Man sentenced to 20 years for pictures on phone and inappropriately touching child

Do any of you find this prison sentence to be excessive?

A man was sentenced to 20 years in prison because police found pictures of child pornography in his mobile phone, and because he inappropriately touching a 10 year old girl. 5 years before police discovered the pictures, the girl had been at a pool party at the man's house. He picked her up to throw her into the pool water, but when he held her he used his hand and cupped it between her legs to throw her. He did this ignoring several requests to stop.

Police found thousands of images of nude children who appeared to be under the age of 18 on the man's mobile phone.

This man obviously has some severe issues and perversion problems, but is this prison sentence really appropriate and fair?

The inappropriate touching of the girl at the pool party is wrong and kind of cringe-worthy, and perhaps the man should be punished for that, but it does not seem like the obvious type of sexual assault that is anywhere close to rape. I think that act alone could only justify 9 months in prison at the very maximum.
I think mainly he is not being punished for that. Rather that act is just being used as insight into his character and confirmational additional evidence that he actually put those pictures on his phone. Perhaps the judge was thinking this actual physical behavior is suggestive that he might physically act on his perverse fantasies.

The man was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years. Meaning he could end up spending even more time in prison.

But back to the details of the pictures. In the mobile phone in electronic storage police found 27,781 photos of prepubescent children engaged in a sexual act and or posed nude, and 5,897 videos of children in various stages of nudity or engaged in sexual acts with adults or other children. Law enforcement was able to identify 10,719 children under the age of 18 in the images and 1,440 in the videos. Victims in the pictures were from Indiana, Georgia, Washington, Switzerland, Russia and Ukraine.

Sounds awful. But how responsible is this man for those children being victimized?
That seems to be a difficult moral question for us. Is he in some way responsible for what happened to those children? Should he be held responsible? Was he further victimizing those children by being one of hundreds of people who viewed their pictures in compromising sexual acts?

I think on top of that there's also the worry over burden of evidence here. That could be another issue. Yes, in this story the man admitted to the court that he had a problem and pleaded guilty to all charges. But wouldn't it be very easy to plant evidence on someone's mobile phone to frame a person of a crime? This isn't even something physical, it is electronic data. There is the possibility someone far away in a distant part of the world could use hacking techniques to move electronic data files into your phone. You might not even realize the pictures have been placed there.
Does anyone else see a problem with putting people in prison for 20 years for having what amounts to electronic data, that has been criminalized, in their electronic devices?


The name of the accused is Christopher Livingston, from North Baltimore. The judge was Joel Kuhlman.

"Pure evil": N. Baltimore man going to prison for child porn, by Marie Thomas-Baird, Sentinel-Tribune, March 6, 2022.

 

I have seen some sentences handed down just for the porn that I thought was excessive when they didn't create it but if this guy was fondling kids, told to stop, and proceeded to keep doing it, I really don't care that he got 20 years.

 

the insistence with which you're defending and making excuses for this man is frankly extremely concerning. not only did he have 30 THOUSAND images of children being sexually abused, he also molested a child himself. he is a threat to society and allowing him to live free would potentially endanger more children. i see that sentence as approriate.

 

Either you are misunderstanding what exactly happened in the story or your should know that is a disingenuous misrepresentation.

He briefly touched her there to hold her as he was throwing her into the water. She had a swimsuit covering that area, and there were several other people around watching at that party. What he did is probably not even the type of thing anyone would say anything about if the man had been her father.
Of course now in retrospect, knowing that he had all those pictures, what he did 5 years previously was reexamined in a different light.

I'm not sure "fondling" is exactly the best description of what happened. The girl had a swimsuit on so the contact was not really directly on the private area. He only held her for a quick period of time, while picking her up and then throwing her into the water.
It would probably not even have been seen as definitely sexual, only a little suspiciously so, since it might have seemed to other people that were there at that party that he was only doing it to hold her up and throw her into the pool. There is a reason he did not face criminal charges for it until several years later.
The girl told her parents at the time but they did not think it was the type of thing that was worth going to the police with. The girl did end up making a report to the police about the incident a year after it happened. But still there were no criminal charges for it until many more years later.

Probably the reason he was told to stop had more to do with him throwing her into the water without her permission than how he was holding her, or more specifically wear his hand was.

