Man Sentenced To 20 Years for Child Porn Convictions

[beam me up scottie]

Man Sentenced To 20 Years for Child Porn Convictions
Friday March 10, 2006 8:55pm

Richmond, Va. (AP) - A man who used a public computer at state offices to receive child pornography depicted in highly stylized cartoons will spend 20 years in prison.

Dwight Whorley, 52, was sentenced Friday.


He's the first person convicted under a 2003 federal law that criminalizes the production or distribution of drawings or cartoons showing the sexual abuse of children.

A court found Whorley guilty on November 30 of using a computer at a Virginia Employment Commission office in March 2004. Authorities say he received 20 Japanese anime cartoons that graphically depicted minors engaged in sex with adults.

Whorley's child pornography conviction was the first under the statute that was NOT based on actual photographs of children.

Whorley was convicted on 74 counts.

http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0306/309600.html

That sound you just heard was BMUS's head exploding.

[bullimiami]

1. that is so wrong. where is the justice in this fucking country?

drawings, no matter how offensive anyone might think they are, do not hurt anyone.
how can there be child pornography when no child is involved.

our government has taken a sick and brutal turn for the worse.

[beam me up scottie]

3. Welcome to 1984.

The thought police were expecting you.

[bliss_eternal]

5. Sounds like they are tying to make an example of him

for some reason or another... :shrug: Much as they did Tommy Chong, for selling drug paraphenalia on-line (bongs).


edited to correct spelling error.

[beam me up scottie]

6. Yeah.

Consider me warned.

Even if this is challenged, look who we have on the SCOTUS.

[bliss_eternal]

30. Oh yeah--

* and co. were setting this up a looong time. Now that they've revealed their evil scheme, apparently taken from the McCarthy book on "How to Alienate a Nation." :eyes:

[Monk06]

9. Imagine how many years in the joint you could get for drawing anime. n/c

[beam me up scottie]

12. I don't want to.

If just looking at it gets you 20 years...

[madrchsod]

14. hentia-anime is not pornographic

i made the same mistake and had to look it up...

[Clarkie1]

2. Who is the victim? This is very disturbing. n/t

[beam me up scottie]

4. In this case,

the defendant.

[Clarkie1]

7. You are right. This is so unjust. n/t

[Poll_Blind]

8. While disgusting and abhorrent I believe this shit is...

...constitutionally-protected. A drawing is a drawing. It is a slippery, very slippery slope. This guy on Monday and someone who publishes artwork of Bush with devil horns by Friday. Wednesday was no crucifixes in a jar of piss, in case you were wondering.

PB

[beam me up scottie]

10. Yeah, we're on our way down.

Man.

Sometimes it seems like these f*ckers are doing everything in their power to make 1984 a reality.

[madrchsod]

11. interesting

i wonder what they are going to do about Japanese hentia? better get rid of my "bondage faeries" comic books

[beam me up scottie]

13. Good idea.

:)

[madrchsod]

15. ebay will go broke!

i think there are more hentia dvd`s than regular porn dvds on ebay

[beam me up scottie]

17. And I thought criminalizing the sale of sex toys was bad.

THis is so much worse.

[beam me up scottie]

16. Interesting contrast:

From the CBC:

Jail time for man with cartoon child porn
Last updated Apr 4 2006 12:19 PM ADT
CBC News

An American has been handed a 30-day jail sentence for bringing child pornography into Canada. Dominic Sousa, 21, of Long Island, N.Y., was sentenced Tuesday after pleading guilty to charges of smuggling and possession of child pornography in Yarmouth provincial court. Sousa was picked up by Canada Border Services officers last October after he got off a ferry in Yarmouth. Blair MacDonald, a criminal investigator with the border services agency, said Sousa had about 13,000 images on his computer, including mostly cartoons but also three video clips and three stills involving real children. "The fact that most of the images might have been in a form called anime doesn't lessen the prohibitive nature of these goods," MacDonald said. The 30-day sentence is appropriate, he added, and sends a message that Canada doesn't tolerate the importation of such images.

http://www.cbc.ca/ns/story/ns-porn-anime20060404.html

[Monk06]

29. Thirty days in jail for a comic book is still thirty days too much. >>

Next they'll be trying to give Robert Crumb twenty years in the slammer.

