we are.

Fortunately, when the Ramsey case broke it was very unusual to see a couple dressing a small child like a hooker. Unfortunately, today it is commonplace. An episode I witnessed the other day illustrates just how little parents seem to think before allowing their little girls to dress and carry themselves in an entirely-too-adult fashion.

On my daily jog though my neighborhood I ran by the house of a man I know fairly well. His garage door was open and music was blaring out of a jam box inside - in fact, the music was so loud it was barely recognizable. But I could tell the song was “These boots are made for walking,” which was popularized by Nancy Sinatra in the 1960s. His two grandchildren were dancing in the driveway to the recent remake of the tune, sung by Jessica Simpson.

As my neighbor’s two grandchildren were standing in the driveway - while gyrating their hips like a couple of prostitutes - I noticed they were both wearing cutoff “Daisy Duke” style short and halter tops. The oldest girl looked like she was wearing mascara. She is 11 years old, by the way. Her younger sister is nine.

There is obviously something very wrong psychologically with the parent who actually dresses a four year old girl like a prostitute. There is also something wrong with the parent who allows a nine or even an eleven year old girl to dress herself like one – not to mention carry herself like one, too. It is not cute. It is simply crude and indecent.

But there is more to the equation than bad taste, here. In today’s world, people who do not make sure their little girls are dressed like little girls are exposing them to extreme danger.

Shortly after I finished my afternoon jog, I went to one of the numerous websites (http://www.mapsexoffenders.com/) that can be used to locate registered sex offenders. I wanted to know how far those two little girls – the ones dancing like hookers - were from the nearest convicted pedophile. The answer: about 500 yards.

Parents of small children (especially little girls) need to do the following things after finishing this short but important column:

Log on to the internet and find the nearest registered sex offenders in your neighborhood.

Make sure you voice your complaints to local retailers who sell sexually provocative clothes marketed for little girls.

Make a note of the names of the companies that manufacture inappropriate clothing for children next time you see these products. Write them and tell them exactly why you will never, ever buy their products.

Tune in occasionally to The O’Reilly Factor to keep track of Bill’s segments on Jessica’s law – a measure designed to impose mandatory 25-year sentences on first-time child molesters.

Make sure that your lawmakers know you will not support them unless they support Jessica’s Law. In other words, impose a simple ideological litmus test on all of your representatives.

I hope all of my readers will give serious consideration to the advice I have proffered today. Even if you reject some of my specific points, keep my general thesis in mind. Our little girls will be women far sooner than we would like. For the time being we should just let them be little girls.

Speaking of cheerleaders, here's a related thread I posted back in June:

Cheerleader tapes spur demands for a strict law
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1648309/posts

The California State Sheriffs' Association is trying to plug a hole in the law books that hindered prosecution of a man who filmed Oxnard cheerleaders in Santa Barbara and then sold the videotapes on eBay.

Santa Barbara Sheriff Jim Anderson said there is no law making it a crime to sell such a video, which was edited to focus attention on body parts while the girls were kicking or doing splits.

Anderson's spokesman, Erik Raney, said the sheriff was outraged about the videos when he learned of them last month "but had his hands tied in that there were no laws on the books to prevent filming of these minors."

The videos were shot from at least two football games involving Oxnard's Rio Mesa High School, Carpinteria High School and Goleta's Dos Pueblos High School.

The shooter sat somewhere in the stands and aimed his camera on the cheerleaders, often below the skirts, said Ventura lawyer Ron Bamieh.

More than 600 copies were sold on eBay for $14 to $70 before the posting came down, and portions of the tape were shown on a television news program, albeit with the cheerleaders' faces blocked out.

The cheerleaders feel violated, said Bamieh, who represents some of them and their families.

"Some don't know if they want to participate in cheerleading anymore because they don't want to be perceived the way they were in that video," he said.

Current law has loophole

Meanwhile, Sheriff Anderson is trying to rectify the problem with the help of the State Sheriffs' Association.

Nick Warner, legislative advocate for the association, said he is researching the law and would possibly help draft a bill to criminalize the activity.

Bamieh said he believes the case could be prosecuted under the penal code as it is.

"My opinion is, enforce the laws you have," Bamieh said.

The penal code provision covering annoying or molesting a child under age 18, for instance, has been interpreted by California courts so that it could be expanded to apply to video voyeurism, according to Clay Calvert, a law and communications professor at The Pennsylvania State University, who wrote the book "Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture."

That penal code provision was used in the California Second Appellate District case of People v. Kongs, after the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department arrested a photographer in 1993 for holding ostensibly legitimate photo shoots with minors whom he got to spread their legs while he zoomed in on their clothed crotches. The court found sufficient evidence that the defendant engaged in offensive or annoying sexually motivated conduct.

Legal journals show prosecutors in other states have dealt with holes in their legislation by charging voyeurs under alternative statutes.

However, Raney said, Anderson doesn't believe the facts in the cheerleading case meet the necessary elements of the penal code covering annoying or molesting a child.

Enhancing privacy in public

Anderson's position is that California's laws are not up to par, and he contacted the Sheriffs' Association for an opinion.

At the association, Warner concluded the group could develop a bill to criminalize unauthorized taping of minors for profit and public distribution.

"We're up against deadlines for introducing bills this year so we're either going to try to find a similar bill and amend the provision into an existing bill or we will introduce a bill in January 2007," Warner said. "We're trying to do the legal research quickly. We're constrained by the legislative calendar."

Ventura County Sheriff Bob Brooks is a member of the association, but his spokesman, Ron Nelson, said Brooks will wait to see the language of any proposed legislation before deciding whether he supports it.

The association is looking at proposed changes to either the penal code or privacy laws.

Calvert said making such activity a crime would run contrary to long-standing principles of privacy law, which hold that when people are in public places they can have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

California already has a statute in place protecting people who have an expectation of privacy, such as a person in a bathroom or changing room, from video voyeurs.

If the law was changed it would give people who in the past wouldn't have been seen as having a reasonable expectation of privacy protection while in public.

"We would put California at the forefront of the law were it to pass such a statute," Calvert said.

Prosecuting voyeurism possible

Cheerleaders, he said, are out cheering at sporting events, and anyone can see them, "which is what makes this so difficult initially in prosecution."

Judging by the efforts of other states, stronger legislation will be tough to write. Statutes that are not carefully drafted can be tossed aside by the courts if they're vague or overbroad, running up against peoples' rights to freedom of expression.

"How are you going to define what constitutes a reasonable expectation of privacy on a person's body when they're in a public place?" Calvert asks. "That seems to be a difficult concept to define. A law that attempted to define that would certainly be cutting edge but would be susceptible to challenges because it could be vague."

Warner said that would be part of the challenge in crafting a statute.

"But we believe it's completely surmountable, and we can draft appropriate definitions to address this case and cases like it in the future."

The sheriffs' efforts to criminalize what's known as "upskirt voyeurism" aren't unique.

Just before Christmas 2004, President George W. Bush made upskirt voyeurism on federal property a crime when he signed into law the Video Voyeurism Prevention Act of 2004.

That law makes it clear a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy when in public if "a reasonable person would believe that a private area of the individual would not be visible to the public, regardless of whether that person is in a public or private place."

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