(Thanks to Furpo and “Yahweh Ben Yahweh Sheikh Hassan Al-Nasri” for the link.)

Clearly there are still plenty of men who believe that chat rooms are breeding grounds for hot, bored adolescents anxious to lose their sexual innocence in the arms of older, experienced men. Of course, “older” and “experienced” too often means meaty, middle-aged, married, and quite possibly mindless. There has been a ton of media attention paid to OMFG! ONLINE PREDATORS!. How is it that these Humbert Humberts have not yet figured out that the only visitors to chat rooms are cops, cyber-vigilantes, and other pedophiles? Does their lust compromise their judgement? (Yes.) Are they just plain dumb? (Maybe.) Impulsive? (Probably.)

It is difficult to figure. But then PervScan and its readership are clearly attuned to the latest developments in the world of kink. (Desensitized? Yes. Clueless? No.) Maybe some of these men who get caught with their hands in the candy jar don’t have the informational sophistication to understand the perils of trolling for teens online. They may come from repressive environments… Sexuality is not spoken about… “Deviant” is a word they learn from the condemnation of homosexuals in a Bible study group… Meanwhile they struggle with irrepressible urges… One day they can no longer resist. Rather than test the waters (go slowly, dip in a foot, stay near the bank), they leap directly into the center of the pond. “Here I go. Banzai!”

It must come as quite a shock to be handcuffed in the back seat of a police cruiser. Perhaps one day a clever perv will demonstrate that pedophiles are not so mindless. “I was not trying to molest a child,” he will argue in his defense. “I was only satisfying my fetish for roleplaying cops. After all, if I were a pedophile, I certainly would not be hanging out in a chat room. Everybody knows that these chat rooms are inhabited not by little girls but by detectives who pretend to be little girls.”

You can almost imagine that the very word “pedophilia” will mutate in meaning. Instead of “sexual feelings directed toward children,” it will come to signify “sexual feelings toward police offers with adult baby syndrome.”

When something difficult happens in life, a do-gooder will inevitably offer up the old stand-by: “Well, it could have been worse…” But that’s not a consolation you can offer to “Kathleen,” the adolescent victim of this hit-and-rape. If she had just been raped, the do-gooder could say, “Well, you could have been run over too.” Or if she had just been run over, the do-gooder could say, “Well, you could have been raped too. Things can always be worse.” But if you combine the two, it’s tough to figure out how much worse things could be. What can the do-gooder say? “Well, it could have been worse. You might have been conscious while you were raped…” The thought isn’t especially consoling. Which do you think is worse: to be run over and then raped? Or to be raped and then run over?

Here is a picture of the dad-of-five. He does have a satanic look about him. He claims that “something overcame me,” but it’s not quite clear whether this act of possession caused him to (a) run over the young girl; (b) assault the body of the girl he’d run over; (c) both of the above. Another news report offers further details of the incident:

Kathleen was thrown five metres through the air and suffered a broken jawbone and serious brain injuries when she landed in a field.

Police commissar Werner Wojahn said: “The perpetrator dragged the bleeding girl into his car and drove to an empty parking lot.”

It was there that he raped her.

After he had sexually assaulted her, Björn P. let his young victim go and she stumbled home barefoot and badly injured while police were out searching for her.

Wojahn added: “When we found the broken bike and the shoes in the field, we thought there had been a hit and run.”

Kathleen has no recollection of what happened, but a witness put police on the right track. They traced the Renault and found the teenager’s bra in the boot.

A broken jawbone — if the devil really made him do it, he must have at least attempted oral sex with her. If you’re going to do something this evil, you might as well go all the way.

(Thanks to Furpo for the link.)

Recently Furpo has sent in a few different links about “sexting,” which is what happens when sex meets texting or, more broadly, what happens when young people act out their biological impulses with technological gadgetry. Though in many ways it’s just another moral panic about the sexual behavior of teens, you can see the dilemma the whole phenomenon poses. On one hand, it is problematic to charge a teenager who creates a video of his or her nude body with child pornography. On the other hand, if the behavior isn’t criminalized, it opens up the possibility that real child pornographers can induce young people to create the pornography which it is illegal for adults to produce themselves.

By way of solution, police quoted in the article recommend that parents disable the video features of their children’s equipment in order to minimize the possibilities of them abusing it. This is like scooping out a bucket of water in the hopes you don’t have to build a dam. It is clear that society has entered into a state where recording technology is ubiquitous. It is impractical to suggest that cameras be kept from the hands of young people in an age when every electronic device has a built-in camera and microphone.

