I've actually known another person who claimed to be a pedophile, but said he didn't touch the girls. I to this day think that guy was just saying it for the attention. (He seemed to say lots of different things for the attention.) Either way, he wasn't breaking any laws and while I wouldn't hire him for a babysitter, he never did anything to suggest he wasn't harmless.
But I don't even know what to root for in the case of the pedophile blogger. I'm not sure why he is choosing to express his desires they way he is, and while again, the photographing the girls in a public place is legal, I can understand how awful that must be on the parents.
I guess I still view his actions as legal, but I wonder what kind of person you have to be to make that much of a spectacle of your own perverse desires, knowing said spectacle will create pain and fear. I'd like to think that the choice this man made came down to something a little more complicated than:
"It would be fun to put this stuff all over the internet, but it would cause a lot of innocent people a lot of pain and worry that I will hurt their innocent children. Oh well, I'll go for the fun..."
But I'm having trouble seeing how it does.
Thoughts?
CC
9 comments:
This guy first surfaced in the Seattle area and I saw lots of newscasts about him. My thought was similar to yours, CC-----why is he being so public? He allowed himself to be interviewed and photographed, he was open about his taking pictures of children, and he never denied anything except that he was actually molesting them.
It occurred to me then that perhaps he was using public opinion as a way to keep himself from hurting them. If everyone knew his proclivities, people would keep track of his whereabouts and would keep him from hurting kids. He pays bigtime in terms of his privacy, his self-esteem, and his ability to support himself.
He can't be arrested unless he does something illegal, which I guess he has now done, in terms of violating a restraining order, but they can't hold him long for that, at least not unless he does it frequently.
What are the options for this guy? and for others who may be like him? Not many, I think. At least he is the "enemy" we know, unlike the many unidentified pedophiles out there.
He's been hanging around in a town nearby, which has parents freaking out. I agree with Ms. Kitty's thoughts, and I'd add one more (totally selfish Monday morning thought):
As a child-free/child-less person, I find that the town nearby is totally paranoid about people without children in the first place and this makes it far worse (I don't actually know whether McLellan has children, but God forbid my husband walk alone and without an alibi past a little league game and pause for a moment.)
Certainly the end of the CNN article linked in CC's post supports what ms. kitty is saying -- that he's doing this as a kind of therapy, to state his thoughts openly instead of keeping them to himself. I agree that I'd rather know that someone has pedophilic thoughts.
While I agree with Volokh that it's impossible for someone to live normally without being within 10 yards of a child, I think a judge would be within his discretion to grant a TRO to every parent who finds that McClellan has photographed her child, whether that discovery is made by seeing him do it or by finding the picture on a site. That may eventually add up to a lot of kids that he has to avoid, but frankly he can stop the TROs by not taking any more pictures of children whose guardians do not consent expressly to his doing so.
He probably does it because it's the way he is, and because he can.
I know lots and lots and lots of photoblogs where gay men take pictures of other men and go "that is the type of guy I would like to have sex with". Whether they are a stranger on the street or some celebrity.
30 years ago, any gay men that open would have been practically crucified, and everyone would be up in arms about whether they or their husband had been the subject of said gay man's burlesque desires and had an internal shiver about it.
Thus, this person is being the same way and making everyone near him explore their own taboos.
Parents, naturally, are freaking out because they are hypersensitive to their children's wellbeing. As most kids are dumb and boorish (usually blanketed by terms like "innocent" and "energetic"), they face innumerable perils. However, the peril of 'might become fantasy material for a self-admitted pedophile' seems to be relatively small when compared to 'might eat poisonous bugs' or 'might play in traffic'.
Either way he's making Americans come to grips with their FUD reactions to pedophilia thoughts: While most people are like 'oh, okay, you aren't actually going to try and touch or interact with my kids', they will proudly admit that they don't want him anywhere around them.
Epilonious, taking the example of if someone has an "I hate women, I want to punch them in the face" blog, where he wrote extensively about how he wants to punch women in the face.
He might say that he isn't planning to punch any women in the face because it's illegal, but if he moved to Fairfax County and started taking pictures of "women I'd like to punch in the face," I wouldn't want him around me either, and if he were, I would worry constantly that if I said or did the wrong thing, he would punch me in the face.
I don't think that's hypersensitive at all, I think that's pretty reasonable.
CC
CC,
But, if blogging about women face-puncher wanted to hit somehow helped him deal with his cruel condition of constantly wanting to punch women in the face... moreso if his blogging attracted women who had a bit of a masochistic streak and wanted to be punched in the face occasionally... I wouldn't fault him.
The pedophile blogger doesn't even get the consolation that some 12-year-old girl is gonna fall in love with him. Maybe he is being so public about it just to go "see, I'm a human being. A human being with desires that are massively fucked-up by societies standards... here is how society is wont to treat me."
People will probably do the same things they've always been doing "wow, that's a really sad situation you're in... but look at my kid cross-eyed and I have a mind to shoot you"
If his blog were to attract little kids who wanted to be sexually abused (Usually kids who have already been sexually abused, wbo grow up associating sexual abuse with love and adult attention) then that would be all the worse for him,because that a child is screwed up and desperate for adult attention doesn't make any resulting sex consentual and doing anything with them would still be child rape.
I actually found one of the guy's websites and two things struck me:
1. He seems to have no interest in writing about the emotional aspects in a way that would be sympathetic. I left his website actually FAR less sympathetic to the guy because of this:
2. He regularly posts about showing up at these fairs while high on drugs like Psilocybin. So we have a man who chooses to have these interactions with young girls while he is on a drug that causes hallucinations and delusions, along with depersonalization.
Let me guess, the first time he does fuck up and touch somebody's kid in an illegal way, it will be the drugs' fault, not his own?
CC
I checked the website you mentioned, CC, and I agree, it is absolutely creepy. His mindset is seriously screwed up, whether he's doing something illegal or not. Turns my stomach.
It's really a difficult area of humanity. It appears that sexual perversions (I think pedophilia is one. I mean that in the psychological sense of "perversion" rather than as an insulting term)are not curable with the current state of psychology. What do you do about someone who has an incurable "disease" that is harmful to others? (and apparently "contagious" too! since people get it from being abused as children. At least that's my impression.)
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