John Grisham apologizes after troubling statements about child porn

[KamaAina]

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-john-grisham-troubling-statements-about-child-porn-20141016-story.html

John Grisham is known for writing bestselling legal thrillers like "The Firm," "The Client" and "The Pelican Brief." Promoting his upcoming novel "Gray Mountain," he told England's the Daily Telegraph that America's prison system is out of control.
Related Elmore Leonard archive goes to South Carolina

And in the process, he said some pretty creepy things about people viewing child porn. Later Thursday morning, he apologized via a statement on his Facebook page.

Initially, Grisham told the Daily Telegraph, "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." He continued, "But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn."

The description of "white men in prison who've never harmed anybody" is problematic on its own -- particularly in the wake of Ferguson, Mo., where 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed African American man, was shot and killed by police. Grisham's racially-loaded statement raises questions of what constitutes harmlessness, and how race is a factor.

I have a friend back East who hates Grisham with a passion. He must be enjoying some sweet schadenfreude right now!

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I don't know what inspired Grisham to mention old white men--

he's about the least racist southern author I can think of--but he's pretty much right about child porn users; as far as harming others, about the only argument you can make that child porn users pose a danger lies in the fact that they are a market for child-porn producers. It is the producers who are the real criminals in this matter, and I think every effort ought to go into catching and imprisoning them.

The following is only one of many studies that pretty much come to the same conclusion; I chose this one because it's freely available online.

The consumption of Internet child pornography and violent and sex offending
Jérôme Endrass1, Frank Urbaniok1, Lea C Hammermeister1, Christian Benz2, Thomas Elbert3, Arja Laubacher1 and Astrid Rossegger*1

BMC Psychiatry 2009, 9:43 doi:10.1186/1471-244X-9-43
This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-244X/9/43
Accepted: 14 July 2009
© 2009 Endrass et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background: There is an ongoing debate on whether consumers of child pornography pose a risk for hands-on sex offenses. Up until now, there have been very few studies which have analyzed the association between the consumption of child pornography and the subsequent perpetration of hands-on sex offenses. The aim of this study was to examine the recidivism rates for hands-on and hands-off sex offenses in a sample of child pornography users using a 6 year follow-up design.
Methods: The current study population consisted of 231 men, who were subsequently charged with consumption of illegal pornographic material after being detected by a special operation against Internet child pornography, conducted by the Swiss police in 2002. Criminal history, as well as recidivism, was assessed using the criminal records from 2008.

Results: 4.8% (n = 11) of the study sample had a prior conviction for a sexual and/or violent offense, 1% (n = 2) for a hands-on sex offense, involving child sexual abuse, 3.3% (n = 8) for a hands- off sex offense and one for a nonsexual violent offense. When applying a broad definition of recidivism, which included ongoing investigations, charges and convictions, 3% (n = 7) of the study sample recidivated with a violent and/or sex offense, 3.9% (n = 9) with a hands-off sex offense and 0.8% (n = 2) with a hands-on sex offense.

Conclusion: Consuming child pornography alone is not a risk factor for committing hands-on sex offenses – at least not for those subjects who had never committed a hands-on sex offense. The majority of the investigated consumers had no previous convictions for hands-on sex offenses. For those offenders, the prognosis for hands-on sex pornography, is favorable.

[msanthrope]

2. In viewing child porn, one has committed an offense against the child.

People who view child porn are very real criminals.

[zappaman]

29. I completely agree.

[msanthrope]

31. Funny..isn't it? If I asked those who thought viewing child porn

wasn't an offense...or a "lesser" offense....how they would feel if someone looked at their private medical records, and how they would want those people prosecuted, I'm betting they wouldn't be so cavalier.

[KamaAina]

3. "he's about the least racist southern author I can think of"

Flannery O'Connor wrote a short story in which the main character mocked his mother's racism throughout. John Kennedy Toole included an African American character, Burma Jones, in his classic 'A Confederacy of Dunces".

[zonkers]

4. What a dumb thing to write. Can't really take it back.

[LeftyMom]

5. Hi, have we forgotten that Harper Lee exists? Or is Alabama not Southern now?

As far as the rest of your post, the children in those images are people. Many of them are adults now. And they get notifications from law enforcement EVERY time an identified image of them shows up on some freak show's hard drive of fucked upness somewhere. Which is, entirely aside from the criminal acts involved in making those images, itself an ongoing source of harm to former child victims.

[xfundy]

11. I was not aware of this.

the fact that they get notice every time some perv looks at an image of what can only be described as a nightmare! How horrible.

[LeftyMom]

13. I read about it in the context of a woman who submits a victim impact statement EVERY TIME

and sues for damages wherever it's allowed. Apparently the images that were taken of her are very... common, popular?, I can't even come up with a word here that works but still conveys the horror... and her lawyer's office gets notices about them being found in police searches of hard drives very frequently.

She's a grown woman so the crime against her was some time ago, but she's revictimized constantly. And even if she wasn't notified or chose not to fight back, she'd still KNOW that those images are out there and perverts are using images of her as a child.

God, I want to vomit just thinking about it. I can't even begin to imagine how she feels.