As PervScan wrote in reference to the bizarre story about The Simpsons and child pornography, society is undergoing a difficult transition in its moral conception of childhood. It used to be that children simply “played doctor,” and now they “play doctor” while recording it with their Disney Pix Max digital cameras or even their iPhones. Sorting out how to deal with the behavior is one thing. Sorting out how to deal with the images and their potentials for abuse is another thing. In either case, though, there is one fundamental. The purpose of legislation is to protect people from harm. If a person is harmed by another secretly taping him and distributing it without his consent, there are laws to deal with that. Piling child pornography charges on top of them seems, at least in this case, absurd.

(Thanks to Furpo for the link.)

Here is a mugshot of Ms Owen. The affidavit published by The Smoking Gun contains descriptions of the video files. (”I” is the officer conducting the forensics examination.)

I viewed the first video file and observed a female that I clearly recognized as the complainant, Michelle Owen. The video showed Owen completely naked, saying “It’s playing” and then walking away from the camera to a bed with a dog on it and lying down. A male, whom I recognized as her ex-boyfriend Heath Pierle… then entered the video, got on the bed, and began to rub something on Owen’s vagina. Owen then picked up a jar of something, scooped some out with her fingers, and also rubbed it on her own vagina. During the application of the substance, both Pierle and Owen can be heard saying, “Toby come here.” Pierle then pointed to Owen’s vagina, and the dog walked over and began to lick it. Owen can be seen smiling as the dog licked her vagina. This video file was 31 seconds in length.

The second video is similar but 1 minute and 11 seconds in length. (That’s right. She will be punished — not to mention humiliated on the internet — for being the recipient of two minutes of canine cunnilingus.)

The obvious question that arises is: How could anyone do something so stupid? Was she secretly hoping to get caught? Did she have no idea that a forensic examination of her computer would reveal “deleted” files? The affidavit mentions that Ms Owen was involved in a custody dispute with her ex-boyfriend. Was she hoping to pin the pedophile label on his chest in an effort to discredit him in the dispute? She failed massively on that front. Evidently it also failed to occur to her that, if child pornography had been found on her computer, authorities might have a difficult time linking it to her ex. It was her laptop, after all.

In the final analysis, it makes for a dispiriting episode in the history of perversion. Typically it is the dumb perverts who get caught. Do you think society would condemn perversion as mightily if it weren’t so often identified with the idiots who sully its name?

(Thanks for the link to Emma, who commented: “One wonders about their early lives….”)

One does indeed wonder. If the eyes are the window to the soul, you might obtain an answer by scrutinizing this picture of Luke Abbey. The guy appears to be doing his best to channel Charles Manson. A little more facial hair and the resemblance would be uncanny.

It was only a month ago that there was a case in which both a father and his adult son were arrested for possession of child pornography. Now these three brothers have been arrested for a variety of pedophiliac crimes that includes, in two cases, actual abuse. Is this a trend? A coincidence? Probably it’s a little bit of both. The larger trend is that the internet has made copious amounts of child pornography readily available online. If you performed random searches on computer equipment owned by adult males — these three, incidentally, all lived with their mother — you’d probably come up with a surprising number of positive results: coworkers secretly downloading the same porn in adjacent cubicles, brothers hiding their kiddie flicks from each other, lovers fucking each other but daydreaming of the pedo stimuli lurking on their respective hard drives…

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this case is not only that all three brothers were pedophiles, but that the twins were apparently interested in girls but the other brother was into boys. (The non-twin was arrested for taking pictures of young boys.) Researchers have looked at the incidence of homosexuality among twins as a way of understanding the biological basis of sexual orientation. What would they make of these three brothers? If one twin is a pedophile, what are the odds that the other will be? If two brothers are into little girls, what are the odds that another brother will lust after little boys? It almost makes a student of perversion fantasize about pedophile triplets…

(Thanks to “Chris Finch” for the link.)

In a way, this story is simply an illustration of the truism that the abused tend to become abusers. Researchers estimate that anywhere from ten to thirty percent of abused children go on to repeat the maltreatment that they suffered. To be clear, the story doesn’t specify that the father abused the son. But all the same, you can’t help but think that something about the home environment encouraged him to repeat the sins of his father. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, as the saying goes.

Looked at another way, this is a story that’s less about perversion than about recklessness or outright idiocy. You would imagine that, when a person in someone’s own home has been arrested for a crime, the other people living there would be highly motivated to keep out of trouble for a while — ditch the drugs, lay off the child porn, maintain a low profile. How is it that the junior Mr Hunter failed to keep clean? Did he not care? Did he think he could blame his father for the continued presence of child pornography? (”No, no, that’s my dad’s kiddie porn… Uh, what? It has a file date of yesterday? No, I don’t know how to explain that… Maybe it’s my mom’s?”)