I'm sure the fundies would love to finally get their revenge against him
for this:

[beam me up scottie]

18. I suppose he'll be classified as a sexual predator when he's released.

For looking at cartoons.

[mrcheerful]

24. Of course he is a dangerous sex criminal because he was convicted of a sex

crime, it doesn't matter if another person was involved or not, remember mind police? If you think it your guilty.

[beam me up scottie]

27. That's why I used 1984 as a reference.

This is EXACTLY what Orwell had in mind.

[RoyGBiv]

19. On a related subject ...

I was chatting with an old professor of mine not long ago, and he went into one of his regular rants about, well, everything. (I loved him for his rants, which often had nothing to do with the class he was teaching, but which were always entertaining and, to me, on target.) At some point he ended up talking about various laws of this variety.

He got up and got one of the texts he uses in his Human Sexuality class. (He's a sociologist/anthropologist.) He threw it down on a table and said words to the effect of this book, published by a respected academic press, is child porn, according to this law he had been talking about. He turned to a page about 3/4 through, and there were drawings of males and females, nude, at various stages of maturity. A few were graphic, "medical" depictions of male and female anatomy, again at various ages, some of which showed how a condom is worn, feminine hygiene products used, etc. There were also a few rather disturbing photographs showing the various tools and methods some cultures, including people in the US, had used at various times to prevent pre-marital sex, masturbation, or to "cure" menstruation. That was enough right there, he said, but the really "bad" part was that the book had excerpts from descriptions of sexual experiences transcribed from interviews with individuals ranging in age from 9 - 99. Interpreted literally, the law in question made illegal such pivotal studies as the Hite Report and M&J's two volumes Sexuality in the Human Male/Female precisely because they had detailed descriptions of sexual experience in people under the age of 18, including abuse testimonials as well as normal behaviors. He and most everyone else involved in making decisions at the university where he teaches had basically ignored this for a few years, but a new Dean of his school had come in and advised him if he used these books, he would be reported.

He also has a copy of another book that has been "outlawed" for some time, and his copy was published by the US government. The title? _1970 Presidential Commission Report on Pornography_.

And it's all covered under the same kind of law.

On this specific subject, this is truly disturbing because with some of this Anime, it's really hard to know what you're watching. I'm not really a fan of the medium, but I've tried to learn what the hype is about and have rented a few videos from the local video store. Some of these were sexual in nature, and with at least half of them I genuinely had to ask myself what the intended age of the characters was because it really wasn't obvious. The style leaves a lot to the imagination. Some of the characters that, from the context, are obviously "of age," are still drawn as though they're underage.

[beam me up scottie]

21. I am sitting here tonight,

still completely stunned at what has happened in this country.

Books should NEVER be illegal.

Cartoons, art, fiction, NONE of it.

And the fact that some on the left support this law really makes me rethink my choice of residence.

[ThomCat]

20. I hope this gets overturned on appeal.

There is no way in hell that art in any form should be considered child pornography.

If the stuff depicts kids having sex then ban it. But if it's legal to sell, and legal to own, then there's no way in hell this guy should have been convicted.

[beam me up scottie]

22. Good luck.

Look who's on the SCOTUS now.

That's just it, child porn is already banned, they are putting people in prison for looking at fiction.

[mrcheerful]

23. Well did you know that the government was going to try to list of age

women, (over 18) models, of being child porn if they were under developed and looked like a teen or pre-teen? If the law would have passed even midgets and dwarfs sex would have been listed as child porn, no matter what age they were. It was deemed unconstitutional because consenting adults can't be stopped from doing what they are allowed to do as adults. During the Reagan years they tried to stop porn by saying it was prostitution, but because of the money involved in porn it was stopped. BTW those same years a repuke from nevada tried passing a welfare reform bill that would have made every women in the state have to seek work at places like the Bunny Ranch as prostitutes. He said that his state didn't need welfare because prostitution was legal, besides the income tax that would be taken in as they are taxed in nevada.

