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March 10, 2015
Depressing news that sentencing toughness is doing little to deter child porn offenses
Regular readers know about the severity of some federal and state sentencing schemes for the downloading of child pornography. The federal sentencing guidelines often recommend sentences of a decade or longer just for downloading child porn (though federal judges do not always follow these guidelines). In one notable case from Florida, as reported here, a first offender received an LWOP sentence for downloading illegal images on a laptop. And in Texas a few years ago, as reported here, a child porn downloader received a sentence of 220 years (though probably mostly do to evidence of lots of child molesting).
I have long hoped that these kinds of severe sentences for computer sex offenses would help serve to deter others who might otherwise be inclined to be involved in the harmful and disturbing activity of creating and distributing sexual picture of children. Sadly, though, according to this discouraging new Houston Chronicle article, child pornography still "is increasing fast, authorities say." The article is headlined "Child porn reports soaring with technology upgrades," and here are excerpts:
Every week in the Houston area, FBI agents execute warrants on child pornography charges, said agency spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap. "It's one of our busiest areas," Dunlap said. "We're serving search warrants or arrest warrants across the city and county area, whether for our (Houston Area Cyber Crimes) Task Force or the (Harris County) District Attorney's Office."
On Feb. 13, William Butler Myers of Meadows Place in Fort Bend County was sentenced to nearly 20 years (236 months) in federal prison for attempted production of child pornography involving a 14-year-old girl, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson's office announced. Myers, 43, entered a guilty plea on Nov. 21, 2013. Charges against Myers resulted from evidence found on a cellphone that he took to a repair shop. A shop employee called police after seeing what he thought was child pornography on the phone, officials said.
Cellphone evidence also led to charges against Jason Ryan Bickham, 32, of Orange. He pleaded guilty in September to possession of child pornography and was sentenced Feb. 24 to 10 years in federal prison, U.S. Attorney John M. Bales of the Eastern District of Texas announced last month.
With technology advancing rapidly, federal authorities expect the crime of creating, possessing or distributing pornographic images to increase as well, Dunlap said. "One of the issues and concerns with child pornography is that, once those images are shared, there's a great possibility for the victims to be revictimized each time those images are traded and shared," she said....
Like most crimes, this one cuts across socioeconomic lines. "We've had affluent individuals, those in positions of trust and regular, everyday individuals," Dunlap said. "There's not necessarily any particular stereotype with this crime."
On Thursday, March 12, former Denton High School teacher Gregory Bogomol is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court in Fort Worth after pleading guilty to two counts of producing child pornography. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in federal prison. Bogomol allegedly used social media applications such as KIK, Grindr, and Pinger to initiate conversations with underage males and to entice boys to produce sexually explicit pictures, authorities said.
Terry Lee Clark of Corpus Christi, who admitted possessing more than 5 million pornographic images, was sentenced Feb. 26 to eight years in federal prison, according to a news release from the office of U.S. Attorney Kenneth Magidson for the Southern District of Texas. Clark pleaded guilty in October to possession of illegal pornograpic images, including about 47,000 involving pre-pubescent females, some under the age of 12, engaging in sexually explicit conduct with adult males, authorities said.
On Feb. 17, a Galveston jury convicted William Cody Thompson of two counts of possession of child pornograpny. He was sentenced the next day to 10 years in Texas state prison on each count, with the sentences to run consecutively. Agents with the Houston Metro Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force conducted an investigation, which led to a 2013 search warrant for Thompson's residence and the discovery of thousands of pictures and videos on multiple computers, officials said.
Since 2010, child pornography reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's cyper tip line have skyrocketed, said John Shehan, executive director of the agency's Exploited Child Division. "We certainly have an increasing trend," he said, noting that 223,000 reports were received in 2010, compared with 1.1 million in 2014 and 560,000 in the first two months of this year.
