Searching question

[Ahmed]

***Please do not read if you are easily offended***

 

What would happen if the police tracked down a computer to an address where someone was viewing/downloading paedophilic material. The police decide that they should take action and raid the house, confiscate the computer and arrest the offending party.

What would happen if the offending party (the owner/user of the pc) was a 12 year old?

What could the police do?

If a child is 12 and is viewing pictures of other people the same age, should it be dealt with in the same way as a 35 year old would?

 

What are people's views?

[cheyenne]

Id be very suspicious about the parents .the police are not that daft.does this so called 12 year old have a credit card??Ahmed!!

[ICEMANSAV]

Ah but he could pinch it from the dad/mum etc. but I doubt many ,kids that age would want too see those pictures and would prefer to go on footy chatrooms or Gareth gates message boards.

[Ahmed]

Vinny, Just read the question as it's written. And Answer it.

I've read many questions on the AB describing much more bizarre situations than this.

 

[georgit79]

It makes sense that the parents of the 12 year old should be prosecuted, as they are legal guardians of the 12 year old and should be monitoring his/her computer access. Then said 12 year old should have counselling.

[mullein]

the parents should be held responsible.as a 12 year old would not be paying for internet service.also the child should be assessed for psychiatric problems and be placed in a secure accomadation for young offenders.the police should treat the child as a potentional threat to society.everything should be confisticated,,some 12 year old children are very street wise and know exactly what they are doing,,,those awfull children that killed james bulger in liverpool were about the age of 12 and they had been watching nasty movies,,and copyied what they saw,,i would have no mercy on the juvenile delinquent...mullein

[cheyenne]

So 3 stars are out of the question then!!

[Ahmed]

Great answer georgit79 :)

 

Mullen, in my opinion, you are over-reacting.

I think locking the kid up at that age is going to do far more damage than good, especially if the child has no idea what they've done wrong. It could simply be the child wanting to find out more about sex education, following on from lessons at school (**note** I'm not suggesting it is 'homework'). Or just general curiosity wrt to the opposite sex.

How can the child be a 'threat to society' if they are looking at images of people their own age?

[Happy Sunday]

I too would be totally suspcious of the parents.  Would a 12 year old even know how to access this stuff? Why would the kid want to view images of this nature anyway, had they seen/been subjected to anything?  Paedophilic material is obviously a criminal offence, and at 12 years old they certainly know what is right from wrong.  If they have stolen the credit card to gain access, they are obviously on the path of some sort of self destruction.  A good talking too from the parents/police, and maybe even prosecution might stop this kid before he/she goes onto committ other offences.

I totally agree with mullein, this needs to be seriously looked into before another wayward kid goes manic - sorry, maybe all rather harsh, but I seriously can't believe that any happy, normal healthy child could want to look at such vile things.

[Bangkok]

Tasteless as this thread is, it becomes an issue of access to the computer.  If an adult credit card is used to access the sites, and the adult bought the machine, they are likely to be prosecuted - if the true user was 12 years old then a miscarriage of justice may occur if the adult is found guilty

[Ahmed]

Will you lot shut up about the credit card thing?? I didn't say anything about that in my question. I also didn't mention anything about the kid's wooden leg or x-ray vision either.

From what I know about other programs that use the internet (not web-browsers), the material we are talking about can be accessed quite easily and for free. I know you're all gonna turn round and start acusing me of being some paedo-hoarder.......please dont' ok.

 

Stop taking the 'Daily Mail' view on life and answer the question based on the material in the question.

[ICEMANSAV]

If it can be viewed free then the police would be able to track the IP address broadcasting the material more easily and would be shut down faster. The serious crimes are due to the pay per view internet sites that make profit from this crime and therefore commit more of these crimes to receive their funding. If a 12 year old was responsible the history of the computer could be uncovered by the police and times it was accessed therefore it could be more easily established who was the more likely viewer. I.e if the computer usage and sites were viewed after school before the Father was home from work there would be a fair chance of it being just seized and the parents warned about the childs access. Anyway all new ISP have access control and any responsible parent would set this according to their offsprings ages and level of internet involvement.

[Ahmed]

Don't hijack the question

"If a child is 12 and is viewing pictures of other people the same age, should it be dealt with in the same way as a 35 year old would?"

Happy sunday said but I seriously can't believe that any happy, normal healthy child could want to look at such vile things.

