A Queensland police officer caught with more than 8000 child porn images on his home computer has avoided spending any time in jail.
How on Earth did he manage that you say? Well, despite being a highly trained law enforcement professional it seems that he's rather accident prone.
He was sentenced to 18 months' jail, but the term was wholly suspended after his lawyer successfully argued Wilson had downloaded the images by mistake.
A mistake he repeated more than eight thousand times no less. But these accidents happen, right?
Police traced his credit card to a child porn website titled “Sunshine Boys”, where Wilson had paid a $35 access fee.
You see, it all makes sense if you think really hard about it- he accidentally found his way online to a child pornography website and then accidentally entered his credit card details. I can only assume his fingers slipped on the keyboard. When police seized his computer what did they find?
In all, 8742 images were identified as depicting children aged between 10 and 18 posing nude, masturbating and engaging in sex acts.
So after accidentally signing up to this website, he accidentally began to browse its contents, and then accidentally began to download the images he found there. Over and over and over again. But it's not his fault you see?
Wilson's defence barrister Craig Eberhardt told the court his client had not purposefully sought out child abuse images when he downloaded pornography files from the internet.
Of course, just some terrible misunderstanding. He must have thought that looking at pictures of minors engaged in sexual acts was... well, something else because, by golly, this is all some awful accident.
"(He is) not a pedophile, he does not have pedophilic tendencies," Mr Eberhardt said, citing medical evidence.
Sure, of course not. There's no scientific link whatsoever between buying illegal images of children having sex and being a paedophile who likes to look at children having sex. None whatsoever. His real crime, you see, was in not getting rid of the evidence of his
"His culpability comes from his failure to get rid of it once he knew it was there."
Indeed. Perhaps he accidentally forgot to delete the images he himself had paid for and downloaded.
Judge Tony Rafter SC said a wholly suspended sentence was appropriate because Wilson posed no risk to children and was unlikely to reoffend.
Sure, there's no history at all of paedophiles committing their crimes again. Not if you close your eyes and stick your fingers in your ears while humming loudly anyway.
But he said the actions of the disgraced policeman had nonetheless helped to feed an "evil and exploitative industry".
Those dastardly websites, luring in unsuspecting police officers and making them hand over their credit card details and then forcing them to download illegal pornography that exploits the most vulnerable members of society.
"You should have been accutely aware of the seriousness of the offence because you were a serving police officer at the time," Judge Rafter chastised.
You would think so, wouldn't you? But apparently this is a minor concern of the judge because he did, after all, agree with the defence that the police officer's actions were somehow not his own fault. Perhaps he missed the class during police training where it was explained that child pornography breaks some kind of law?
"I accept that you did not actively seek child pornography and these images were accessed somewhat accidentally."
Yes, I think we've demonstrated quite clearly how easy it is to accidentally find, register with, browse, and download more than 8,000 highly illegal images to your computer. Funny that they don't mention the time period over which these accidents took place. Did he accidentally return to the same website over and over again too?
"I am also mindful that as a former police officer, a period of imprisonment would be harsher upon you."
And here we have it, the final piece of magic that being an Only One conjures up- the idea that somehow being a person who has taken an oath to uphold the law, who is bestowed with the power to wield the full force of the law on his fellow man- and who then decides to ignore the law himself- is somehow excused from being punished as his fellow men are. Why? And exactly where in the law books does it state that police officers are to receive special treatment at the hands of the court simply because of the job they do? I mean, if he hadn't been a police officer, a person trained to have knowledge of what was and wasn't illegal, you can bet that the court would have let him off with no punishment too.
If it wasn't such a heinous crime it would be funny to hear about apparently educated and reasonably intelligent people lie to themselves about what went on here. As it is, we're left with yet another example of how the Only Ones are being given tremendous leeway in the eyes of the law to commit any damn crime they want- and to get away with it.
1 comment:
Why can't he just look at normal porn like the rest of us?
Post a Comment