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pre-series wincest = child pornography?

Man escapes jail over child-sex fantasy note
The West Australian, October 27, 2006
RYAN PEDLER

A Perth man who wrote an explicit note detailing a sexual fantasy he had about his partner’s nine-year-old grand-daughter has been convicted of possessing child pornography but avoided being jailed.

The man received a rare non-custodial sentence for the offence after State prosecutor Sean Stocks conceded jailing him was not appropriate because no children had been harmed as a result of his actions.

Chief District Court Judge Antoinette Kennedy placed the 50-yearold man, who is not named to protect the identity of the girl, on an 18-month intensive supervision order.

The man’s conviction also automatically resulted in him being placed on the sex offenders register, which means he must keep authorities informed of where he is living and report regularly for at least the next eight years.

The man was living with his de facto of 15 years when he hand-wrote a half-page note last year describing a sexual fantasy he had about her grand-daughter, who had visited and slept over at his home.

He threw the note in a bin at his home early this year and the girl’s mother discovered it by chance when she was searching through rubbish in the bin for an unrelated reason. She contacted police.

The man, who is still with his partner, admitted writing the note and told police he was disgusted with what he had written. He later pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography in the form of a story.

In sentencing submissions this week, Mr Stocks said even though the man had not shown the note to anyone, it was still an offence.

“Possession of child pornography includes possession of an article and an article includes written material,” he said.

Mr Stocks said possessing child pornography was considered an extremely serious offence because the demand for it drove people to produce it and, in the process, abuse children. But he said that principle did not apply in this case because no child had been harmed.

Defence lawyer Simon Freitag told the court he believed the girl was unaware of the note the man wrote. The man was willing to undergo counselling.

Judge Kennedy told the man that if he reoffended in the next 18 months he would be resentenced for the offence.

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That's a scary thought, really, that people can be convicted for writing, say, underage RPS slash.

Okay, so maybe this guy wasn't exactly writing fanfic, but where should people draw the line, really?

I think the line-drawing is the contentious thing here, yup. On the one hand, I feel like I want to dig into what this place is all about and cement my/our place in it, but on the other hand I'd rather just skirt around it, you know?

*eyes shelf, wot with the Lolita and On The Road (in which Dean boasts about how he 'had his first woman' at age nine)*

*eyes website full of gyrating Robins*

Well, I'm screwed. You can have my DVDs when I go to Oz.

Oh man, we are so fucked. Like, seriously.

eep!

Have you got a link to the original article? I can't find it.

it's not available online (i am using the online subscription we have at work, they have this interactive paper thing. it's crap).

I can look up the p.# if you need it, though.

S'okay, I just found it through the uni subscription.

Thanks.

some scary shit.

Wow, the paranoia over child pornography is mad. The idea of being prosecuted for the possession of any written material or for that matter image, really troubles me. The problem is that any questioning of these laws leads to the assumption that you are condoning the act of sexual assault on children.

Yep. I get and fully support laws against pornography that involves children to produce - because yeah, that is testament to child abuse, and consuming it supports its continued production. When it comes to fiction and art, things are a little shadier. In more than a few respects. I mean, people portray all kinds of awful, confronting stuff in the name of 'art' without persecution. And also, more problematically, I think - these issues of fantasy and reality, and the assumption that people are unable to tell the difference in the eyes of the law, and etc etc etc. it's all very fascinating, and very complicated, and a wee bit scary.

It is an incredibly confusing issue and where the line is drawn is not obvious. I was recently at the Goddess exhibition at the art gallery of NSW. They had little figurines of male and female gods in an embrace; I think it was Parvathi and Shiva. In Indian religious art it is common for the male god to be much larger than the female. So superficially, these figurines could be viewed as a man having sex with a young girl. I did wonder at the time if I could be prosecuted for owning one.

The law is obviously in place to persecute percieved potential child molestors, not to persecute everyone who writes erotic underage fiction. You can see the difference, surely?

Doesn't mean I think it's a good or just law. But I do think the paranoia is misplaced.

oh yeah, i see the difference. I'm all for preventing child molestation, hell! I posted that less because of that individual guy and his 'case' or whatever, and more just to... prod at that boundary. Or that grey 'thought police' area, and where we sit in it. and where RPSers sit in it. and where people just having plain old fantasies fit in it, and what happens when they write it down, and how the law here doesn't take into account the huge blurry morass of it.

I remember Australian HP fans, particularly, being concerned about potential fallout when that law went into effect a couple of years ago.

It is, frankly, the reason why I give the only warning I ever use when I post fic - which is "Sex under 18." I want people to have the chance to be fully aware of the legal risk they may be taking when they click the link and leave those traces on their hard drive.

Has anyone in fandom written underage RPS?

(Underage RPS about one's own relative would be a whole different category of !!! Not that that's quite what this man was doing.)

What he's done is still actually under the line for me - dodgy as hell, but still under the line - but the reason it comes so close to the line is that even though it didn't require a sexual assault on a child to make it, it was porn a) about a real child and b) about a real child whom he knew and spent time with.

I wonder how he felt about what he was writing. Did he put it down on paper for the thrill, or was he getting it outside of him where he could try to deal with it, or did he plan to show it to someone, or what? I know what it said in the article, but that's just the standard thing you say when you're arrested and charged and admit to it.

Why did he throw it in the bin? I even shred envelopes with my address on them, so they can't be used in identity theft, let alone bank statements, let alone those stupid half-filled-out credit card offers companies send, thank you so very much Melbourne Uni Credit Co-op and NAB. Maybe he wanted to be caught.

I'm glad the girl was unaware. Ambivalent, but mostly glad. Maybe when she's older she should be told.

It says "the man, who is still with his partner". I think what's more interesting is that she's still with him. What does she think? What does her (daughter? son? the article said the girl's mother found it, but not whether that was the de facto's daughter or in-law or what) think?

I'm of the opinion that anything involving TEENS doing anyhting other than kissing is skeevy. Anything over 16 is fine (Age of consent in my country)

Because of that, I don't read anything with wee!cest, where they are under 16. but that's the beauty of LJ cuts. You see the warning you don't click on the link.

I've always thought that in some countries, wee!cest writers could be opening a legal can of worms.

How ever, prosecution is dificult, because of the different standards in each country. The Yanks can't prosecute an Aussie, or I might write a fic of Sam at 16. Legal in the UK, but not in a America. I beleve some countries in Europe have lower ages of consent.

I wrote a long comment and LJ ate it. Sorry.

It's a tricky, weird, grey area.

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