Tougher Child-Porn Law Would Make Viewing It a Crime

2-20-2013 Vermont:

A recent spike in arrests for possession of child pornography suggests Vermont is gaining ground in the battle against this cyber crime. Since December, state and federal prosecutors have announced the felony arrests or convictions of at least eight men accused of possessing lewd, graphic and frequently violent images involving sex with children.

Now police and prosecutors who handle these cases are urging lawmakers to close a loophole in state law that allows suspects to escape prosecution if they viewed those images over the internet but didn’t actually download — and thus “possess” — them.

Under federal law it’s already illegal to view pornographic material involving anyone under the age of 18. But Vermont is one of 21 states that has not outlawed it in state statute. As a result, state prosecutors say it’s more difficult for them to secure child-porn convictions than it is for their federal counterparts.

A bill coming up for discussion this week in the Senate Judiciary Committee aims to change that. S.19, sponsored by the committee’s chairman, Sen. Dick Sears (D-Bennington), would make it illegal to “access with intent to view” photos, videos or other depictions of sexual or lewd acts involving kids under 16.

“The problem is that our current law is based on how people used to view child pornography, which is a magazine they would hold in their hand,” says Christina Rainville, chief deputy state’s attorney in Bennington County. “It doesn’t reflect the current reality of how child pornography is looked at today, which is by surfing the web.”

The Bennington County state’s attorney’s office was at the center of a high-profile child pornography investigation last year involving John Dockum, a fifth-grade teacher in Bennington who was charged with possession of child pornography on his school-issued computer. Dockum consistently maintained his innocence and his attorney claimed he never viewed any of the 17 graphic images involving sex acts with children that were discovered in his laptop’s temporary cache, or others found by his wife on Dockum’s home computer. He never downloaded the images.

Prosecutors eventually dropped the charges against Dockum, who was fired from his teaching job. His lawyer accused investigators of damaging his client’s reputation by .continued. by Ken Picard