Finally, there is also a comic aspect to the whole thing. It used to be that fathers and sons went fishing together or attended baseball games. These guys evidently swapped illegal pornography. (”Hey dad, look at this infant getting ass-fucked… Wow, son, that’s really hot… I think so too. Let’s jerk off together like we used to…”) Or maybe it would be even more comical if each had absolutely no idea what the other was up to. You can imagine them sitting in separate rooms, downloading their depraved images and chatting to each other’s aliases in some pedophile chat room…

Several different readers (Warren, Emma, and Chris Finch) sent in links to this story about a Simpsons cartoon parody being classified as child pornography. This New York Times article does a decent job summarizing the issues.

It is obvious that child pornography — and child prostitution as well — have become international hot-button issues. In the past, the difficulty has been how to determine what is or isn’t pornographic, as exemplified by the famous pronouncement “I know it when I see it” offered by Justice Potter Stewart in 1964. In this case, the emphasis is on a different point — not what is pornography but what is a child or, more broadly, a person. Does an animated character count? It may seem ridiculous to consider a Simpsons character a “person,” but what authorities fear is a slippery slope. Given the sophistication of computer illustration, if a cartoon character isn’t considered a “person,” it will open up the way for forms of animation that are virtually indistinguishable from photographic — i.e. real and abusive — child pornography.

The irony, of course, is that while lawmakers are battening down on child pornography, children are making themselves increasingly pornographic. Just today PervScan reader Furpo sent in two links to articles declaring More Young Adults Engaging In Risky Anal Sex and 1 in 5 Teens Engaging in “Tech” Sex. What happens when these young people who have grown up with a lifelong awareness of pornography become adults and lawmakers?

In his book Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, the historian Philippe Ariès writes about the development of the notion of childhood innocence, defined roughly as “should be kept away from all matters sexual.” His work is worth quoting at length not only for its humor but for the perspective that it gives:

One of the unwritten laws of contemporary morality, the strictest and best respected of all, requires adults to avoid any reference, above all humorous reference, to sexual matters in the presence of children. This notion was entirely foreign to the society of old. The modern reader of the diary in which Henry IV’s physician, Heroard, recorded the details of the young Louis XIII’s life is astonished by the liberties which people took with children, by the coarseness of the jokes they made, and by the indecency of gestures made in public which shocked nobody and which were regarded as perfectly natural. No other document can give us a better idea of the non-existence of the modern idea of childhood at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Louis XIII was not yet one year old: “He laughed uproariously when his nanny waggled his cock with her fingers.” An amusing trick which the child soon copied. Calling a page, “he shouted ‘Hey there!’ and pulled up his robe, showing him his cock.”

He was one year old: “In high spirits,” notes Heroard, “he made everybody kiss his cock.” This amused them all…

Ariès gives further examples. This is not to say that morality, where childhood is concerned, was better or worse in the 17th century. It is to say, rather, that morality is historically conditioned. Can there be any doubt that we are going through the growing pains that signal a transition from one conception of childhood to another? Adults today continue to uphold the identification of childhood and innocence — and yet children themselves already seem to be abandoning it to play with their cocks, like Louis XIII.

Here is a photograph of Mr. Melia and here is one of Ms. Lewis. Weirdly, neither seems to have a chin. Mr. Melia’s dissolves into his neck, and Ms. Lewis’ gets lost in a roll of fat. Their faces make you recall those attempts by 19th century phrenologists to correlate the shape of a person’s cranium with tendencies to criminal behavior. Is this the face of a person inclined to perform a sex act on a cow?

Fellatio, of course, is oral stimulation of the penis, and a cow is a female creature, so you can presume that Mr. Melia was trying not to give but to receive. You might also presume that Ms. Lewis informed the police about these forays into animal cruelty. How else would the information have come to light? It’s unlikely that Mr. Melia would have incriminated himself, and the cows didn’t come forward to complain.

No one enjoys going to prison, but Mr. Melia will enjoy it even less than the average joe. Police officer, pedophile, pederast, bestialist — these are not the sort of tags you want to bring to jail with you. One is bad enough. Four of them? Mr. Melia may not have been consciously seeking to kill himself, but he pursued a suite of activities that will attract nothing good on his cell block. You’ve heard of suicide by cop? This is almost the opposite — a cop committing suicide through perversion.

(Thanks to “Chris Finch” for the link.)