[1StrongBlackMan]

6. Viewers of child porn ...

are just as much the criminal as those that produce the porn. But for the lucrative market, there would be far few children exploited.

Further, the children are just as raped (by the adult performing the act) as they would be if the viewer were performing the act.

[smirkymonkey]

15. +1000

Exactly, I can't believe he doesn't see that. And I really find it very hard to believe that his friend just got drunk "one night" and "accidentally" stumbled on to some child porn. Consumers of child porn create a market for it.

[theHandpuppet]

18. Well said!!

[1StrongBlackMan]

7. Regarding his being the least racist of southern writers ...

his statement could be easily understood to be, "Yeah, these old white guys committed a crime; but they don't desire to be in prison like those (Black/Brown) people that committed a crime."

[LeftyMom]

9. And of course it's an assertion based on Southern Writer meaning White Southern Writer.

There's so much wrong with that post one could go on for days. It's almost worse than the comments it's defending, which is really saying something.

[Gormy Cuss]

35. Yup. n/t

[MattBaggins]

19. This would be a great time for a self delete. or better yet a heart felt mea culpa

[EvolveOrConvolve]

32. I haven't read a post this distasteful on DU in a long time

And with the swill that's served up on DU on a daily basis, that's saying something.

Whether or not they actually physically rape the child victims, these consumers of child porn enable the rape, over and over with every image or video they view. Without the demand these sick fucks provide, child pornography wouldn't be so lucrative, and there'd be less child sexual abuse.

[Gormy Cuss]

33. A good friend from law school who served time for having child porn is what inspired the comments

and Grisham misstated that case by using an example of a drunk white man who accidentally stumbles across some porn with 16 year old girls who look older. Problem is, his law school buddy had a collection of porn featuring children as young as 12.


Grisham did offer a sincere apology for his comments :

October 16, 2014

Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure, or who in any way participates in child pornography—online or otherwise—should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

My comments made two days ago during an interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph were in no way intended to show sympathy for those convicted of sex crimes, especially the sexual molestation of children. I can think of nothing more despicable.

I regret having made these comments, and apologize to all.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

8. too late, buddy...

you suck.

sP

[Rex]

10. Hmmm...that sounds kinda specific, does he have a certain white man in mind?

A friend of his?

[Skittles]

16. I believe he is channelling himself

[mainer]

22. Yes, he was referring to a specific white 60ish friend of his

It was the example he used in the interview.

[Rex]

27. Thanks, sounded like he was talking about a friend. nt

nt

[B Calm]

12. Was John Grisham a politician long time ago?

[KamaAina]

14. Yup! I did not know that. </johnny-carson>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Grisham#Law_and_politics

Grisham practiced law for about a decade and also won election as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990 at an annual salary of US$8,000. Grisham represented the seventh district, which included DeSoto County. By his second term at the Mississippi state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.

[B Calm]

26. Democratic Mississippi State Congressman John Grisham. .

Bet he's making one hell of a lot more money today than what he was back then.

[dionysus]

17. dafuque? you don't "stumble" into looking for child porn! "oh hey hey i was drunk and..."

[MattBaggins]

20. I know right?

I was just walking along looking for a drug store and stumbled into this bath house.

[AndreaCG]

28. Well it's not impossible for someone to hack

Your account and put child porn on it if they want to frame you for some reason. It's also possible to be conducting legitimate academic research into child porn and view sites, though this might be hard to defend in court. But Grisham didn't cite either of these in his apologia.

[dionysus]

36. yes, it can be used as a nespecially vile way to frame someone, but Grisham didn't seem to be

talking about that. At the very least he opened his mouth wide and jammed a foot in there, at the very worst he tacitly condoned something I don't think he quite meant to.

[Nye Bevan]

21. Interesting how he focuses on the problem of 60 year old white guys being sent to prison

for surfing for child porn while drunk. As opposed to, say, countless minorities being sentenced to death in vastly disproportionate numbers.

[JonLP24]

30. He wrote a book about that

"The Confession"

It was fiction but a commentary that is relevant to what is going on.

Though sentenced to death numbers are disproportionate, it is especially on the victim side. 80% of victims in death penalty cases are white despite them making about half of all murder victims. Much more likely to get the DP if the victim is white and especially a white woman.

[mainer]

23. He's a lawyer, and he said something I do agree with.

There are far too many people incarcerated in this country.

Should viewing child porn lead to the same jail sentence as actual rape? I think that's a valid question.

[Gormy Cuss]

34. Should rape sentences be so short?

That's a better question.

[Silent3]

37. I've got what I know many people would consider an extreme view of First Amendment protections.

I don't think that the viewing or possession of any type of images or words, no matter what the content, no matter how offensive, should be illegal. When such things, in and of themselves, are crimes that strikes me as "thought crime" territory.

As a secondary matter, the issue of this kind of porn, along with keeping the threat of terrorism alive and the endless drug war, are all used as excuses for intrusive surveillance, as ways of convincing people to give up their freedom and privacy, because, you know, whatever it takes to get those bad guys.

[Brickbat]

24. "probably had too much to drink or whatever"

The classic defense of old white guys.

[Orrex]

25. The internet was totally asking for it.