Registered sex offenders should never be allowed on social networks where people freely use their profiles as digital scrapbooks of their lives – frequently sharing photos of their babies and themselves on nights out potentially dressed proactively.
They do not have the right to participate in an open network online – where many children under the age of 13 have set up identities without their parents’ knowledge – just as they cannot mix openly in society offline.
I might be willing to agree that the bloke convicted of grooming kids online then raping them shouldn\’t be allowed online to groom kids.
I certainly agree that Facebook, Lonked in and all the rest have the right to ban anyone at all from their sites.
But \”registered sex offender\” is such a wide description that such a ban is ludicrous.
Section 45(2) changed the definition of \”child\” in the Protection of Children Act 1978 (which applies to child pornography) from a person under 16 to a person under 18. Section 45 also inserted section 1A of the 1978 Act, and section 160A of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, which create defences which apply where the photograph showed the child alone or with the defendant (but not if it showed any other person), the defendant proves that the photograph was of the child aged 16 or over and that he and the child were married or lived together as partners in an enduring family relationship, and certain other conditions are met.
It is possible that a bloke with a picture of his 17 year old girlfriend with her tits out on a topless beach is guilty of a crime leading to being a registered sex offender.
This isn\’t, I submit, a crime which should have you banned from an online social life.
And I\’m sure the resident legal brains around here could offer up more examples of such stupidities.
Social media networks are very dangerous places for registered sex offenders. Even if all they want to do is chat to friends (yes, sex offenders do have them!), too many people – including the police – assume that their purpose in joining the network is criminal.
The statement that “they do not have the right to mix freely in society” is simply wrong. They do, within the limits of the order imposed on them. A registered sex offender can, for example, go to a pub unattended. Some organisations – including the Church – impose ADDITIONAL restrictions, particularly on paedophiles. That is a matter of organisational policy, not a legal requirement. Facebook etc. could impose voluntary restrictions like this. So far they have not chosen to do so.
It would be reasonable for a court to impose an order restricting access to social media if the offence justifies that – as in the example you give, Tim. But generally restricting access to social media for even the most minor of sex offenders in my view is way over the top.
What is dressing “proactively” – going out with your tights already torn and no knickers?
Examples of people who could be forced to register as sex offenders under E&W law include:
* a bloke found with a cartoon of Bart Simpson fucking Miss Krabapple.
* a bloke found with a cartoon of a man fucking a donkey.
* a 19-year-old youth group leader who has a relationship with a 17-year-old girl from his youth group.
* a rugby player who gets his knob out in a nightclub for a dare.
* a 12-year-old boy found with nude photos of a 15-year-old girl.
An 18 year old boy with a topless photo of his 18 year old girlfriend, taken when she was 15.
Look, I’m sorry. Maybe it’s because I’ve never had kids but this issue is completely beyond me.
“…many children under the age of 13 have set up identities without their parents’ knowledge.”
Then they’re fucking hopeless parents. Would they give their kid a credit card? Let ’em use the family car? Send ’em out to play on the hard shoulder of the motorway? Then put the onus on everyone else to ensure they came to no harm?
How the hell do you keep registered sex offenders off of social networking sites? The sites aren’t even necessarily within UK jurisdiction. They can open an account in any name they care to choose. or are we expecting a US company to validate it’s customers & then check the results against a UK database. Why should it go to the enormous trouble & expense to do so? Our law enforcement requirements aren’t their problem.
Or are we to attempt to tackle it from the other direction? We all have to prove we’re not sex offenders before we access the interweb. Before we can use a cybercafe or a terminal in a library.
What’s the problem with folks accepting responsibility for their own kids?
“Then they’re fucking hopeless parents. Would they give their kid a credit card? Let ‘em use the family car? Send ‘em out to play on the hard shoulder of the motorway? Then put the onus on everyone else to ensure they came to no harm?”
The answer is almost certainly ‘Yes’…
The law has created the ludicrous situation where a pair of 16-year-olds can quite legally bonk themselves stupid but commit a serious offence should they decide to video their connubial bliss…
…..What is dressing “proactively” – going out with your tights already torn and no knickers?…..