[beam me up scottie]

28. I didn't know that.

I do remember the Ray-gun years, though.

And I thought that was all behind us.

When will people learn?

As long as we make laws based on centuries old ignorance and bigotry, we'll never truly get out of the dark ages.

Sex is not dirty, it is not a sin, and if done right, is one of the best things about being alive.

[JHB]

25. Additional facts: it wasn't just the hentai toons

The following was posted by Marie26 in the GD thread on this. I'm reposing it here because of the relevance:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1000888&mesg_id=1001342

OK, I hate to stop the outrage here with some facts, but here goes:

- Whorley was not convicted just for the 20 cartoons, but for over 74 counts of child pornography & obscenity. He was supposedly using the Va. Employment Commission computers to look for a job, but actually used the state's computer to download & email pornographic images instead. Some of these images were cartoons, but some were actual photographs of children. He also emailed these images to a minor child & wrote numerous explicit emails about sexual abuse of children.

- He had been convicted before on federal child pornography charges & is a registered sex offender. After serving his sentence for these prior convictions, he was released on probation, & promptly re-arrested 3 months later for these new charges. This incident occured within the first 3 months after he was released from prison.

- One of the laws he was convicted under, the PROTECT Act, has already been struck down by the Supreme Court as overbroad & unconsitututional. Therefore, this conviction stands a very good chance of being overturned on appeal.

http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-795.ZS.html
http://www.fbi.gov/page2/march06/obscenity031006.htm

[beam me up scottie]

26. That is incorrect.

He was convicted under the 2003 law which has NOT been declared unconstitutional.

From the USDOJ release:

U.S. Department of Justice
United States Attorney
Eastern District of Virginia
Main Street Centre 804/819-5400 600 E. Main Street Fax [phone] Richmond, Virginia 23219-2447

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Further Information Contact Richmond, Virginia Sue Vick 804-819-5400 March 10, 2006

Paul J. McNulty, Acting Deputy Attorney General and United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, announced the sentencing of Dwight Whorley, age 52, of Richmond, Virginia, on child pornography charges. United States District Judge Henry E. Hudson sentenced Whorley to 240 months’ imprisonment.

Whorley was convicted on November 30, 2005, after a four-day jury trial, of using a public computer at a Virginia Employment Commission ("VEC") office on March 30, 2004, to receive twenty obscene Japanese anime cartoons that graphically depicted prepubescent female children being forced to engage in genital-genital and oral-genital intercourse with adult males. Whorley was convicted under a new federal statute enacted in 2003 that criminalizes the production, distribution, or receipt of, or the possession with intent to distribute obscene drawings, cartoons, sculptures, paintings, or any other obscene visual representation of the sexual abuse of children. Whorley’s conviction for receiving cartoons is the first conviction under the statute that was not based on actual photographs of children.

The jury also convicted Whorley of receiving fourteen digital photographs of real children engaging in sexually explicit conduct and of sending and receiving twenty obscene E-mails which graphically described, among other things, parents sexually molesting their own children.
At the time of his arrest in this case, Whorley was a registered sex offender who was convicted in March 1999, on a federal charge of receiving child pornography and was sentenced to 46 months’ incarceration. In January 2003, after serving that sentence and while on supervised release for his earlier conviction, Whorley was re-arrested for violating the conditions of his probation. Whorley subsequently pled guilty to violating the conditions of his release and was sentenced to an additional 12 months of incarceration to be followed by 12 months of supervision by the United States Probation Office. He was arrested on the present charges on April 5, 2005, just three months after being released from incarceration, when United States Probation Officers learned that Whorley had received child pornography by using a computer at the VEC.

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/ceos/Press%20Releases/EDVA%20Whorley%20sentencing%20PR_031006.pdf

They are prosecuting people for downloading cartoons.

Nobody will touch this because he's also guilty of possessing real child porn.

