Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Teacher Faces 40 Years in Jail for Pop-Up Porn

American society is becoming overzealous in its attempts to "protect the children" when it comes to sexual matters. Somewhere, sometime, there needs to be some real outrage, which should be provoked when any free-thinking, rational person reads about the plight of Connecticut substitute teacher Julie Amero.
Amero was convicted in January of exposing students to pornography on her classroom computer. While prosecutors insist she is guilty, some experts believe that the lewd images were caused by unseen spyware and adware programs, which critics call one of the top scourges of the Internet.
Even the principal of the school surprised at the conviction. There is no evidence that this 40 year-old woman deliberately exposed the students to pornography. Amazingly, the prosecution never even checked the computer for adware or pop-up ads, and the computer lacked updated firewall protection because a vendor's bill was not paid. This woman was so adamant about her innocence that she rejected a plea deal and now faces almost certain jail time.

Where was the defense in this case? Why is this woman being jailed for something she almost certainly did not do deliberately? Shouldn't the school be responsible for failing to properly secure the computer? And why not try and prosecute the people who created the pop-up ads that cause the pornography to appear?

It's happened to me and I have a firewall and pop-up protection. I went to some web site that had nothing to do with pornography and suddenly dozens of windows began popping up with graphic images. I had to click Ctrl-Alt-Del and close the browser completely to stop the windows from appearing, and then ran an adware program to make sure any unwanted software was not installed.

It's far to easy to destroy the life of a defenseless woman. These small town prosecutors love sex cases, they get their names in the paper and increase their profiles as a stepping stone to running for higher office. It's all about politics. It's child's play to create outrage in a jury that is already over-moralized to believe that anything nude or sexual is immoral and disgusting, and, of course, harmful to children.

None of us are safe in a society that is complety unforgiving of the foibles associated with human sexuality. I think all of this Christianist moralizing began during the Clinton-Lewinsky matter, which mobilized the right to inflate a private sexual act into something that threatened the very existence of mankind.

But let this poor woman off. Give her a stern warning and probation if necessary, but let her move away, change her name, and start a new life. Not likely in today's political climate, she is probably headed to jail and be labeled a sex offender, where her name will appear on a list and she will be unable to ever again work as a teacher or even be near where children play. God forgive American society for the pain we inflict on the meek and helpless.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think this will only fuel more of a backlash against the religous right in this country.

Anonymous said...

Of course this is a sad commentary about some of our public officials. But to blame it on the Christian right does not look at the complete picture. It was Janet Reno (not known for being a right-wing Christian) who did much worse to Grant Snowden, Police Office of the Year and the most decorated police officer in the history of the South Miami Police Department. She also destroyed Frank and Eliana Fuster of the Country Walk daycare case. It’s about the grab for power. Liberals, conservative, Christians, and non-Christians can be guilty of that.