aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Pictures lie
Another tale from the great state of Georgia:
Shortly before Thanksgiving 2004, I took my three kids camping in Mistletoe State Park near Augusta, Ga., with my best friend and his two kids. After six years in Savannah, my family was about to move to France for my wife’s new job as an administrator for an American company. We had all been camping together before and figured the trip would be a great getaway from all of the packing, painting and stresses of moving, and would allow the kids to be together for one last time. Our wives decided to stay home to organize the packing and spend some quiet time together to say goodbye. [...]
As usual during the trip, we took several photos. Because I forgot my digital camera, I bought a disposable camera at a gas station on the way to the campground. I took pictures of the kids using sticks to beat on old bottles and cans and logs as musical instruments. I took a few of my youngest daughter, Eliza, then age 3, skinny-dipping in the lake, and my son, Noah, then age 8, swimming in the lake in his underwear, and another of Noah naked, hamming it up while using a long stick to hold his underwear over the fire to dry. Finally, I took a photo of everyone, as was our camping tradition, peeing on the ashes of the fire to put it out for the last time. We also let the kids take photos of their own.
When we returned on Sunday, I forgot the throwaway camera and Rusty found it in his car. He gave it to his wife, whom I’ll call Janet, to get developed, and she dropped it off the next day with two other rolls of film at a local Eckerd drugstore. On Tuesday, when she returned to pick up the film, she was approached by two officers from the Savannah Police Department. READ ON.
Now I ask you, in this age of digital cameras does anyone really think that real child pornographers are developing their pictures at Eckerd? And all of the resources spent following up and pursuing those leads mean less resources for finding the real predators. So we get statistics of investigations, arrests and convictions as a misleading measure of success.
I don’t mean to single out Georgia; this Sexual Fascism has swept across Progressive America in the name of protecting children with no awareness of the harm done to children. More from Salon:
The presumption of innocence until proven guilty had been turned on its head: the burden had been placed on us, not the legal system, to prove our innocence. Our most basic right and instinct as parents—to protect our children—had been usurped by a single accusation. [...]
Oney had told me she would be paying a visit to our house. Our lawyer said she could look anywhere—in our drawers, closets, attic—without a warrant or without specifically stating what she was looking for. [...]
Despite the fact that the case was unsubstantiated, a record of the accusation and ensuing investigation will be kept on file for three years—in case, we were told by our lawyer, other complaints should be filed against us. Our children’s records will show the incident until they are 21 years old. [...]
I discovered there are simply no uniform standards for police officers, teachers, child-care workers—or photo lab employees—to tell lewd and illegal photos from harmless family pictures. [...]
Dr. Douglas Besharov, a child abuse expert at the Maryland School of Public Affairs, and the first director of the U.S. National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect, estimates that out of the nearly 3 million child abuse reports made every year, seven in 10 of them are without merit. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, nearly 60 percent of child abuse or neglect reports are “unsubstantiated.”
Please read the whole article. We have to better understand what’s happening here.