A number of sites have run this story (or non-story, as the case may be), and commenters seem to be particularly outraged at the suggestion that breastfeeding can be pornographic. Here’s one at random: “What kind of perverted weirdy beardy sexualises something so pure and innocent? No wonder breastfeeding rates are so abysmally low.” There are two answers to that. First, a lot of “weird beardy” perverts get off at the sight of breastfeeding and pregnant women. Have a look around the internet and you’ll see that it forms a very popular genre of pornography. Second, lots of people lust after feet, but that doesn’t automatically mean that a picture of a woman wearing open-toed sandals is pornographic. The “pornographicalness” of a picture doesn’t come just from what it represents but from the use to which it is put. In practical terms, a photograph only becomes pornography when a viewer experiences the physiological symtpoms of arousal.

In that sense, a photograph of a woman breast-feeding isn’t pornographic in itself. Ms. Spears’ mother could view the picture in a perfectly benign, un-erotic light. But the photograph could become pornographic when it is plastered all over web sites serving the celebrity porn and “nipple slip” market. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the photograph is pornographic. It only means that the photograph is potentially pornographic, and you can’t indict it for that. Any photographic has the potential.

Even more interesting, however, is the question of whether the photograph somehow constitutes child pornography. Ms. Spears is currently seventeen years old. She became pregnant at age 16. State laws typically enable a person to consent to sexual relations at that age, but federal law still defines the individual as a minor — hence the paradox that the father of Ms. Spears’ baby has never been arrested for statutory rape, but a picture of her breast might qualify as kiddie porn. That’s clearly absurd and suggests that the definition of child pornography ought to coincide with the age of consent. If it’s legal to fuck at age sixteen, it ought to be legal to bare a tit to a camera.

(Thanks to “Chris Finch” for the link.)

Sage advice: if you begin to receive snail mail offering you child pornography, you’re fucked. Quit your job, sell your house, move to Latin America, and live a clean, pure, and devout life. Otherwise you’ll be sure to find yourself in jail, like Mr. Leitenberger.

The criminal complaint archived at the Smoking Gun makes for fascinating reading. It contains the initial solicitation letter. Here is part of it. Take note of the clever maneuvering — for example, the clear acknowledgement that the videos feature illegal material (which will serve to show criminal intent on the part of Mr. Leitenberger), or the agent’s attempt to build a sense of solidarity with his correspondent.

We received your name from a trusted source and understand we share a common interest. We would really like to send you our catalog. What we got (and what we really enjoy viewing) is taboo, very rare, forbidden and ILLEGAL MATERIAL. We have tried to be very discreet because of our profession and the fact is we like to keep our private lives very private. We do not do business over the internet. We are strictly a mail order business. We have found that mail order is the most secure and discreet manner to distribute our products. We wanted to let you know these things up front because you can get into serious trouble with our materials if you treat them lightly or are just curious.

We offer top quality kiddy porn videos, CD-ROMs, and DVDs (homemade and commercial). Our products contain underage sex, rape, showers, pets, and other hard to find items (note: underage really means under age 18, not just actors made to look young)… We also have extensive contacts and will attempt to fill any special requests. Just tell us what you want!

We are also willing to trade our products for kiddy porn videos (homemade and commercial), magazines, photos (homemade or commercial). Tell us what you have to trade and we can make a deal.

The criminal complaint also includes the catalog of verboten videos. Basically it’s a list of illicit scenarios culminating in a “great kid orgy video” in which a foursome goes at it “like little porn stars.” The catalog ends with the admonition to “destroy if not interested.”

Unfortunately for him, Mr. Leitenberger was interested. The complaint gives a number of emails he exchanged with the agent. At one point he wanted to back out of his order, but the agent roped him back in. And while Mr. Leitenberger may indeed have been gullible, he wasn’t completely unself-conscious about the whole thing. In one email he wrote: “Understand where I’m coming from, you got my name from what you call a reliable source, that kind of freaks me out. I’m on somebodies [sic] list that deals with this kind of material…” In the end, Mr. Leitenberger was more pedophile than paranoiac. He was arrested when picking up his package, which the complaint specifies contained “actual images of child pornography.” (The government can mail out real kiddy porn? Hey, unless they produce it, isn’t that copyright infringement? And what if the package had ended up in the wrong hands?)

Nowadays busting pedophiles is like shooting fish in a barrel. It happens countless times a day — but it all happens online. What’s astonishing about this particular incident is that it reverted to what you would have thought were outdated methods. You can imagine higher-ups even scoffing at the idea of mailing Mr. Leitenberger a letter… “A letter? You want to mail the guy a letter? On a piece of paper? With a stamp? Nobody’s that stupid, agent……. But boss, doncha see that that’s the brilliance? It’ll catch him unaware, put him off his guard…… All right, agent, just this one time. But if this don’t work, you’ll be busted down to selling money orders on the night shift….. Don’t worry, boss. I know how to work ‘em. You’ll see.” And damned if he wasn’t right!