Source: thecentersquare.com 11/10/23
(The Center Square) – The Washington Sex Offender Policy Board last year recommended the Legislature consider treatment rather than imprisonment for those convicted of possessing or viewing child pornography or caught in an internet sting operation.
The recommendations among several contained in a report to the House Public Safety Committee regarding “treatment alternatives for certain sex offenses; lifetime supervision; failure to register; washouts; and system improvements.”
I guess the government is finally figuring out that that they can’t lock up every one of the over 29 million of viewers of CP out there. There needs to be a better approach than making felons out of almost 30% of the adult male population. Even so, it’s a shame that they have no problem ruining people’s lives anyway by putting them on the registry. What happens when virtually everyone is on a registry?
Why can’t we collectively agree to start filtering this stuff off the Internet? If they put as much effort into filtering as they do detection, they could eliminate the widespread propagation of this stuff.
I’m all for going after those who, with full knowledge, create, collect and profit off of disseminating pictures of CP victims. They, like child sex traffickers, know the harm they are doing and are among the worst of the worst. Let’s realize who the real enemies of children are and are not.
At last! A sane voice in the wilderness! Yes, people with CP offenses can be treated! In my case I had to do and pay for most of the work myself but it can be done. However, in my case, the kind of work I did with my psychologist was not related to my offense; it was related to the sexual trauma of my childhood that led me down that dark path. It was individualized treatment, something that I suspect the government will never want to pay for due to its cost. Also, around the time I was arrested I got involved at the suggestion of the psychiatrist who was monitoring my psych meds with the Sex Addicts Anonymous fellowship and that has worked wonders for me. I’ve been nearly fifteen years sober from any kind of pornography, legal or otherwise, and the desire to do what I once did with alarming regularity has been gone for the most part for many, many years. This begs the question as to why I am required to register every year and that my mug shot and home address are continually updated on the Megan’s Law website/public pillory. Ask the CASMB and the Legislature for that answer!
I agree with most points in this article except for the bit about sting operations. Generally, people caught up in stings first interact with the fabricated “victims” on an *adult* website, where they respond to a profile that indicates the user is *18 or over*, and the whole “gotcha, I’m really (insert arbitrary underage number here)” moment, more often than not, happens *as* they are on their way to meet a person they have every reason to believe is a mature adult who may be “age playing” or some such.
Treatment as an alternative for prison for first time, non-production cp offenses seems rational to me…(of course, I may be biased in that regard, given my own conviction). However, the treatment needs to be conducted by a legitimate therapist, not one of the numerous quacks out there masquerading as “psychosexual specialist” for an easy paycheck.
In my experience, people who view/collect cp are often treated exactly the same as “narcotic/sex addicts”…I believe this is a mistake in many individual cases, as the various compounded reasons that people seek out and indulge in such material are much more diverse and complex than a standard, one size fits all “addiction/philia” diagonsis.
That said, I personally believe that someone who simply views illicit material, is no more or less likely to engage in such acts themselves, than someone who does not. An individual’s interest in a certain type of media is not an accurate indicator of how they behave in the real world, nor of how they may act in the future…and most of the time, the mere interaction with cp will be the *only* criminal activity such individuals engage in for their entire life (or until/unless they get caught.)
I certainly fall into the “depiction only” category, but I was sentenced to 3 years in prison under a state statue for merely having deleted images on my computer that investigators took 4 months to find forensically. That’s how bad they wanted to charge me. Ironically, I would have received a lighter sentence at the federal level where they don’t have a mandatory minimum for possession. But being that my offense occurred in Wisconsin, the court slammed me with a mandatory prison sentence. I had no criminal record for 49 years, I had a suburban condo, career and was a tax paying citizen. But Milwaukee County DA th*g John Chisholm wanted his pound of flesh, so I did 3 years in prison. He’s the same criminal who low bailed another criminal that went out and murdered multiple people with his car during a holiday parade. My prison sentence ended up radicalizing me. When I say “radicalized,” I no longer believe in the views of the status quo concerning sexual abuse and perpetual victimization touted by the victim right’s industry. I have zero empathy for victims, because most likely they support these horrible possession laws. I know their victim right’s handlers support them, but they’re already enemy number one. That’s what happens to the mind of a person who was imprisoned for never touching & communicating with a child. At that point, treatment is useless because the disproportionality of the sentence leads one to believe that contact offenses aren’t serious, since they entail the same sentence as looking at a photo of someone doing the contact offense. Even my SOT therapist admitted to me that treatment won’t work unless I get over my belief that “my punishment didn’t fit my crime.” 7 years later, I’m still not over it, lady! Washington State has its heart in the right place, but frankly, it’s a little too late for me.