Well this is kind of weird. Ampersand of Alas, a blog passes along one of those classic gotcha stories that combine double standards, overzealous prosecutors, and young people exchanging nude photography…
Reading, Pennsylvania: Where you get three years in prison for taking consensual nude pictures of your girlfriend, but cops who expose their penises in the office aren’t penalized at all.
... that for some reason I foolishly started following links back through the story. And discovered that, as they say on Facebook, “it’s complicated.” There’s more to it than will fit in any two-sentence summary.
Let’s get the willy-waiving policeman out of the way first: According to The Agitator (the site Ampersand links to) a Pennsylvania police officer was reinstated after an arbitrator determined he was improperly fired because his employers (the police supervisor he exposed himself to?) didn’t follow “progressive disciplinary guidelines, which involve a series of verbal and written warnings.” (That would be “progressive” in the procedural rather than political sense.)
The child-porn conviction business, though, just keeps getting deeper and weirder.
Most surface/gotcha-level view of the story: man convicted earlier for possessing naked photos of his then-17-year-old wife is sent to prison for 3 years for failing to notify a sex-offender registry of a change of address. Extra irony/quirk/outrage/overreach/whatever: his now-adult wife and child they had together are now an impoverished single-mother family and will remain so till the husband gets out of prison around 2012. Ouch, right?
Well, yes, ouch. The next complication, though, from the Reading (Pennsylvania) Eagle after the man was originally convicted: in 2003 a 23-year-old man has a hotel-room party with his 17-year-old girlfriend who takes pictures of the two of them having sex, and of two other girls, 15 and 16, kissing, touching, and showering naked. Girlfriend swears she took the photos and made a photo album of them and then gave it to him.
Ok, that’s more complicated but still way more of a sorrow-than-anger situation. (Update: Making the very big assumption that since court and news reports don’t say otherwise that contact was limited to his fiance and she really did take all the photos. But in current comments Sungold is persuading me to lean towards her interpretation, in which case eww, and throw the book at him.)
Except there’s the next level complication: The man allegedly kept the photo album in his vehicle for a year. It didn’t turn up till he had a traffic accident and a police officer found the album in his car. Oh, and they didn’t just charge him with child porn they also charged him with providing alcohol to minor.
Yeah, I’m starting to feel a little sympathy fading too here. Tough, and all that, but still, WTF, right? Well, yeah.
It gets even more complicated though.
The police officer who found the photo album was the man’s brother in law (or possibly his step-brother.)
The brother-in-something held on to the album for a year before someone else on the police force found it in his desk. When police searched his computer they found 120 other photos of naked minors.
That too got complicated. The brother-in-something was charged with possession of child-pornograhy but, since the photo album was evidence against the original man he wasn’t charged for possessing that.
It gets even more complicated: first, it sounds like the man and his erstwhile partner are separated. So it’s not clear what’s going on with her. And comments by a local in one of the articles said the brother-in-something eventually escaped conviction, which sounds like a bit more of a scandal — the photos aren’t characterized but it doesn’t sound like they were of people he was involved with.
But wait! It gets even more complicated! The brother-in-something was actually convicted and sentenced to six months house arrest. For possessing those 120 computer photos. Oh, and peeping in windows. So there you go.
Meanwhile the original man, having served his original sentence, is still back in prison for three years under the state’s Megan’s Law provisions for failing to let authorities know he’d moved.
So end of the story? Yes, it’s scandalous that a different police officer was reinstated after exposing himself to his superior and a bystander.
And yes it’s on-balance unfortunate that the man went to prison a second time after serving what may have been a shorter first sentence for exercising what could only optimistically be called really, really, really bad judgment and somewhat more generously for canoodling with someone still a minor but past the age of consent and… her two minor friends who certainly weren’t. And not-at-all generously, for either getting minor children drunk, having sex with one of them, and taking and keeping naked photos with them, or, nearly as bad, getting drunk and naked with minor children and keeping the resulting photos. No really good way to spin that and… it’s not really clear why one would bother.
