Queensland Police want to send a father of four to jail for up to 20 years on child-abuse charges over a video the Federal Government’s own censors have classified as MA15 .
Chris Illingworth, 61, from Maroochydore, was charged late last year with accessing and uploading child-abuse material after he published, on a video-sharing site, a video of a man swinging a baby around like a rag doll.
Despite having no involvement in the creation of the three-minute clip, he was committed to a trial by jury in the District Court on July 8. He faces a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment for each of the two charges.
Illingworth’s solicitor, Chelsea Emery, of Ryan and Bosccher Lawyers, has said that, if the case goes ahead, every Australian who surfs the net could be vulnerable to police prosecution.
He should probably just be charged with self-abuse.
Oh great I giving up the idea of moving to Queensland now.
Dvorak better be more careful that the “righteous squad” doesn’t come after him. For some of the things that get posted or linked to this blog. I know, we have “freedom of speech” in the USA. But I’d assume the Aussies have something similar. And it appears that over zealousness, in protecting the young, tosses aside any such rights. It’s all about winning votes. And this pretense at upholding token moral standard, by government officials, is what lead to things like Prohibition, McCarthyism, the Blacklist, and other tramplings of rights of American citizen. It can happen in the US, just as in Australia. It only require the right excuse, and political climate.
Wasn’t Australia a dumping-ground for convicts from the rest of the British Empire when first colonized?
Maybe it is a government-sponsored effort to strengthen their heritage by inventing new and inventive ways of incarcerating a percentage of their population. No doubt their prisons will soon become the centerpieces of culturally-significant theme parks, with rides and carnival sideshows operated by the inmates.
If only the great firewall of Australia was up and running he would have been protected from seeing the site the video was posted on. He should consider suing the Federal Government for negligence by allowing him to access this material in the first place.
He toke a video from YouTube and uploaded it onto LiveLeak and faces child-abuse charges. Absolutely ridiculous…
Pathetic, truly pathetic.
“every Australian who surfs the net could be vulnerable to police prosecution.”
Isn’t that the best way to control a society???
Put everyone in a position of perpetual defense of their innocence and you have a well controlled society.
20yrs for Jaywalking (malicious life-threatening endangerment of nearby pedestrians by forcing cars to dodge you)
10yrs for spitting gum out (malicious health-threatening endangerment of pedestrians from trip hazard)
# 4 Uncle Don
Tired cliché. South Australia for example (bigger than Texas) never had transported convicts. And the convicts were sent to Australia largely because America’s ‘convicts’ and ‘riffraff’ (who are obviously better, braver and more committed than England’s elite) had a revolution and the British needed to find somewhere else to put them.
P.S. 22% of Australians are foreign born (i.e. definitely not convicts).
I have some old photographs of my Uncle throwing me 5 feet in the air when I was a baby. If that considered child abuse now? Most of the time he caught me.
This seems to be a half assed attempt to demonstrate the kind of ‘child abuse’ material that the aussie internet filter is supposed to protect us from. Its an utter farce.
This is all driven by some bible-thumping independents that hold the balance of power in the senate, who are being brown nosed by the government in order to ease the passage of legislation (pardon the rectal puns).
Fortunately, its seems that the government is trying to find a way to back away from this filter crapola in a manner that saves face and doesn’t upset the god-botherers in the senate.
http://tinyurl.com/l3jn8h
My bet is that the slimy spin doctors in the Labor Party are going to try to get the most mileage out of scrapping the filter, as if they are doing the public a favour.
We have also blacklisted an abortion site, pro-euthanasia sites, and graphic Iran protest videos. And a man was convicted in relation to possession of naked cartoon Simpsons characters (some of whom are under 16 apparently).
The same is true of child porn. In my state you can be charged and convicted of producing child pornography merely by burning it to a CD or backing it up to a hard drive. You’re producing it because you’re making new copies.
To me the reason why the real producers of porn get higher sentences is because they create it. They’re the ones getting and forcing the children to have sex. And they’re the originators of such porn, thus without them, it would not exist. So it only makes sense that they should be punished more severely. But under the law anyone who makes any copy of such porn is punished equally.
This appears to what happened to this poor guy. He did not produce the child abusive video. But because he uploaded it, he’s synonymous under the law with the nutjob who did produce it. And that makes no fricken sense to me.
This is even worse than the guy who got nabbed for child porn when he photographed his child in the bathtub and sent a copy to the grandparents!
What amazes me is, this guy faces 20 years for posting the video yet the website goes ahead and publishes a scene from said video. I say they have knowingly and willfully violated the law and should have their cojones removed with rusty scissors!
# 12
Exactly.
How about news networks or documentaries that again and again shows footage of animal cruelty and people getting killed? Shouldn’t they be prosecuted for just that? And Steve Irwin did alot worse stuff to his kid then the guy in the video. Why hasn’t broadcasting companies all over the world been prosecuted for distributing footage like that?
See folks, this is what happens when you have government get involved in your lives. Have your government running health care in America, they will force you to get their vaccines full of mercury and cow puss, or face jail as they will consider it abuse to your kids and to society, claiming you are the threat.
It sorta makes sense to me. The idea of videos of adults abusing children is just as offensive as child porn; isn’t it the same thing? Doesn’t matter if it’s sexual or not, it’s still abuse of a child.
But they are lumping this material with child-porn, just possessing it will get you thrown in jail and labeled a sex offender. Regardless if you had anything to do with creating the material.
I tend to believe that this man shouldn’t be thrown in jail, but shouldn’t the same be considered done for people who merely posess child porn?
It all goes back to conspiracy laws. You didn’t do it but you have knowledge of the folks who did so you are just as guilty. Or so the idea goes. I don’t buy it, but it has long long legal roots.
And it does get sticky sometimes. For example, Charles Manson didn’t kill anyone, AFAIK. But I’m sure as hell glad he’s been locked up all these years.
I’m positive that that video was linked here too, and the discussion revolved around whether it was straight video or FX. You can see a smiling baby at the start and end, but for most of the video, it’s pretty much a blur and could easily be a realistic doll. A bit of careful placement and morphing, and you fool the Australian authorities, eh?
Big brother is watching you.
Maybe it’s time to just give up and go live with the Amish.
Mmmmmmmmm. Amish girls.
In all Australian states the prosecutors are independent of the government, no matter what level. In effect, the legal system works as a republic safety net within our democracy, which is usually a good thing ™, else we would have many lynchings from majority decisions.
In South Australia the state government tried to influence the prosecutor and had to remove very large doses of egg from their collective faces for quite a while.
Yeah, go Emporer Rann … er sorry, Premier Rann.