Two recent letters regarding child pornography somewhat miss the point. We are a nation of laws. We can discuss the morality of Mr. Spiese’s actions, we can argue the psychology, we can castigate or rationalize depending on our own standards, but the real point is that the Commonwealth has laws regarding child pornography. Mr. Spiese knew the law. He broke the law. And he got a slap on the wrist for it.
If your other correspondents see no problem in the suffering and abuse of extremely young children, then work to change the existing laws and their penalties. As for all the psychobabble about porn users and the likelihood of them engaging in perversion with children, one has only to read the case histories of the most perverse of our serial rapist/murderers/cannibals. Every single one, without exception were extensively involved with pornography. Both Jeffrey Dahmer’s last interview and Ted Bundy’s last interview spoke of the line they crossed from “enjoying” pornography to acting out the things they had learned on many unwilling, unwitting victims.
Mr. Spiese may not have physically harmed any children (that we know of), but children were brutally and perhaps permanently harmed in the production of those materials.
It is one thing to be supportive of a man in his struggle to rehabilitate. It is another thing to excuse him, make this all sound like he has been persecuted, or dismiss this as no big deal. The number of small children being victimized is ever increasing. It seems to take a Jessica Lundy abduction, rape, and murder to shock us these days. Anything less gets whitewashed away.
Editor’s Note: In retrospect, we did not give sufficient gravity to the concept that, by patronizing children pornography sites, a person was creating a market that could lead to child exploitation. Nevertheless, we think the furor over Spiese involves more than this valid concern, and branding him a
sex offender and punishing him for eleven years is excessive.
