Inquisition 21
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Child pornography
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1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11
Child porn is at the heart of our new sexual absolutism. Its laws have criminalized both artistic representation and objective intellectual examination and speculation.
The Athlone story - State of malice
Brian Rothery
This story is about Louis (real name) in Ireland’s largest Midland’s town, Athlone. It could be another version of A City Possessed, the award winning book about the New Zealand Civic Crèche scandal by Lynley Hood. That scandal spread a poisonous cloud over the city of Christchurch and the whole country through most of the 1990s, the consequences of which still continue (See Bookstore). In the Athlone events, we have a story about the possession by evil and malice of the population of one of Ireland’s largest towns.
The greater dimensions of the story could be expressed only in a large book like Hood’s, and one could indeed read that Christchurch story, and other similar ones, and find explanations for what is happening to the people of Athlone. The disturbing background information which emerges in the Athlone story is how hostility and competition between soccer clubs, and the neighborhoods, schools and officials supporting them, can be invaded by the cancer of the rumours of sex abuse and the use of the defamatory and toxic label of ‘pedophile’ to attack individuals one does not agree with. The story also illustrates how our fundamentalist ideology of maintaining moral panics can poison relationships between neighbours.
There is an article under ‘Threats to liberty’ on this web site titled ‘Legislating for malice’. Written before the events described here, it predicted and explained much of what happened in this Athlone story, and tried to understand why we have created a society in which the lives of good people are ruined and where the malicious are assisted by the police and the courts to spread their defamation.
It’s bad enough to have the police seize your computer and find what they judge to be ‘child pornography’. It is worse when the images have been inadvertently or maliciously acquired by your hard drive. But what of a man whose computer and files were seized by the police in an Irish town where everyone was to hear about it, and then, when the police found nothing whatsoever, a detective sergeant involved returns them to his house and contemptuously dumps them on his hallway floor.
Bad enough yet? Not quite. The securing of the search warrant and the subsequent raid were based on the testimony of neighbours, the malicious content of which could easily have been established by the police. We have been warning people on this web site about the dangers of seeking assistance from the police in any situation where one is falsely accused of sex abuse or child pornography, or even where one becomes the victim of such malicious intrusion as ‘browser hijack’. If you do seek their help, the police may grasp at the opportunity to investigate you. This is precisely what happened to Louis. Married and with two daughters, he was a soccer coach to local youngsters and an occasional helper at discos. He was also a volunteer at the Special Olympics, which involved police vetting.
Two of the boys he coached warned him that a woman at their school was interrogating them about possible ‘inappropriate behaviour’ between him and them. What Louis appeared not to have known was that such trawling by teachers and social workers for allegations against leaders and coaches had been going on in Western, and mainly English speaking, countries for over a decade. What Louis definitely did not know was that if you are a man and one or more women are making such accusations against you, you do not fight back and you certainly do not complain to the police. In believing that justice and truth would prevail, Louis committed the great sin of naivete. It used to be called innocence, but in today’s climate of moral panics ‘innocence’ is guilt. Worst of all, instead of running away and hiding, he protested his innocence, and pointed to his long record as a coach and his love of the sport.
Louis was also a retired bank manager and in his day he had made a few enemies in the town, especially by foreclosing on some local businesses, a fate shared by other bank managers. It seems that there was a connection between this and some of the people who conspired against him.
Louis learned that the woman who had interrogated the boys, had also adopted for herself the role of warning parents that he was a ‘pedophile’, indeed had set herself up as an interrogator of children. This appears to have been the reason that the police moved against him.
Few men can defend themselves against false allegations of child sex abuse, but his accuser, or someone connected with her, added that he had child pornography on his home computer. This was to become his one stroke of good fortune, and add to the disgrace of the police and judiciary that they used this complaint to get a search warrant to seize his computer and establish the presence of child porn on it. But there was none there.
Even before the lack of child porn was established, the police and the local health board interviewed other boys, so that Louis was in a very dangerous position, because the more they interviewed, the greater the danger of a false allegation. The police confirmed that no child porn had been found and they returned his computer and files.
Characteristically, instead of being relieved, Louis was further infuriated by the apparently contemptuous way the officer dumped the computer and files on the floor of his front hall. He was also outraged that in taking them away in the first instance they had not allowed one of his daughters access to her degree course examination material.
Louis obtained verbal confirmation from the police that he was innocent, that the information given to them was false and incorrect, that in hindsight the raid on his house should not have taken place, that comments by one officer were totally inappropriate, that the failure to provide his daughter with the computer information required for her examination was a serious matter, that the police ‘Paddywagon’, seen by all the neighbours, was unnecessary, that the officer’s failure to reinstall his computer was unacceptable, that prosecutions would result if the information provided by the accusers was deliberately false, and, finally and ironically, that they would have no difficulty in confirming his innocence to local newspapers.
As the raid was headline news, this promise was risible. He had been ruined by his accusers and the police, his reputation in tatters, his health broken, his mind at great risk. It should be no surprise to learn that his ordeal now continued, for no sooner was this phase over than a second woman began to interrogate a nine year old boy whose parents were friends.
With his parents’ permission, this boy wrote and signed the following statement.
“She asked me a lot of questions about my Coach Louis Ryan
- Did I go to his house?
- What rooms was I in
- Did my Coach ever touch me?
- Did he ever touch my private parts?
- Did I ever sleep in his house?
- Did I ever sleep in his bed beside him?
- Did I see his private parts?
- Did I touch his private parts?
- Did he ever hit me?
“She asked me all these questions about five times. It was always in her car. No one else was ever in the car. I was scared. I wanted to jump out of the car. I was even scared to tell my parents. I saw her talking to (another person) whom I know as she is a next door neighbour of Louis Ryan’s and I have played with her children and have been in her house. I also saw her talking to (another person) in a red shop - Super Valu I think.
“I confirm that all I have stated is true.”
Signed by the boy
The boy and his parents complained about these interrogations to the police, who apparently did nothing. Adding great insult to injury, when Louis also complained to the police they told him that his own former complaints had caused the raid against him.
Louis believes that his rights under the Irish Constitution have been denied him. He also believes that all of the local and state bodies who could have helped him have failed to do so. Perhaps the greatest failure in his eyes was that of the Irish police complaints board, known as the ‘Garda Complaints Board’. In December 2003 he made what must be a very unusual, if not unique, complaint to it – he complained to it about its own failure.
Garda Complaints Board
Block 1 Irish Life centre
Lower Abbey St
Dublin 1
26th Dec 2003.
Dear Sirs
This is a formal complaint that the Garda Complaints Board have knowingly and willingly conspired to deny me and my daughters our rights under the Constitution of Ireland.
The attached documentation is evidence of the denial of our rights under the Constitution.
There is clear evidence that this is not the first occasion that the Garda Complaints Board has acted in an illegal manner and have failed in their duty to uphold the Constitution.
Yours with no respect whatsoever,
Louis Ryan.
Louis has lost his house and is close to bankruptcy, but he is now fighting back and has found some friends to help him. He is separated from his wife, but his two daughters live with him and support him in his campaign to clear his name and obtain some justice.
Editor: Louis has just found a solicitor to handle his case.
Child pornography
Background reading
Mitsubishi abandons employee
Henry goes to prison
Dangers from your hard drive
Operations Ore and Amethyst are discredited
The Athlone story - State of malice
Irish judge in child porn allegations
Who did it? When child porn appears.
Operation Ore on the verge of collapse
Alabama man’s four year wait in Limbo
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