[Junior]

When dealing with organizations (and a lot of child porn is very organized), if you start nabbing the guys in ones-and-twos, the rest go to ground and become harder to catch.

What gets me about this is the headline. This guy is no "victim." He was a purveyor.

[goldstategop]

Exactly. Someone who peddles child porn IS evil. He's no victim. That's who I had in mind in my last post. Death to Pedophilia Chic!

(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")

[beyond the sea]

What gets me about this is the headline. This guy is no "victim." He was a purveyor.

Agreed. I saw him testifying on the news last night. I'd predict this kid is always going to be a nutjob because he most likely had a screw loose before he began HIS sick venture.

[ozoneliar]

What gets me about this is the headline. This guy is no "victim." He was a purveyor.

Personally, I agree; although I'm sure many here would not.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

What gets me about this is the headline. This guy is no "victim." He was a purveyor.

What it sounds to me:

He showed himself on webcam of his own accord until he was caught. His aggressive "victim" stance now is being coerced by prosecutors in order to get more money from Congress as a condition of not be prosecuted himself, like several recent cases of underage girls being prosecuted for distributing pictures of themselves. Everybody is playing a charade. He pretends to be a victim. The law pretends that it's the worst thing that could happen and they could catch the thousands (or millions) of perverts if they only had more money. And Congress pretends to be concerned and outraged in order to get votes.

But you have a problem if you want to call the kid (for 5 of the 6 years) a perp. In order to be a perp, the kid has to have knowledge that what he was doing sexually was wrong. If you make the case that he should have had the knowledge of the right and wrong of the situation then you are arguing essentially that he had the ability in fact, if not in law, to consent. In that case you undermine the whole logic underpinning age-of-consent laws, that until 18 a child is in need of protection because they lack such knowledge.

The difficulty in prosecuting from a list of names and credit card numbers is that prosecutors need forensic evidence from the boy's computer of the particular pornographic images transfered to a subject's computer in order to have probable cause to make an accusation. The list alone is not enough for indictments. And the most recent year or more of images he transmitted, after he turned 18, would not be illegal.