@CJ Morgan: I'm trying to [rstuart] him honest.

It didn't look like anything else to me, CJ. While you on occasion do attack the person rather than discuss the issue at hand, this isn't one of those occasions and I appreciate your attempts to keep it that way.

@CJ Morgan: the recidivist paedophile was arrested and charged with indecent treatment of a child under 12, i.e. taking photos of a naked 4-year old girl for the purpose of sexual gratification

OK, so your issue isn't the parole violation. It is taking the picture. I don't know the circumstances around the case, so lets talk hyperthetically.

There are perfectly good reasons for making taking of pictures illegal, the primary one being invading a persons reasonable expectation of privacy. Let us assume that none of those laws have been violated. Your issue isn't the violation of parole conditions, so let us also assume he is a free man - an ordinary person like you or I who has no legal constraint on his actions. Finally let us assume he wasn't doing anything else illegal at the time, meaning if his camera was replaced by a police officer looking on, he would remain a free man.

So he is taking picture that doesn't invade someone's privacy or reveal a deep secret, and he is not otherwise, apart from taking the picture, doing anything illegal. It becomes a crime in your eyes because he will, in his own private place and time, get off on that picture sexually and it happens to be of a child instead of a horse, man or woman.

This means you are prepared to convict a man on the basis of what he might think, not on what he does. If that is what you believe CJ, I think you are a bigger danger to society than he is.

There is one caveat to this. We currently have a law that says is someone willing appears naked in a public place, they are granted a greater expectation of privacy than a clothed person. I think this is absurd.

Still fudging I see, rstuart. Why talk "hyperthetically" when we have a recent real life example of a child rapist being arrested and convicted for taking pictures of a naked little girl for sexual purposes?

The crime for which he was most recently convicted was "indecent treatment of a child under 12", which in this case constituted the pervert surreptitiously taking pictures of a naked little girl at a beach without parental permission, for the purposes of his sexual gratification. That this behaviour violates community standards is demonstrated by his apprehension at the scene by alert onlookers and security guards, his subsequent arrest by the police and conviction by the court.

It's not the taking of the pictures that is the crime, rather it's the indecent treatment of the kid. Are you suggesting that creeps like this guy should be permitted by the community and the law to pollute public spaces and endanger children with impunity? Who else is going to skulk around around naked children, taking covert pictures, other than someone who gets their jollies from sex with kids?

Of course people should be able to take pictures with appropriate permission, and children (or indeed adults) should also be able to be naked on a beach without being recorded for some sicko's sexual gratification. In this instance, I think both the community and the law worked well in the interests of child safety.

If you have a problem with that, then I think you're almost as much a problem for society as the child abuser in this case, since you're effectively facilitating this pervert's sociopathic sexuality.

P.S. Severin - come back as soon as you can. You'll be missed :(

@CJ Morgan: Are you suggesting that creeps like this guy should be permitted by the community and the law to pollute public spaces and endanger children with impunity?

No. He is a convicted child rapist on parole. Obviously there should be constraints behaviour. But when I made that obvious statement, you said I was fudging. You said I was focusing on the man and his parole instead of his actions at the time.

So in what I thought was a reasonable attempt to answer that criticism, I then said OK, let us us pretend he was a normal citizen; someone you could trust around children, and talk about what happened from that point of view. Now you accuse me of "talking in hypotheticals".

Make up your mind. And I supposed to be discussing this real incident or something else?

@CJ Morgan: Of course people should be able to take pictures with appropriate permission.

There we have a basic disagreement between us. If you have by your own choosing your yourself in a public place, then as far as I am concerned you have given permission to everybody to look at you, to record what you are doing, and to report on it. There is no need to ask.

It is a case of taking responsibility for your choices and actions. So if you personally have a problem with someone looking at, or taking a picture of your naked kiddies on the beach, then for pete's sake put some clothes on them! It is not a big ask.

I realise this isn't what the law says now. In this case the law is an ass. This sort of thinking is responsible for parents fighting over whether one parent can take a movie of their kids on the sporting field because another is worried the camera might catch a glimpse of their toddler taking a piss on the side line. This is insane.

rstuart:"This is insane"

In a nutshell. But let's face it, the society we have alllowed to be created around us over the last few decades is a pretty insane sort of a construction. Personal responsibility has been largely discarded as a driver of official policies in favour of a melange of victim-driven excuses for greater state regulation of everyday lives.

Morgan's reaction is a classic example of the old argument I mentioned earlier: "I reckon I could get turned on by such a photo, so you can't take it".

It's classic wowserism with a rather nasty streak of thought police thrown in. You're just fine as long as you do exactly what you're told, which, of course suits those who prefer not to think too much. After all, if it was OK then it wouldn't have been banned...

rstuart: << I realise this isn't what the law says now. In this case the law is an ass. >>

I think we'll have to agree to disagree - I think that the law worked very well in the case of the Southbank paedophile. Should the law and the community have to have waited until he raped yet another child, or should the precursor behaviour have been investigated? Personally, I'm happy that a predator like him can be apprehended under current laws. If he'd had a reasonable excuse for covertly taking pictures of naked little kids he wouldn't have been charged with indecent dealing. As it stands, his clearly unacceptable behaviour led to his arrest, conviction and reimprisonment - which I think is a good result.

Perhaps you and Antiseptic could start a campaign to have the law changed with respect to child pornography and indecent dealing offences. Of course, you'd have to identify yourselves and wear the public opprobrium that such a campaign would attract. Somehow I think that it's not going to happen.

CJMorgan:"you'd have to identify yourselves and wear the public opprobrium"

As I said, classic wowserism with a nasty streak of thought police and a touch of the jackboot for good measure.