This article (click below) on John Grisham’s view about people who watch child porn, that not all of them are pedophiles, is controversial, to say the least. That’s the headline of the article and I, initially, chose not to read it because I felt that the position/opinion was horrid and unjustifiable so why should I waste my time reading his justification?
FORBES: “MILLIONAIRE AUTHOR JOHN GRISHAM SAYS NOT ALL MEN WHO WATCH CHILD PORN ARE PEDOPHILES”
A lot of people told me (on Twitter) that I was jumping to conclusions, that the headline was misleading and that I should read it so I did and here’s my response:
I – just my humble opinion – disagree with what JohnGrisham is saying here.
For a start, what the heck is this:
“We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who’ve never harmed anybody, would never touch a child,”
what has being white or otherwise got to do with it??!! Seems that he’s saying that it’s outrageous the a ‘white man’ should be in prison/jail for such crimes, that a black person, ok, they do this sort of thing, but a white man?%$#@!
Now, moving on….
“But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn.”
I’ve been drunk and, simultaneously, been on the internet but I can assure you that I have never “pushed the wrong buttons, (gone) too far and got into child porn”!!
I appreciate that some sites may have girls on them who are under 18, that that important detail is not always highlighted and that, in those cases, it’s possible to venture into an inappropriate site but I’d be surprised if sites featuring children, 12 yrs old, a bit older and a lot younger, do not ‘advertise’ the fact: “pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn” – nope, I don’t buy that! If you are there, I believe that you intended to go there!
Forbes, quoting Grisham: ‘”There’s so many ‘sex offenders’ – that’s what they’re called – that they put them in the same prison. Like they’re a bunch of perverts…We’ve gone nuts with this incarceration,” he added, citing an anecdote of a law-school pal who he says accidentally viewed porn that was apparently incorrectly labelled as child porn.’
Mr. Grisham, if someone looks at child porn on the internet, or anywhere for that matter, he/she is a pervert!
As for Grisham’s ‘pal’ who he says “accidentally viewed porn that was apparently incorrectly labelled as child porn”, what’s he saying, that there was no child porn on the site which was labeled as child porn, that he saw the label and deliberately went to the site but that he shouldn’t be in jail because there wasn’t any child porn on it? If it was labelled ‘child porn’, what the heck did he go there for???!!! Should he be in jail/prison on the basis of intention? Maybe…
On the one hand, it can be argued – or I guess it is argued – that viewing child porn is not ‘as bad’ as physically and sexually engaging sexually with children. I’m not so sure about that because one has to consider what crime and outrage occurred to produce the videos:
WATCHING CHILD PORN MAKES THE VIEWER COMPLICIT IN THE ACTIONS OF THE CREEPS WHO MAKE THE VIDEOS – which makes the following paragraph justifiable:
Forbes: “According to a 2012 report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, in the last decade average sentences for those who possess but do not produce child pornography have nearly doubled in the US, from 54 months in 2004 to 95 months in 2010”,
and as for this stat,
Forbes: “Commission data also shows that virtually all offenders (96.3%) possess images of minors who were prepubescent or under 12 years of age”,
as I ‘said’ above, I don’t think one accidently ventures onto sites featuring such young children and that stat highlights the depths of depravity to which viewers of child pornography do venture.
Next:
Forbes: “The U.S. has the world’s largest prison population, with about 2.2 million adults behind bars. Close to a quarter of the world’s prisoners are held within American prisons; the U.S. accounts for just 5% of the world’s population”:
That statistic doesn’t, on the face of it, have anything to do with the subject of child pornography – my guess is that it has a lot to do with the disadvantages of growing up as a black kid/man in the United States but that is not the issue here.
Grisham does say this:
“Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure, or who in any way participates in child pornography—online or otherwise—should be punished to the fullest extent of the law”
so, on that point, he is clear – good! – but as for the rest of what he has said, he either doesn’t understand it as I, again I say in my humble opinion, understand it or he does and his opinion is chilling.
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