Part of the spike is explained by a federal law that requires electronic service providers to make a report to the Cyber Tip Line if they become aware of child pornography images on their systems, Shehan said. "Many companies are proactively looking on their network for child sexual abuse images," he said, which likely means they learn about more images than they would by happenstance.
Also boosting the numbers, Shehan said, is the fact that pictures are easily spread around the globe online, he said. Of this year's half-million reports to the tip line, 92 percent were linked back to IP addresses abroad, he said.
However the number of federal child-exploitation cases brought against defendants between 2009 and Fiscal Year 2014 has hovered around 2,100, dipping to 2,012 in Fiscal Year 2012 and jumping up to 2,331 the next year.
This story confirms what social scientists have long known about deterrence: even a very severe punishment is unlikely to deter if its imposition is neither certain nor swift. This story suggests that there may well be at least 1000 other child porn offenses for every one that gets prosecuted. Even if a jurisdiction were to try imposing a death sentence for child porn offenses (which, of course, the Supreme Court has held to be unconstitutional in the US), such a severe sanction would be very unlikely to deter when there is less and a .1% chance of any offender getting caught.
I have long been concerned about the efficacy of severe child porn sentences in the federal system, and this story heightens my concern. In the end, I think some distinct technology and a kind of economic sanction on tech facilitators of this scourge is now needed far more than still tougher sentences (which may not even be possible) in order to deal with this still growing problem.
March 10, 2015 at 12:16 PM | Permalink
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Comments
This is progress. Left wing propaganda outlet says, no deterrence, the lawyer believes them.
Eventually, he will also come to believe the following:
4 million child porn sites, explosive growth thanks to the lawyer.
Child porn legalization drops sexual abuse of real children by substantial amount.
Fed Gov is the biggest subscriber to child porn sites, and a subsidizer of Eastern European criminal gangs of child porn producers. One has to wonder if these are funneling campaign donations to get tough legislators through legitimate businesses to maintain these Draconian but worthless laws.
The downloading of child porn is immunized by the First Amendment as much as the downloading of a video of any crime, such as the looting of stores in Furgeson.
Downloading of porn not only causes no substantial harm, contrary to the claim of vile feminist lawyer, but reduces the abuse of real children.
I have patience. Eventually, the lawyer will grasp these self evident points.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 10, 2015 1:07:11 PM
One has to wonder, where are the federal defense lawyers on this subject? Why not attack the entire lawyer bunko operation? Why not demand e-discovery of the prosecutor and or the judge's computers, which are likely to contain more child porn than that of any defendant, then report the prosecutor to the FBI. The FBI can investigate the metadata on the access to the child porn.
Why not raise the above points?
Why not question the false setting of adult hood at age 18 with a demand for a Daubert or Frye hearing?
Here is why not. The defense bar owes its job , not to the client, but to the prosecutor. Like most bullies, they are easily and permanently deterred by simple if effective responses. So the slightest resistance, the prosecutor goes away, does not come back, and the defense lawyer is looking for work as a high school substitute teacher.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 10, 2015 1:22:25 PM
"This story confirms what social scientists have long known about deterrence: even a very severe punishment is unlikely to deter if its imposition is neither certain nor swift."
I agree that this is an issue for crime in general but when it comes to child porn the bigger issue is that pedophilia is a sexual orientation as much as homosexuality or heterosexuality and sexual orientations are difficult to change as anyone aware of the "gay therapy" movement knows. Look at how far the Catholic Church has got with their call that gay people are called to "chastity". Nowhere. Pedophilia has been around for thousands of years--it's not going to stop because one tiny cadre of people in one country in the world get into a moral panic about it.
Posted by: Daniel | Mar 10, 2015 3:19:58 PM
Daniel:
Just thought I would point this out that child porn =! pedophilia. I know that in my own case, as well as in a lot of other cases of young men who get caught up in internet porn, child porn becomes a part of a larger collection of porn. I sought out child porn, but I also sought out MILF porn, asian porn, redheads, etc. It wasn't that I didn't need help -- I did -- but it was also not the case that I was a pedophile or that I was seeking out children to molest or anything like that. For me, anyway, there was a huge disconnect between what I was doing and any sense of reality. I was majorly deluded.