I’ve still got questions, though, about double standards on police vs. civilian conduct. Because one final Reading Eagle story, on the conviction of the brother-in-something adds one final complication. Turns out it wasn’t the brother-in-something who found the photo album in the first man’s truck after an accident. Instead some other officer found it and turned it over to the brother-in-something. Who put it in his desk. Where it was discovered a little more than a year later by someone else. Who, if I’ve got the chronology right, may actually have been investigating allegations of window peeping. But, having finally seen the light of day, resulted in charges against the original man for child porn, the brother for otherwise-unrelated child porn… but not withholding evidence… and… what?... disciplinary charges? Tampering with evidence charges? Nothing at all? ...for the officer who handed the photo album to the brother-in-law.
Point being that yeah, in its bare bones the story fits that two-line gotcha, “Reading, Pennsylvania: Where you get three years in prison for taking consensual nude pictures of your girlfriend, but cops who expose their penises in the office aren’t penalized at all.” But where the rest of the stories (I’m just a regular Paul Harvey, eh?) ought to raise even more eyebrows.
Submitted by 3209 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-09-21 11:21.
"It's more complicated" is practically the unofficial slogan of historians, so I appreciate the way you reconstructed this story in all its dimensions. It seems disproportionate that the stepbrother with a hard drive full of child porn gets only six months of house arrest while the original offender serves a minimum of nine months in jail. I have to wonder if the stepbrother got a lighter sentence since he was a cop.
As for your analysis, I disagree that the scenario in the hotel room, where the 23-year-old is messing around with a 15-year-old, is "still way more of a sorrow-than-anger situation." Really?? This is a case of statutory sexual assault! Sure, the alcohol adds to our picture of this fellow as a scumbag, and it further impairs the girls' ability to give consent. But how can you have *any* sympathy for an obviously exploitative rapist? This isn't a case of an 18-year-old with a 15-year-old. It's a situation where an adult took sexual advantage of a child. Even without any alcohol involved, this is still a crime. Apart from the legalities, sexual abuse is liable to leave psychic scars; underage drinking isn't normally traumatic in itself (absent sexual coercion). I know you've been on an anti-alcohol bender for months, but there's absolutely no reason to see the provision of alcohol as a greater abuse than sexually manipulating young teenagers.
[Eeek! You being a historian you've probably also read the sources more closely than I did. I didn't get the impression he'd only had contact with his partner and not the other two minors. If so then, yeah, no sorrow in that situation. Also I'd perhaps naively assumed that since he was in the photos he didn't take any of the photos either. If he had then that too would be an issue. Oh, another point that's sort of percolated through might be that (we are talking about Appalachia here even if it's not southern Appalachia) the cop guy may have been both brother-in-law *and* step-brother. I won't speculate whether the cop guy was a brother-in-law by being some sort of relative of the 17-year-old partner's. Although that would be the most non-creepy reason the other cop gave cop guy the photo album. Anyway, my point was to walk the story from it's "news of the weird" quality into more ominous territory. The "sorrow-than-anger" bit was meant to put it on the path. If I'd seen that story without the other context I'd have thought something between "what an idiot" and "what a child-molester." Thanks, Sungold. --fl]
Submitted by 3209 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-09-21 16:27.
Well, it's hard to piece the story together - which is why I really did enjoy your detective work - but one of the sources says clearly that Madeira (the central figure) was convicted of "sexual abuse of a child," which has to refer to one of the younger girls, as his future wife was 17 and thus over the age of consent.
That same news story also contains an intriguing but totally unsupported line, which enhances my impression of this place as seriously weird:
"There seems to be an abundance of child pornography being found by police on computers." Not clear if the porn is being found by police on *police* computers, but the context suggests just that. An old friend of mine works in Reading; I had no idea he was surrounded by such going-on.
As for who took the pictures, I'd be suprised if Madeira's girlfriend didn't take the fall, knowing she'd get off lightly as a juvenile (she was not punished, in fact). It's just a wee bit too coincidental that he *only* took the photos in which she appeared.
