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AUTHOR JOHN GRISHAM has said that prison sentences for people who look at child porn are too harsh.
Grisham (59) made the comments in an interview with the Telegraph.
The novellist said that America is jailing too many people for watching child abuse online.
“We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who’ve never harmed anybody, would never touch a child.
But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons and went too far and got into child porn.
“These are people who haven’t hurt anybody. They deserve some type of punishment, whatever, but 10 years in prison?”
Grisham said that an old lawyer friend of his was jailed in Canada for three years after viewing pornographic images of underage girls while drunk.
It was 16-year-old girls who looked 30 … He shouldn’t have done it – it was stupid, but it wasn’t 10-year-old boys.
He added that he had “no sympathy” for “real peadophiles”, who deserve to be locked up.
Grisham is best known for penning legal thrillers The Pelican Brief, The Firm and A Time to Kill.
One in Four, which supports survivors of sexual abuse in Ireland, criticised the comments.
Executive Director Maeve Lewis said that Grisham’s assertion that “innocent middle-aged men stumble across such websites while under the influence of alcohol is not borne out by the international experience”.
“Across the world, most convictions for downloading images of child sexual abuse relate to people who have stored hundreds of these vile videos and photos on their computer and many of whom have shared such images with other sex offenders.
It is an added burden for the child victims that these images will be available on the web for all eternity and may continue to be circulated long after the child has grown up.
Lewis said that downloading images of sexual sex abuse can also be “a pathway for
the viewer to sexually abuse children in their own social network”.
She added that One in Four has seen “a marked increase” in the number of young sex offenders aged 18 – 25 attending their treatment programme.
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Polar vortex heading our way. Most of Europe will be in the minus teens next week. Ireland minus 2 and 3. Hopefully this is the last blast of Winter
@saoirse janneau: what a time to have an airlock in my radiators. Oil must have been nicked from my tank.. it seems it went from half full to empty in 4 weeks and I’m out Mon to Fri 9 to 5. Now I have oil and no radiators working :(
@Peter Cavey: easily enough to fix. Just google the name of the boiler and it usually involves loosening a screw until the oil comes out
@phil: Water comes out, oil doesn’t go into the radiators.
@Peter: Sometimes you need to bleed the boiler. If all of his rads are cold it’s his boiler that’s the problem.
-2° in Leitrim now, this has been a long chilly winter here!
@Dorothy Giselsson: at least it’s lovely though ;)
Next week could see significant snowfall in places. One of the Models took a step back this morning however. It will be bitterly cold with temps struggling to get above freezing during the day. If it snows it will be proper powdery not the wet shite we get from the Atlantic.
@phil: That’a a relief. Can’t be doing with that wet shore. Proper snow is what we deserve.
@phil: yeah cant have another episode of “the wrong type of snow fell” again
@phil: The year of the big snow in 1947 which I often heard the old people talking about, the snow didn’t hit till the end of February. Hopefully we’ll just have a light dusting.
A lot of comments moaning about Met Eireann issuing lots of warnings. I for one appreciate the forcasts and understand they can’t be 100% of the time.
I can’t wait for the yellow warnings when we hit temperatures with double numbers. Break out the sun screen!
God help the homeless! Hopefully all who can will be sheltered.
The beast from the east. However most people don’t believe it. Can’t blame them. Lows of – 10 and heavy snow is predicted. Met office UK gave a 30 forecast other day which was laughable at best considering most reputable weather monitoring stations give ten day forecast.
@James O’Brien: The UK met office always air on the side if caution regarding long range forecast.
@James O’Brien: they couldn’t get clarity 30 days especially after a ssw took place .peoole in east irl uk should prepare it’s going to get very messy this isn’t just 2 days this could last weeks last time we saw ssw was 2013 2010
It’s the Beast from the East!! Where’s Dwayne Johnson when you need him?? I think I’ll hedge my bets and wait and see what happens…. no panic buying on the tins of beans just yet.
I’d rather the porn vortex
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=porn%20vortex
I don’t get why February is considered spring in Ireland. To me it’s considered winter as in the rest of Europe. I don’t expect somewhat warmer conditions until March tbh.
Next 2 weeks of frozen hell?
have your say