None of that is to minimize the harm that child porn causes or the harm that I caused, but it is to point out that I think it's more complicated than laying it at the feet of pedophilia, especially where internet porn is concerned.
Posted by: Guy | Mar 10, 2015 8:07:15 PM
Guy. Please, specify the harm you did by using internet child porn.
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 10, 2015 9:28:29 PM
"Depressing Predictable news that sentencing toughness is doing little to deter child porn offenses"
There, FIFY.
Posted by: Gritsforbreakfast | Mar 11, 2015 8:47:21 AM
Since our nanny big governments have proven themselves to be scumbag criminal regimes, I can't support anything they are trying to do. F them. I pray they are unable to do anything effective. F them. Especially for the BS "crime" of someone looking at pictures. And again, I have yet to hear any explanation from anyone, anywhere about why child porn is illegal but looking at pictures of other crimes is not.
Also, I have to think that, just like for drugs, the very fact that child porn is illegal drives a huge, expensive market for it. I suspect that, just like for drugs, if none of it was illegal, consumption would not change in any significant amount or certainly by any society-damaging amount. It would have to remain illegal to have sex with children so I don't know exactly how a not-illegal market would work. But the current system is BS.
Posted by: FRegistryTerrorists | Mar 11, 2015 10:08:00 AM
"Guy. Please, specify the harm you did by using internet child porn."
I'll answer that. This is a troubling development that doesn't have an easy answer. Most people I've associated with whom have child porn ("sexual performance of a minor") generally will never contact a child in real life, but that doesn't mitigate the damage of the "re-offense" against the child. In short, while the offender may not be targetting the child directly, the victim who finds out after the fact that his/her picture was viewed by someone new experiences another assault.
In short, child porn viewing is, clinically, the same as a drug or alcohol addiction TO THE OFFENDER. But the victimization is nearly the same to a new assault TO THE VICTIM. Neither condition is false, but the law dictates the punishment in all cases. This is not a repudiation or an excuse for the offense, it is simply a factual observation and conclusion.
Federal law now mandates a minimum of $10,000 payment upon conviction, but it won't mitigate the probles for the most part.
Posted by: Eric Knight | Mar 11, 2015 12:22:13 PM
Eric Knight | Mar 11, 2015 12:22:13 PM:
"the victim who finds out after the fact that his/her picture was viewed by someone new experiences another assault"
The victim should never find out. I am aware that our brilliant governments sometimes notify them. Stupid waste of limited resources.
So if there is a picture of me being punched in the face on a newspaper website, am I being victimized every time it is "viewed by someone new"? Clearly I am. And these days, that entitles me to be paid by them. Perhaps a minimum of $10,000 would be appropriate.
It's all nonsense. The fact is, whatever pictures there are that exist of me, someone may see them. BFD. I have a life to live. I'm not a professional, lifelong victim, using it as an excuse for any failure I ever have.
Posted by: FRegistryTerrorists | Mar 11, 2015 1:37:15 PM
@guy
I think your response overlooks the logic of the law. It is true that not every person who looks at or even collects child porn is a pedophile. As you point out, they might have other motivations. However, it is safe to say that the overwhelming majority of child porn is made by pedophiles. So the logic of the law is that by punishing child porn collectors it will reduce the demand for child porn production (the so called "market theory") and thus result in less children molested. That is to say the law views child porn collectors as enablers of pedophiles, even if they are not pedophiles themselves.
The ultimate goal of the law is to go after the pedophiles. So your individual case in my view represents a double tragedy. Not only are harsh sentences not stopping child porn production (because in reality there is no market for it) but it punished someone who--with a little bit of therapy--would not even be collecting porn at all, thereby turning a potential ally into a resentful enemy.
