RAISING THE BAR: 2.04 “No Child’s Left Behind”
I mentioned this episode was controversial on my pre-airing post. And if you’re wondering, I’m rooting for the father. And when I first watched it, I really did wonder, “Why does the prosecution think this case has merit?”
And at first, I thought it was ridiculous. But let’s look like it in black and white terms. If there was child porn on the internet, you’d go after the person selling it and the person who took the picture. In this case, the person who took the picture just happens to be the father, which (sadly enough) doesn’t make much difference anymore with all the terrible sexual abuse within families that we hear about now.
So it was Jerry’s first priority to convince the jury that the father didn’t know the person who sold the picture. And he did that. But if the picture is in a public forum–available for everyone–maybe, just maybe, he’s considered giving the picture to the public for use. And that’s where the confusion lies.
I personally narrowed it down to this: intent. He certainly didn’t intend to display the picture as pornographic. But then again, if someone steals a loaf of bread, whether they intended it negatively or not, they still go to jail. So where does intent matter, and when does it not?
And as Balco presented, isn’t it a parent’s job to protect the child? Should he have seen this coming? In my own question, I’m curious to know if part of the problem was the child’s age. I know it seems unrelated, but this all seemed ridiculous until they said that he was on a soccer team. Suddenly, the child wasn’t a toddler. He was a bit older, maybe four or five. Is that what suddenly made it pornographic?
For those of you who still feel that this is a ridiculous case, what about a current event? Here’s someone who is being charged for putting the heads of minors on the naked bodies of adults–it’s still considered pornographic, even if it’s not the children’s actual bodies. Does that seem ridiculous? Maybe so, but it really makes you wonder how far is too far? How far is not far enough?
Both make a compelling case, and to be honest, I never thought it would be a hung jury. I very much look forward to seeing what they’re going to come up with in the next trial.
And kudos to Raising the Bar for forcing us to see a danger that may never have been realized. A personal website seems safe; most people assume that no one sees it unless they tell people about it. So by “for friends and family only,” he could have very well meant that that was who it was for, though he had no privacy settings that controlled who actually saw the picture.
The nerd in me still wonders what exactly he was using to post the pic. Facebook? Twitpic? Flickr? Blog? Either way, it’s something watch. And think about.
Kudos.
I think it was probably something like Facebook. I sympathized with the father in this one, but he also should have known better. In the end, the picture he took was being used to earn money to keep an really horrible, evil business in operation.
I liked Balco in this episode. We’ve pretty much only seen him as the super-ambitious DA, pushing all his lawyers to grab a win in any way possible. But his confrontation with Jerry at the end suggested, at least to me, that he has some strongly held beliefs of his own that he wasn’t willing to compromise on.
This kind of reminds me of an SVU episode, where porn people were taking adults (like 18 and 19), dressing them up as kids, putting them in questionable positions, and then using backwards aging technology (the kind police/FBI use) to make them look like 11 and 12 year olds. technically, they are not doing anything illegal, but the intent is certainly there.
Oh my god, that’s terrible! I hope that one wasn’t “ripped from the headlines.”
[...] I wish they’d gone back and tried some of the cases we were left hanging on. Like the Jerry/Balco case. Or the case where Porter was first introduced. You know, the cases that were left unfinished. [...]