Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Online Crime-Fighting

Brent at Cop Talk blogs on becoming part of the internet task force. Correlates nicely with the DM Register's series on Randy Brown.



I dislike the series, because the title and the tone of the articles suggests Brown was "Imprisoned by the Internet," as if he were powerless over his decision to download and masturbate to child porn. Okay, even in the disease model of addiction, it is recognized that a person can make a conscious one-day-at-a-time decision to stop using his or her drug of choice, with the help of a 12-step program, etc. And at least alcoholism, smoking, etc., don't generally involve trading pictures of people abusing kids. I can't fathom the kind of overt selfishness it requires for him to play the role of a victim.



They minimize the offense:

Is that a 14-year-old girl who looks 18? An 18-year-old who looks 14? Sometimes it's impossible to tell.



So easy, so exciting.



So dangerous. . . .



Investigators found 2,600 pornographic images when they confiscated the computers. Twenty-six were deemed "problematic."


Today's article discussed at length how devastating it will be for him if he's not allowed to be around children unsupervised after his release.



Well, look at how he got caught and you tell me whether he should be allowed around children:



Brown says he doesn't remember role-playing with the person who blew the whistle on him. That person was an Indianapolis man named Jason Young, posing as a 15-year-old girl.



Young told authorities Brown was pretending to be a 25-year-old bank employee.



Brown says he doesn't remember assuming that identity but agrees it's possible. In one of the chat rooms, he came across a female-sounding user name that interested him. Young, who declined to comment for this story, does not say why he was pretending to be a female.



Whatever the reason, taking on a false identity is common chat-room behavior. It's a game of charades anyway, so what's the harm?



"People are always questioning you," Brown says. " 'Are you really that old? Are you married?' People are leery."



If Brown was leery, he was also intrigued. He clicked on a name. Of all the choices, he had to make this one.



It could have been a cop. The chat rooms are filled with law enforcement officers ready to make a bust.



Young was no cop, but when the conversation quickly took a sexual turn, he kept it going, he told authorities, just for the sport of it. There were several conversations over a period of months.



About this time, authorities say, Brown also sent Young unsolicited pictures of minors posing nude - but not engaged in sexually explicit activity.



Just as the law makes a distinction between adult pornography and child pornography, it draws a line between child pornography and erotica featuring children. The latter is legal so long as it has redeeming artistic value.



Though Brown does not admit sending images of minors over the Internet - charges of distributing child pornography were dropped - Young gave authorities a different version of the story, and they say Young began to worry. He knew this kind of activity was inappropriate at the very least. He became uneasy with the situation. Was he breaking the law now?



The dialogue ended, investigators were told, when Brown mentioned he was in Indianapolis and wanted to get together.



At that point, Young called the FBI, which directed him to the Cyber Tipline - (800) THE-LOST - set up by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.



Brown and his lawyer say Young is wrong about the meeting. They say Brown never tried to arrange one, was never in Indianapolis.



Marshall says the ISU Department of Public Safety learned through the university athletic department that a basketball recruiting trip to Indianapolis had been scheduled but canceled.



Here is where Brown throws up his hands in frustration and anger.



"I'll say to the very last day I never intended to meet anybody regardless of age," he says. "I'm guilty of possessing child pornography. I don't condone it, for anybody. I recognize the dangers. I have kids. But I never set anything up. No matter what kind of shape I was in, no matter how bad, I never would have gone that far. No way. I know that to be true in the deepest part of my soul."



Law enforcement officials cannot see into an offender's soul.



"We're just glad we stopped him," Marshall says, "before he molested any children."



The friends who know Brown best believe him; the authorities who fight the crime aren't willing to make that leap.



This much is indisputable: Young's tip unleashed events that would put Brown in prison. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children notified the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Des Moines, which contacted the ISU Department of Public Safety, which reviewed the chat logs Young had saved and traced the Internet protocol addresses to the Iowa State computer network and an account belonging to Randall Alan Brown."


I have an idea - why doesn't the DM Register go the extra mile and request Brown authorize them access to the logs? The transcripts should prove exactly what was said.



DISCLAIMER:

For those who don't know me personally, I should state that I've known people with this "problem" both personally and in my former position as a prosecutor.



As a whole, they consistently paint themselves as victims, no matter how horrid their actions.



I recall one defendant trying to explain meticulously how his ten-year-old stepdaughter sexually seduced him.



Of course, that was over a year after his conviction, when a court-ordered psychosexual exam caught him out. Before that, he and the mother - who was present in the home during the abuse - both swore the girl was a slut and a liar. Last I heard, she was having real problems getting over the sheer betrayal of being lied about on top of being abused.



I don't believe in capital punishment for various reasons, but I've not often come closer to wanting to kill someone.



Articles like this soft-pedal the horrors child porn inflicts on kids. Speaking in terms of the 'victimhood' of the men and women who get off on the pictures of kids being abused does nothing but perpetuate the nightmare.

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