Posted by: Daniel | Mar 11, 2015 2:39:46 PM
"Even a very severe punishment is unlikely to deter if its imposition is neither certain nor swift"
That part of your argument suggests that the problem is that judges (largely due to arguments from folks like yourself) are not following the sentencing guidelines and should actually do so to make sure that those dealing in child porn face swift and certain justice.
Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 11, 2015 2:55:14 PM
well Daniel I guess that means we can now execute every FBI employee since some of the numbers I have seen put 50% or better of what is out there has been put out there by the FBI.
after all you state!
"However, it is safe to say that the overwhelming majority of child porn is made by pedophiles."
seems to make them a legal target. Just have to remember to yell "citizens arrest" and "I see a gun" as you take them down!
Posted by: rodsmith | Mar 11, 2015 3:23:18 PM
The notification of "victims" is a scam pushed through by attorneys who "represent the lifelong victims" to the tune of 30 to 40 percent of their awards. Check out what John Ashcroft, former Attorney General, does for a living now.
Posted by: Maggie Moon | Mar 11, 2015 6:39:28 PM
Eric. Should a cross claim be filed against the federal Victim Notification Service since knowledge of the viewing is the harm?
Should I be imprisoned as a revictimizer when I watch security recordings of looters in Furgeson or recordings of millions of crimes and accidents on YouTube?
Any comment on the Free Press right to receive information, not just publish it?
Posted by: Supremacy Claus | Mar 11, 2015 6:54:33 PM
@Supremecy
My point was not to determine blame/victimhood. I was acknowledging that, clinically, many child porn downloaders experience problems that are similar in intent to alcoholism or drug abuse, while at the same time, acknowledging that child victims DO feel re-abused from the offense.
Obviously, there are hypocracies to be waded through, such as the aforementioned comparason to watching criminal acts and "revictimizing" those particualr victims, such as thefts, assaults and murders. That cannot be refuted.
In short, legalities cannot be properly diagnosed in the current state of law, and to be blunt, I don't believe there will ever be a solution that will reduce child porn crimes until society starts to attack the original source of such crime, and not to focus all resources on punitive after-crime measures. The plain fact is that the human instinct to protect children above all other rational discourse has left us at a place where such lawmaking can only be conducted through judicial purview with reams of supporting documentation. Until then, there is no other recourse.
I had originally worked with family reintegration of family abuse/ in the nineties; nowadays, that is not possible as the law doesn't let victims live with family who've committed the crime. It is hard to believe that such violations could be resolved intra-familial, but it was actually far better than what is being done now: splitting families up through our "politically correct" permanent segretation of sex offenders and the public.
It's up to the courts for now, as legislative processes will never be part of the process that prevents such abuse.
Posted by: Eric Knight | Mar 12, 2015 3:56:56 PM
Eric:
There is no problem that the government cannot make worse with its false pompousness and piety when it tries to enact solutions for the wrong reasons. As you noted, their focus is not in correcting or preventing these abuses, but in justifying the structure of and function of the penal and judicial parties as they currently suck the blood out of the system.
That the 100,000th viewer could be responsible for all the damages strikes me as absurd, especially when said party is incarcerated and impoverished for his/her defense. Should there be fines and consequences - absolutely - if it is reasonably tied to the supposed damage.
The "instinct" of most humans is to protect real children, not necesarilly the legal definition of children but that human instinct is secondary to government's self-interest to protect itself and it's false public image.
Posted by: albeed | Mar 12, 2015 7:14:33 PM
What a surprise... making examples of people does nothing to deter crime.
Posted by: Doh! | Mar 13, 2015 9:45:45 PM
Prosecutors are not saying what,when,and how the person in question is guilty of the crime.
A compressed zip file or archived file can contain hundreds if not thousands of images, so all it takes is one download, there is sometimes no way to tell if the person actually viewed the images.