[I'll just say if I'd had any suspicion that the younger children were involved I'd have taken a different tone but the impression I got was that he only had contact with the 17-year-old. (And I gotta say it creeps me out just typing "he only had contact," even in that context.") Anyway, I also assumed that based on some of the comments about prosecutors and the presiding judge if there was any evidence he'd had contact with the younger children the courts, and newspapers, would have been more clear about it. Him being convicted and all I don't have to worry about "till proven guilty" or anything, I just think if there had been allegations, even unprovable ones, the various reporters (who seemed keen on the case) would have mentioned them. But! I'm going to defer here because based only on what I've read I'm neither impressed with nor sympathetic towards the guy. Nor do I know that he didn't have a prior history of this kind of behavior and this was just the one they finally nailed him on. And I'm really serious when I say, as I have elsewhere, that I think it's a really, really bad idea for adults to interfere with the sexual development even of teenagers because a) there's nothing a teenager can do that he or she can't also do after age 21 and b) because whatever hypothetical "hawtness" a victim's youth might hold for perpetrators it's not worth the long-term consequences it can have on the young person's 40-70 years of adult life. So anyway, enough of that. I have no idea what's going on on computers in the area, police or otherwise, but eww. Thanks, Sungold. --fl]
Submitted by 3209 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-09-21 20:13.
It's not actually clear if Madeira had "contact" with the younger girls. But I'm visualizing a motel room, and there's no way to imagine the girls aren't part of the scene somehow. I'm pretty sure this wasn't a suite at the Hilton. I mean, if there are pictures of Madeira and his future wife going at it, what are the odds that they took *those* photos? I might have been rash in calling Madeira a "rapist," which implies more than the articles support. (I'm missing that preview feature!) But they're clear in stating he was convicted of the sexual abuse of children, plural. Then again, the local paper in Reading is even less impressive than my local daily, so it's hard to know how complete or distorted its reporting may be.
Totally agreed that 18 isn't some magic age of maturity. I've known hundreds of 18-year-olds in the past few years, and very few of them could hold their own with a man 5-10 years older, no matter how hawt they appear on the outside. Heather Corinna has spilled oceans of pixels on the ugly power dynamics that too often typify relationships between men in the 20s and girls in their teens. I'd actually love to hear her perspective on this. She's wonderfully perceptive but it's disturbing to see how much predatory behavior goes on. I'm not saying that girls in their late teens should remain virginal, only that they should be playing with kids their own age, not loser guys half a decade older with a penchant for control and manipulation.
And now I'm gonna contemplate kittens for a while. Eww, indeed.
Submitted by 3209 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-09-22 07:10.
Is this guy a moron?
Yes.
Did he exhibit poor judgment, beneath even the relatively low standard I set for 23-year-olds dating 17-year-olds in the first place?
Yes.
Is he a danger to other people to a degree that would justify him being on the sex offender registry for the rest of his life, with all the harassment and difficulties this entails, and go to jail when he doesn't file his paperwork?
I don't think so.
And, if anything, this makes the cops sound even more corrupt than they did when I read the initial accounts, especially if the fact that the cop is his brother-in-law means that the cop is the brother of his wife.
That would mean the cop had nudie picks of his own then 17-year-old sister in his desk for a year.
Now that takes the perviness crown.
[I couldn't comfortably diagnose him as a moron but I can really confidently say his use of judgment could have been a little more, um, consistent. I'm actually kind of sanguine about hanging the threat of sex-offender registries over adults who interfere with children's sexual development and however culpable he might have been getting them there he *was* in the hotel room with 15 and 16 year olds, which would typically put them in, what, ninth and tenth grade?!?! I don't agree he should have gone back to jail for longer than he was in the first time (unless, again, there's way more evidence than has been reported that he's a repeat offender and/or likely to reoffend.) But yeah, even with the best of intent that's still horrific judgment verging on, ok, the moronic. And I'm kind of hoping that if the cop was a brother in law he wasn't related by blood. Thanks, Chalicechick. --fl]