Paul thanks for the link. Some interesting stuff. I liked the Hinch one as well, very different style but maybe more me http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=tCAaI0UqDJ8

Ludwig, a lot of your earlier comments seemed to go well beyond "what might have happened" arguments and into minimising and seemingly passing off as trivial actions that others of us find abhorent. Maybe bad phrasing but you will notice that its not just those keen to attack you who have read those comments in that way. I keep questioning myself to see if I could have misunderstood you on this but its difficult to see what you have written about Harris and his actions on this thread as intellectual exploration concerns with the justice system.

R0bert

there are no win propositions
like are you still beating;..your wife

or you cant say a word properly
once someone has pointed 'it'..out; its become a self fullflling prophecy

like i notice 321 seems obbsessed by teaching us how to read what ludwig says[you have to because he says so
i have seen it with my writings/they cant refute so they polute

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/give-a-dog-a-bad-name-and-hang-him

give a dog a bad name and hang him

proverb It’s very difficult to lose
a bad reputation, even if it’s unjustified.

RObert, I just thought I'd mention to you that yes I'm keen to attack Ludwig. There's 1 reason for that, and it's Ludwig's heartless attacks on the victims of pedophilia. As I said earlier it's the rapist's excuse that these attackers use .. blame and accuse the victim as much as possible in an attempt to mitigate the actual crime.

I was a victim of pedophilia, and I will forever defend victims of pedophilia against attacks from people using the rapist's defence.

<< Ludwig, a lot of your earlier comments seemed to go well beyond "what might have happened" arguments and into minimising and seemingly passing off as trivial actions that others of us find abhorent. >>

R0bert, please be aware that as Poirot noted, this thread evolved as have my views. I started the thread before the jury had reached its verdict. I said that I was having considerable difficulty with the whole issue and was vacillating somewhat early on.

Just be mindful that quotes presented in isolation can be quite misleading if the full context is not understood.

Also, when everything that is construed as negative is pulled out and presented as a package, completely minus anything on the other side of the coin, then a very unbalanced perspective can be presented.

<< I keep questioning myself to see if I could have misunderstood you >>

Please don’t hesitate to ask if there is anything that you want clarified.

Dear Ludwig,

I have certainly been pretty shocked by the stance you have taken on this subject. A proposition from you of a $300 fine for a near 40 year old man twice raising a little girl's skirt to touch her genitals I felt was so completely out of synch with the way our community views this type of transgression that I was at a lost.

Having said that compared to individual's dreadful and cruel claim that all the molested young girls led Harris on to get at his money your position was hardly the worse. Individual refused to back away from his comments but from your last post I take it that you see your views evolving over the thread. It is in that light that I continue the conversation.

Harris has had the charges of downloading child pornography removed from this particular case but I'm keen to see where you put this component on your scale of severity given you see the interfering with an 8 year old child as a reasonably minor offence. Since it appears he did not pay for the images but rather searched for particular sites and downloaded them then it could be said did not finance the production of child exploitation material. He had no impact on the physical or emotional health of the children whose images he gathered. The case might even be made that getting his jollies online may well have meant he was a little less inclined to go after children in real life.

So a $50 fine? $100 - $200? $200 - $300? $300+?

Steele

Regarding Harris’ offence against ‘A’, which was his first offence, or at least the court would had to have assumed that it was his first… a nine month custodial sentence is surely just completely outrageous.

This is what I said about it: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=6462#192478

If it had been his only offence, I wonder if he would have received a custodial sentence. I wonder how many people would receive that sort of a penalty for such a thing?

Given the quite considerable uncertainty in the stated effect that this very quick and once-off action had on ‘A’, I would think that the penalty should indeed have been very much smaller.

This offence was extremely minor compared to that committed against Tonya Lee for example for which he received 12 months jail.

Ok, perhaps something a bit more substantial than a 300$ fine would have been in order. But certainly not jail time!

Regarding Harris’ downloading of child pornography; I am of the understanding that he viewed websites a few times back at the start of the internet age and then ceased doing it, perhaps when he realised that these actions could amount to an offence and could be traced on his computer.

The simple viewing of images on screen apparently falls within the definitions of ‘downloading’ and the ‘production of images’ as I understand it, and that downloading in this instance did not refer to the storing of images on his computer or other device.

I also recall that these images were not of small children but were of girls that were only a little bit underage apparently, and that the authorities had to have a very close examination of the material in order to determine that they were actually of underaged girls.

Correct me if you know differently.

continued