 

Paraphilia is very much a disorder of a sexual nature. That he was doing it in public and against directions suggest he may actually be on the cusp of engaging in pedophilia if he hasn't already.

 

That's kind of a stretch. He would likely not even be charged or legally punished for that if it had not been for the pictures police found 5 years later.

You understand that, right?

 

based on what it sounds like he did, I have no problem with the sentence

 

I tend to agree with you.

 

Do you want to wait until AFTER he rapes a child?

 

Well, it is usually the right thing to do to wait until AFTER a person has done something wrong to punish them for it.

Otherwise, shouldn't the punishment be in proportion to the actual wrong that was committed?

(And bearing in mind that you and me seem to have different views when it comes to morality. By "wrong", I do not just mean "illegal".)

 

If people did not download the porn, they would be less likely to abuse children to sell it. He is guilty for contributing to the abuse of all 10,000 plus children.

 

So, for the sake of argument, would you hypothetically agree that this punishment hinges on whether or not he actually paid for that material, and how much money?

(playing devil's advocate here) I think we can also ask the question, exactly how likely is it these children would not have been abused if there were not paying customers? I mean, I suspect many of those children would still be abused even if there was no one paying to watch it.
The article said some of the abuse happened in the Ukraine and Russia, so those might be places where money would be more likely to fund an abuse industry.

I just want to see some actual math here. About how much money does it take to end up causing one of these abuse incidents, on average, and so how much actually responsible is person who pays a certain amount of money for the abuse? How much money being spent exactly is equivalent to paying for one rape to happen? (There has got to be a way to view this statistically)

The punishment should fit the crime, right? Otherwise justice and fairness is being thrown out the window, and all this is being based on hysteria and emotionalism.

Or do they just assume that if this guy has a massive trove of this stuff, he must have paid a lot of money for it, and that is just easier for law enforcement to assume than having to track down evidence of how much money was spent?

Some of you will think this is an insane idea (and I am not supporting this stuff) but another idea might be to have a registration of all the pornography that already exists, with registration numbers, to make sure new pornography is not being produced. That might actually end up being more effective at preventing the abuse.
It could still be made illegal, if you want, but just with much less punishment, since we would know that money was not funding more abuse.

 

The very possession of child porn is illegal - in lots of countries and there are special task forces dedicated to tracking the end users. No this is one crime that the international community stands firmly against

https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/opsccrc.aspx

 

Mate we don’t often agree but on this topic we surely do

Child pornography is NOT a victimless crime

 

More emotionalism. Tell us exactly how many victims this man. And to do that, you'll have to resort to mathematical estimation and statistics, because there is no evidence that he actually raped or directly paid for anyone to be raped.

Look, I'm not saying it's a victimless crime. I'm just asking you not to fall back on oversimplified overgeneralization fallacies. (Simple-minded emotion)

 

Paedophile rings

You are assuming money is changing hands - often it is not. The dark web is the haunt of Paedophile rings where they “share” their pictures and videos. It is already illegal registering it (and my stomach turns at this suggestion) would do nothing. We are not talking here of a picture of a naked child

https://www.sent-trib.com/news/pure...cle_ea54efea-9cfb-11ec-bda3-874a8cdf3aad.html

 

Doesn’t matter

The very act of dealing in child pornography is an international crime

 

I'd be OK with a lighter sentence if he helps prosecute whomever he got the images from.

 

That is unlikely. Those images were probably obtained from anonymous sources through the internet.

 

If money is not changing hands then he has really not actually caused any of these unfortunate kids to be victims, has he?

It would be no different than if I had a friend who gave me a copy of a picture he sneaked of his wife while she was in the shower without her permission.
I suppose you could argue that I would be disrespecting her by looking at it, or that I was taking part in the violation of her right to privacy if I then gave the picture to someone else. (Although one could ask if her rights are really actually being violated if she never finds out, since it has no additional physical effect on her if more strangers view it)

 

It's wrong because it is illegal.
That argument will go very well for you in the abortion forum, won't it.

 

This is really disturbing - do you know that? Yes it bothers people to have pictures of them naked shared without their permission aNd you can be prosecuted for that too in many places in the world including Australia

 

type of guy who writes this many paragraphs in order to defend a man with thousands upon thousands of pictures of children being r*ped

 

Maybe you should be especially aware of the fact that the there is nothing anonymous on the internet...

 

You understand I don't care how much he got because if that, right?