In addition I have to repeat this, child porn is "any sexually suggestive image of anybody under 18", a high school teen who takes a photo of himself in his undies could be guilty, and prosecutors have argued for criminal sanctions against "self produced child porn" even though the conduct was legal. In addition there could be images of younger children but no actual molestation just photo poses.
Should folks who watch ISIS torture videos be grouped with ISIS as criminals, are you re-victimizing the victim, what about videos of folks over 18 getting tortured,raped,etc.
Politicians and prosecutors keeping using that same flawed line of logic.
Posted by: Alex | Mar 20, 2015 7:43:24 PM
My son is going to be convicted of downloading/viewing child porn. He is 28. He is in IT, owns his own home, and has never committed any crime of any kind other then an occasional traffic ticket. It has taken 3+ years for my sons case to come to court. Consequently, his mother and I and our son have had a lot of time to get over the shock and trauma of his arrest on these charges. We have done a lot of research and done a lot of thinking regarding his offense. In early grade school our son was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and a co-morbidity of anxiety disorder. This resulted in our son being very non-verbal. He would only talk to anyone about technology, especially computer technology. He was around girls in school but would never talk to them. He had great difficulty figuring out the "nuances" of boy-girl talk. During his 3+ years post arrest our son has enrolled in a sex offender therapy program. I have been going to support and supervisory session within the same counseling network to become a supervisor over my son and thus, monitor him effectively. What I have learned through all of my training and research is something startling: Many counseling services consider our society to be engaged in a "witch hunt". I was stunned when I heard my sex offender counselors mention this in one of our sessions for the first time. They went on to explain that what my son did is still wrong and unacceptable in any society. However, our son's crime does not fit his impending punishment. Since our son's arrest many professionals have examined him, I have had many, many intense, probing conversations with our son on this subject. The result: Therapy works! Our son's sexual curiosity became an addiction. Statistically sex offender therapy programs, monitoring are the most effective ways to curb the possibility of someone like my son violating a child. Not incarceration, not a lifetime registry. In closing, my son will go to prison. A sex offender who hasn't had sex with anyone.
Posted by: tommyc | Mar 26, 2015 5:37:08 PM
What really hurts with child porn is when children look at it. My 15 year old son was arrested for looking at child porn, the really big problem with this is that he is a child, he was looking for girls that look like him, as do MANY young males today. The real problem that nobody is doing anything about is that instead of the FBI doing their job and removing those images from the web as soon as they are posted they are posting these pictures themselves to intrap people to look at them. The FBI agents that raided our house at 5AM with assult rifles eventually acknowledged that the pictures my son Tweeted were still there and probably always would be. How is that allowed to happen???? Why aren't we going after the websites like Twitter that allow this kind of content on their site in the first place??? The fact is neither my son or Tommy C's son would be in this mess in the first place had the information not been readily available for any and all who happened to find it. My son, who has never touched anyone and finds the thought of hurting a child repulsive now is not allowed to drive by himself, he's not allowed to go to the bathroom in public by himself and is generally treated like a pediphile even though he has never touched anyone. As far as I'm concerned this is a broken system that doesn't do anything to protect anyone. It lines the pockets of counselors, attorneys, and the states. My son has never been in any kind of trouble before and now is losing 2 years of his life because he saw pictures that probably millions of other people have already seen. For that he's been under house arrest now for 9 months and is having to attend sex offender therapy to the tune of $200/month plus polyprah fees of $200 each time, plus psychosexual testing at $417. I'm not saying that my son doesn't need help but he doesn't need this kind of help. I am really worried that the things that he is being exposed to in this "therapy" are doing more harm than good.