My thoughts exactly
“What’s the problem with folks accepting responsibility for their own kids?”
But but but that would be putting back “social” legislation and regulation at least two generations and putting a lot of prodnoses and many in the public and “third” sectors out of business.
My father in law once sent naked pictures of an underage prepescent girl.
That is was his daughter and that I was shagging her about 10 years later probably wouldn’t be much of an excuse for some.
Did raise some eyebrows opening that email at work.
a 16 year 1 month old having sex with their 15 year 11 month old squeeze.
a Scottish man jerking off with a bicycle when the hotel cleaner walked in.
It goes on. Bonkety-bonk.
“a Scottish man jerking off with a bicycle when the hotel cleaner walked in.”
When the cleaner used her pass key to open a locked door.
Judging by the comments, I’m apparently not that out of order.
Then there’s a very easy solution. A net filter that if you’ve rug-rats in the house you subscribe to. The wider net is only available on entering a pass code. Filter can be graded to suit the age of the user. Any kid accessing via school, cybercafe, McD’s etc only provided with the restricted net.
Simples. Even a lot of dosh to be made by subscription to the service, ads or data capture.
So why hasn’t it been done?
Because most parents don’t give a fuck about their children.
End of.
Some organisations – including the Church – impose ADDITIONAL restrictions, particularly on paedophiles.
Yes, the paedophiles have to be ordained!
@bloke in spain – it’s pretty easy to get around filters, if you have control over the computer that you’re accessing from.
I run the filtering software for my work, and the only reason it works at all is that we have physical control over the PCs and the users can’t install software on them or change the networking configuration, so they can’t bypass the filter.
…..A net filter that if you’ve rug-rats in the house you subscribe to…..
So if the missus and I wish to watch group rutting sessions after the kids are asleep we are unable?
@bloke in spain – it’s pretty easy to get around filters, if you have control over the computer that you’re accessing from.
Which is why when I have kids, I’ll be filtering at the router and not on individual devices.
Yes, the paedophiles have to be ordained!
Well at least they get well compensated.
Serf
Richard @ 15 & Matt @ 17 probably have the answer.
But……
Think about what you’ve just said. Your viewing preferences are more important than your kids? And you’ve bred? God help the human race.
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Most of the archive of Samantha Fox’s page 3 career is destroyed, because it’s classed as child pornography. Something that millions of Sun readers looked at every day.
The idea is that persons who commit certain crimes have no rights, and it is considered not just acceptable, but desirable, to persecute them arbitrarily and render them as “unpersons” who, even though not incarcerated, are rendered unable to live a normal life- get a job, socialise, form relationships. Another interesting real example is the fellow who used to be head of the world’s most disastrous pressure group, the Paedophile Information Exchange who, along with a few friends, was recently hauled into court under the new cartoon porn law and jailed indefinitely for his collection of hentai toons and games.
The problem with a society in the grip of a moral panic- an example is the Gay Panic that started in Victorian England- is that it does not recognise it. The hysterical and extreme behaviours exhibited by panickers are considered not only normal, not even just desirable, but effectively obligatory. It’s quite interesting to note that the paedophile as folk devil has almost perfectly replaced the homosexual as folk devil, with only the degree of hysteria being even greater. The fact that many of the victims of this witch hunt are not, as noted above, even recognisably suffering from the aberration described as paedophilia does not matter, because unfortunately when it’s witch huntin’ season all that matters is that one joins in with the hunt (or raise suspicions that one is worthy of becoming the quarry).
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My comment about the Church didn’t relate to the outbreak of paedophilia among the clergy. I was referring indirectly to the experience of someone I know who committed a very minor offence, was given a Community Service Order (i.e. a slap on the wrist) and placed on the sex offenders’ register, and then to his horror found the Diocesan Child Protection policy banned him from even going into a church let alone attending a service. So much for repentence, forgiveness and the starting of a new life.