They are trying to set precedence, and during an election year, they will probably succeed.

What politician would possibly even consider taking this up?

And with the SCOTUS packed, I doubt whether it would be overturned if it ever got that far.

[mrcheerful]

31. Notice how the guy never was arrested for molesting or raping a child

yet people here are saying the guy deserves prison time for looking at pictures. I really can see one area where some DU folks are like the freepers in their desire to protect from the unknown. So if looking at pictures means your going to act out on what you see then I guess people need laws to stop pictures of blood and guts. all movies, videos and pictures of death should be made illegal and the people that look at them get prison time and put on a list for being dangerous.

[JHB]

35. Actually, I don't think anyone in THIS thread said that.

I was passing along a point made in the GD thread. It's also been disputed. It'd be useful to know details of the case beyond the one news article, just to be sure what the actual facs are vs perhaps-not-exact reportage.

The final arbiter has to be how someone actually treats real people.

[Marie26]

36. Are you saying child pornography should be legal?

That's what I'm gathering from your post.

[Marie26]

32. He was convicted on numerous other charges

He was convicted for downloading & distributing numerous actual photos of child pornography, and writing many obscene emails, some to a minor child. So the poster is correct when he says that it wasn't just the hentai toons. The 2003 Protect Act has never been tested before in the courts, and flies directly against the Supreme Court precedent that has held that "virtual images" of child pornography cannot be criminalized. (Ashcroft v. FSC). Therefore, any convictions for the actual cartoons should be overturned. The convictions for all those other violations should stand. I wanted to clarify my original post to say that the 2003 Protect Act itself has not yet been declared unconstitutional, because it was written after the SC case that struck down laws banning "virtual images" of children pornography. But, since it covers the exact same images as the earlier unconstitutional law, I believe a conviction under this particular section will also be struck down once it is appealed.

[mrcheerful]

33. The problem I have with these types of laws is everyone thats picked up on

these charges ends up on the dangerous predator list. How can you tell who is dangerous when 1)everyone convicted of a sex crime is put on the list 2)most states use criminal code, which is very confusing, to describe the persons crime. Not only that but the intent of the law was to list dangerous people that rape and kill their victims. The problem is the law will not protect one child from harm, just like any other law out there people are expecting the government and the police to do the job of watching their children. I see places that have a few people on the list and see kids run wild with little or no supervision from parents. Sure you can say I can't watch my kids all of the time, but guess what, you need to be aware of who your kids are hanging out with and what they are doing. Xase in point, people that used to live in my neighborhood from 1958 until 1998 would provide alcohol and drugs to under age kids, (12 to 18 yo) and it was well known that they were having sex with these kids, (us kids knew about it but our parents were unaware and not one kid during those 40 years ever told on them), so they are not on any list nor have they stopped doing what they been doing. You can't make any laws that will stop crime unless you start putting people in prison for thought crimes, the Meagan law is one step towards the USA becoming a police state. I'm not saying its a bad law, I'm saying the way its being used by the police makes it bad.

[mrcheerful]

34. Also don't forget about how many fake child porn there is being passed off

as the real thing and the use of women that look like young teens and pre-teens as well as midgets and dwarfs. Unless they have the persons that did the porn come forward and state their age then we are leaving it up to the state to decide if said person was actually a child. Certain age groups yes you can tell, but in japan they have a lot of small women that can pass for 11 and 12 year olds. Also during the 70's there was a midget that was doing porn that looked like she was between 8 to 10 yo. BTW, most of the child porn pay sites scam people by using these type of tricks, so are we to convict the people going to these sites for thinking they are getting child porn? We are letting fear and emotions get the better of common sense and we are looking for government and courts to decide for us how to make us safe.

[Alfalfa Wolf]

37. Bad Idea....

Next, they'll be putting people in prison for looking at drawings of people being shot, stabbed and disemboweled based on the idea that the pictures may incite a person to commit murder.

I have to say this: we have given our governments too much power for our own good....

[newyawker99]

38. Hi Alfalfa Wolf!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: