Man forces his 8 and 9 year old daughters to watch porn. Texas "sex-ed" statute protects him

[charlie]

DALLAS – A 1970s-era Texas law that allows parents to show "harmful material" to their children has come under fire after a prosecutor said he couldn't file charges against a man accused of forcing his 8- and 9-year-old daughters to watch hardcore online pornography.

Randall County District Attorney James Farren has asked the Texas attorney general's office to review his decision not to pursue charges in the case, which has prompted at least one lawmaker to vow to change the state's public indecency law.

"Our hands are tied. It's not our fault. I have to follow the law," Farren said Thursday. "The mother of the victims in this case was less than happy with this decision, which I understand. We were less than happy with the statute."

The law apparently was meant to protect the privacy of parents who wanted to teach children about sex education, but it states clearly that parents can't be prosecuted for showing "harmful material" to their children.

Farren said police reported the incident to his office after one of the girls told a counselor in June that her father made them watch adults having group sex and various other acts at his home in Amarillo. The parents of the girls, and their 7-year-old sister, are divorced and share custody...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091030/ap_on_re_us/us_parents_pornography

[flvegan]

1. Oh dear.

No idea where to even begin with this one.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. A very, very sick man

He may not face arrest, but hopefully his wife can get complete custody of the girls with this information.

[rug]

4. If she can explain how this is in her daughters' best interest.

"The Associated Press typically does not publish the names of parents if it could identify children who might have been abused, but Buckner is seeking publicity about the case. She has printed out copies of the penal code, which she hands out to everyone she meets."

[Brickbat]

7. If that happened to my kids, I might do what she's doing too. I'd want everyone to know about the

shitty law.

[rug]

10. Would your kids want to be the poster girls for yor crusade?

[Brickbat]

15. I guess it depends on what you mean by "poster girls," doesn't it?

If I were making fliers to hand out, I wouldn't use the girls' faces or names. I'd also tell them what I was doing, and help them understand that by going on this "crusade" we'd be helping other children, too. I think they'd be proud to see their mother stand up for them like that. I can't understand keeping silent about something like that, frankly.

[seabeyond]

22. i could see it as a very positive experience and empowering for the girls after father

making them watch hardcore porn with them and discussing sex acts with the girls that takes away their empowerment.

[Kutjara]

3. Something smells fishy about this article.

Maybe it's the fact it's in Texas that raises my hackles, but the whole thing is a bit too neatly packaged for the ultimate "Free Speech and Sex Education Produces Paedophiles" headline. It should not be beyond the bounds of human ingenuity to craft a law that permits parents to educate their children about sex, without also forcing those children to watch gangbang videos.

Like I say, this looks like someone's idea of a set-up.

[Confusious]

9. I don't think I'd like to see the law though

It'd probably be a tangled mess, and someone would get busted for using an encyclopedia article.

Worse has and always will happen.

Just let CPS take the visitation rights for Mr. Pervy.

Besides that, I was a minor and used porn to learn about sex. There's a whole bunch of guys out there just the same.

[seabeyond]

23. did your mother do it with you at 7 when you were way too young to be interested in it

sitting with you and discussing the sex acts with you?

that is healthy to you?

[TheMadMonk]

13. Well it was a long time in the making if deliberate.

No this is simply a case of unintended consequences. The law obviously allows that if the material is "adult legal", then it's permitted for the purpose of sex education. My wondering is if this idiot thought that by forcing his daughters to watch "NASTY" (goo?) sex he'd put them off trying it themselves.


Perhaps someone with use the "Will someone think of the children!" catch cry to try to capitalize and ram something ridiculously draconian and probably unconstitiutional through the state legislature. However, I doubt there was any plot to have this guy deliberately subject his daughters to hard core pornography in order to have him be "let off the hook" by this law, so as to deliberately touch off a "Kids and SeXXX" public ground-swell.

[Schema Thing]

5. I'm hoping that doesn't keep CPS from making sure he never

has the chance to do so again.

[ezgoingrl]

6. He may not be able to be criminally prosecuted, but I'm

willing to be a family court judge might be interested in his version of the family matinee.

[Egnever]

8. I dont think that law needs to be changed

this guy is a deviant to be sure but I dont think we should make laws based on the exception.

[EndersDame]

11. Yeah I can just see the Conservo Fundies trying to jail parents for showing their kids medical

illustrations.My charter highschool's health teacher had us put condoms on dildos (it was targeted at at risk youth many whom already were parents) and I see nothing wrong with that.

[blogslut]

12. Hang on

The AP story leaves something out:

The Randall County Criminal District Attorney has asked the state's Attorney General's Office to determine whether he can prosecute a father for showing his young children pornography as part of a sex education lesson.

The three girls, ages 9, 8, and 7, told their mother they had watched several pornographic movies with their father and discussed sex acts with him during a weekend visit at his home in Randall County.

The mother filed a complaint with the Amarillo Police Department.

Amarillo Police Cpl. Jerry Neufeld said officers investigated the complaint and interviewed the girls before deciding no laws were broken...

According to the above article the father showed his children an adult film in order to educate them about sex - not as a means to abuse them.

link: http://www.amarillo.com/stories/100309/new_news3.shtml

[Tumbulu]

14. why would anyone ever show children porn

as a means to "explain sex" to them. Porn is not at all normal sex. Porn is normally exploitive and shows unsafe sex (and women as stupid bimboes to be beaten_. This is abuse, not sex. Little girls, grown women, no one should be shown porn as a means to explain sex.

I hope the mom gets complete custody.

[Brickbat]

17. +1.

[seabeyond]

19. not only that... 7, 8, 9 all too young. such a thing as age appropriate and porn isnt

it.

and the father, sitting with three girls talking about the acts... just creepy, beyond

[blogslut]

20. First off

We don't know what films the man showed. Granted, this is not the way I would choose to teach my kids about sex but we have no idea the content of the films - we only have the salacious language used by the reporters of the articles.

As for your descriptions of "normal porn", I'm not going to get into that with you because you have a pre-exisiting opinion that I don't really care to change.

[Liquorice]

21. Oh it's abusive alright. The article says he showed them "hardcore online pornography." Those

kids shouldn't be around that man unsupervised.

[blogslut]

24. And you believe it because it was written in a news story?

I just find it interesting that people are so willing to believe every word of an article written with the intent to titillate.

[Liquorice]

28. I guess you think those little girls are a bunch of liars... Sounds like you have issues. nt

[BolivarianHero]

16. God bless America...

Woman puts double-entendre-filled ad for World Series tickets on Craigslist and gets entrapped by cops:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6896287.ece


Man shows hardcore pornography to young children and suffers no consequences:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091030/ap_on_re_us/us_parents_pornography

Wait...Can someone explain to me how the fuck this is even supposed to work?

[Warpy]

18. I think they need to look at that clown pretty carefully

if the girls confirm the "forced to watch" part, that it just wasn't something Dad was watching while they were playing with dolls or something.

If Dad is forcing them to watch hard core porn, then Dad is looking for them to do what their mama won't do for him any more.

He needs to know the cops are paying really close attention to him.

[paulsby]

25. good for the DA

the law is the law. what the man did was clearly wrong, but apparently not illegal.

the proper redress is to change the law. sad to see it took such a case as this to give the legislators a sense of urgency.

just like in the lori drew case, grossly immoral behavior is not necessarily illegal.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

26. Sounds like a badly drafted law.

In Texas, they do that all the time. Draft laws badly, make them overbroad or void for vagueness, and wonder why unintended consequences happen. Another consequence of idiot politicians.

[paulsby]

27. they do that in WA state too

where i live and work.

i sometimes read the law and get the impression that legislators purposefully write laws that are overly vague, overly broad, etc. to keep lawyers in business.

a great example is our state's cyberstalking law, a kneejerk law that is clearly (imo) unconstitutional.

[eShirl]

29. The parents share custody.

I'm pretty sure that can be changed.

[conspirator]

30. whata...nt