Posted by: Christi | Apr 11, 2015 10:42:52 AM
I am posting this primarily with the hope of obtaining effective legal assistance, but also to educate those within the legal system about the true face of one of those accused of possession/distribution of child pornography. I am one of the unfortunate so called deviants currently facing a future not worth living. A few months ago police served me with a search warrant claiming that I had distributed and possessed 13 files containing child pornography discovered by someone in an Ohio task force devoted to policing CP on the internet. Apparently my IP address was identified by the investigator via a P2P program I had been using. Before going further let me just say that I am a good person, help people that need it, have no criminal record, never physically hurt anyone, never touched a child NOR WANTED TO NOR WILL, and most friends would describe me as exceedingly honest to a fault. Now....in response to the charges of possession I am 100% guilty. Technically, the same can be said for the claims of distribution, although to my surprise I was not aware that by default the program I used made files on my computer available for sharing to complete strangers. Perhaps most surprising was the notion that by downloading aforementioned content I was breaking the law. Like most of the uninformed idiots caught in this crazy web I presumed that it was the furnishing, buying and selling with currency, and the physical act of molesting a minor that were illegal. Having never tangled with the LAW I had no hesitation in talking with the officers with complete honesty. Despite learning that possessing CP was illegal I didn't hesitate in divulging to the officers that I had indeed downloaded the content in question for personal reasons that had nothing to do with sexual gratification. This is a summary of what I told them: Since the age of 30 I had fallen into a severe, unexplainable depression which resulted in losing a successful career, fiancé, close friends and family. I sought help via psychologists and psychiatrists resulting in little to no positive outcome. A couple of years later I randomly (by random I mean had no intention to find or view) found an image online depicting a child being sexually abused by an adult which strangely brought about emotions of personal familiarity. What followed in the coming days was an avalanche of memories from my own childhood that were far more disturbing than that depicted on this disgusting image. I was able to recall multiple incidents involving 2 individuals that had sexually assaulted/raped me over a long period of time starting from roughly the age of 7 to 11. Following these revelations I once again I sought professional help from a medical professional and explained these new revelations in detail. Despite her best intentions the shrink really didn't offer much in the way of help except for a prescription for an antidepressant. I even called my best friend hoping for support of some kind only to ruin said friendship with unbearable awkwardness. I even told my Dad (poor guy) who was too shocked/angry to even comment on the matter. I was left without a way to confront this matter but was desperate to do so thinking that I might reclaim a productive role within society. What I did next is hard for others to understand, but I'll try nonetheless. I began to search for pornography involving adults and children. Specifically, I was seeking content that reminded me of my own history of abuse much like the first photograph I discussed earlier had. I was able to find said content with a simple search followed by a click of the mouse. This brings me to the most misunderstood and perhaps complex issue involving CP laws and my circumstance...the intent under which I downloaded the files. I wasn't sexually aroused nor did I pleasure myself in viewing such files. On top of that I didn't know that what I was doing was illegal. Had I known, I never would have sought out such content. I am of sound mind, considered intelligent by peers (scored in 99% for SAT's) and yet I was unaware of the mere existence of these laws let alone the extreme penalties involved which is evidenced by my lack of effort to even hide the content or my activities. As of now I am in the waiting stages of finding out what I am charged with while the computer forensics teams investigate (thereby breaking more CP laws by consuming/viewing said illegal content). After I researched what happens to those facing similar charges I panicked and fled the country. I am convinced that there is no possibility for fair treatment nor trial in the face of these charges. The basic principals that my Law 0100 class taught me in college are absent and change is needed. I have no idea how this plays out concerning extradition etc...what I do know is that the only way I return to the U.S. is if I have a reasonable chance to beat these charges. I am not a sexual predator nor will I ever be and I refuse to cower to a plea deal. Furthermore, I refuse to lie claiming that some virus or wireless bandit user is at fault and that "I didn't know". If there is an attorney out there that you know of who isn't just interested in collecting fees (I am capable of paying mind you) and possesses the intelligence and strength required to institute systematic change please let me know (the charges are in VA BTW). And yes, I know I have better odds of summoning Batman tonight than finding such an individual. Thanks for the help..
Posted by: pleasehelp | Jun 29, 2015 2:46:43 AM