What is vile about looking at pictures of people the same age as him/her? Should the child be told that looking at naked bodies is wrong or criminal??

 

This is what the Daily Mail is doing to the public...

 

[Morrisonker]

Sending teh child to a young offenders unit or whatever is over the top, kids of that age are naturally inquisitive about sex.  looking at 'normal' porn wouldn't be so much of an issue would it?  If this child was going into a search engine and actively looking for indecent inmages of children over and over again, then i would suggest counselling for teh child and introduce the parents to netnanny or some similar programme.

[georgit79]

good answer ICEMAN.

[ICEMANSAV]

If you read the answer more in depth than your hatred towards the daily mail it will make sense to you.

[undercovers]

bloody hell ahmed you don't half go on do you... people are discussing your thread - what did you want a yes / no answer. Down loading child porn is against the law, it matters not how old the person downloading the images is - this is because if there is a market for this material people will make it available, this means that children will be abused I think you should try and bare this in mind when you consider this crime. The child in question would be dealt with as children generally are when they are arrested, the police may well take into account that he is young and caution him BUT this decision would be made on a case by case basis - taking into account any other arrests or worrying behaviour.

I think you should try and base your thoughts about this thread on the victim (the children) as downloading images of them is just child abuse at a distance and there is absolutely no argument that could possibly be made that would convince me that in some situations it would be ok to view it.

[georgit79]

Ahmed, you can't ask a question and then decide exactly how it is answered..

[justpassing]

Ahmed,  I have personal experience of this..... My son (then aged 13) was given a floppy disk by a school friend that contained child pornograpy.  Unfortunately the first few files on the disk were perfectly ordinary cartoons, and thinking the whole disk contained the same he gave it to another friend, who contacted my son in a state of shock having discovered the content. To give my son credit he destroyed the disk immediately, but by then the content of the disk had become knowledge at his school, and the staff notified the police.

All the boys were interviewed by the police in the presence of myself and a member of staff.... It transpired that one of the boys was accessing the sites via home network and using his father's credit card details.... In due course all the boys were arrested and had to make formal statement, which are still held on file. Each boy was then given a verbal or written warning dependant on what their direct involvement with the incident was.

My son was lucky..... He had a verbal warning as did one of the others as they were considered to be 'on the fringe' of it, but the boy who had downloaded the material WAS given a written warning effectively giving him a criminal record till he was 18 yrs old. I believe that the parents of the boy were totally unaware of what he was doing as he did this while they were at work and he was in the house alone.

As parents we were asked to undertake setting suitable punishment, which was agreed by the police.... My son was banned from any computer activities, totally grounded for a set period and MADE to return to school to face the humiliation from classmates..... The others involved stayed off school for weeks, so I consider my son punished enough.

From my point of view, I was punished enough through the anger, stress embarrassment, distress and humiliation this caused. Prosecution was not necessary.

[BUNNY]

I'm assuming that the pictures of the kids are not those embarrassing but ultimately innocent 'children mucking about in the bath' or 'kids on a beach in bikini bottoms' photos.These photos would be deliberately sexually and designed to have a sexual response.And as many 12 yr old boys who are sneaking peeks at the lingerie section onf their mothers mail order catalogues will prove,sexual awareness is well in place at this age.Therefore I dont think that the age of the viewer is relevant.The photos are an exploitation of young kids for the viewers sexual gratification.

[Ahmed]

ICEMANSAV, I understand your answer, and it was a good one, albeit from a different angle to the one I was trying to address.

Georgit79, I'm not trying to dictate the answer, I'm trying to steer the discussion away from a 'witch hunt' direction. Most answers seem to be about tracking down who did it, how illegal it is, what the punishment, "it must be someone else" should be....and so on.

 

The point I was trying to make was not whether it is legal or not. As undercovers pointed out, the victims are the material subjects - no arguement. It was more from a moral aspect. I believe that if a curious 12 year old is looking at pictures of other 12 year olds, then he or she is not in the wrong. Obviously, the creator of the material is 100% evil. Yes, the parents have a duty to supervise their child's internet use, but this is sometimes difficult when the parents are somewhat IT illiterate.
I agree that the child should be counselled and the parents educated, but I don't think branding the child "the next buldger killer" and locking him up is the way to deal with it.
My original question was trying to explore a grey area in the law of a very sensitive subject. I can only apologise for my abusive comments towards the Daily Mail. I just felt that some answers were over P.C.