I sometimes wonder if the child pornography thing that is always being discussed by the media isn’t a hoax to attack freedom of speech and create massive new spying powers. It seems like it would be easy enough to shut down these websites if they wanted to, and we keep finding that the FBI is running them as honeypots.
It’s not clear if any of them are not honeypots.
Then you have the fact that when people do get caught with them, nothing much happens to them.
A paedophile Labour councillor who worked in a children’s home has walked free despite being caught with over one million child porn images – including of 12-year-old girls being raped.
Roger Spackman, 50, who was a Labour councillor on Exeter City Council until his arrest in 2017, worked at a secure children’s home at the time he started collecting the enormous hoard of images.
Exeter Crown Court heard that he was part of an underground internet network called The Other Place.
A police investigation in 2017 charged the two front runners with offences and other members were exposed.
But Judge Peter Johnson jailed Spackman for ten months, suspended for two years, with 40 days rehab for possessing a ‘huge number of images’.
Spackman, of Exeter, Devon, was arrested and 68 electronic devices were found at his home and examined.
Judge Johnson said it was ‘an astonishing number’ of images which included the most serious category A images and others of category B and C.
The judge said he was of good character working hard in public service as a councillor in Exeter before his ‘fall from grace which has been dramatic’.
He said Spackman had been abused as a child and played the role of an abused child in this forum.
Many of the images were inaccessible but the offences dated back to 2008 – seven years after he began working at the secure children’s home.
The court heard the most graphic images showed young girls aged 12 being raped.
Spackman’s barrister Barry White said: ‘He likes to pretend he is a young girl who will be abused. He will pretend to be a young girl.’
Mr White stressed: ‘None of the images are of people who he knows. He has never sexually assaulted any children nor would he do so.
‘The images were sent to him by the other party in the fantasy which were indicative of what that person liked. He did not get to choose what images but he accepted them all.’
Prosecutor Thomas Faulkner said some of the worst images were found on two devices found in his bedroom.
He said: ‘Those images depicted pre-pubescent girls forced to take part in sexual activity.’
…
Spackman admitted between October 2007 and July 2017 possessing still and moving images of categories A, B and C as well as possessing a prohibited image and possessing 48 extreme pornographic images involving an animal.
This is a damning indictment of a lot of different people and concepts, not the least of which being the judge and the courts that would let someone walk after engaging in this.
More than that, however, it is an indictment of the hoaxers who say that the whole internet needs to be shut down and censored in the name of fighting the child porn spook. By not sending this guy to prison for a serious amount of time, the court sends the message to everyone trafficking in child porn that they really don’t have very much to worry about if they get caught. Sure, it will be embarrassing for them, but they won’t really be punished.
Treating a perpetrator so lightly absolutely encourages people to get involved in child pornography, and more people being involved in it gives the government more reason to engage in mass privacy violation and censorship in order to fight this spook.
Basically, there is so much porn in our society that people have to keep looking for more and more extreme forms of porn to satisfy their porn urges, just like a drug addict needing higher doses. It is a known fact that people who use too much porn develop the inability to get an erection during real sex because they are so twisted from the porno. So, in a porno society, there is always going to be a demand for child porn, for people who need something more extreme. If you wanted to wipe it out, you would shut down the sites and you would punish people who got caught severely.
By making child porn widely available (FBI runs the websites) and then not punishing people with any kind of severity when they are caught with it, the government shows that it wants to get people involved in this activity. The more people who are involved in it, the more they are able to claim it is a huge problem, and the more they are able to exercise powers in the name of stopping it.