Heres a bit of useless trivia thats emerged from todays important Facebook debate about paedophilia. According to the UKs Child Protection Act the maximum sentence for possessing a tracing of a pseudo photograph of a child in an indecent situation - say, a tracing of a collage showing a childs head next to mans penis - is 10 years imprisonment. Fair enough, I hear you saying. We wouldnt want people who possess tracings of collages of childrens heads next to mens penises to do any less time in prison than that (to argue otherwise would be to see shades of grey and to be a defender of an appalling paraphilia). But what about people who are handed a line drawing depicting same and dont know its provenance, whether it was drawn freehand or traced? Fortunately, the law is very clear: Where a person possesses an image not knowing that it is, a tracing, for example: D downloads what he thinks is a hand-drawn picture from the Internet (and accordingly legal) but in fact it is (unbeknown to him) a tracing. He is probably not guilty of possession under section 160 CJA 1988 as the courts will interpret section 160(2)(b) to provide a defence. Certainly the wording of section 160(2)(b) when read in conjunction with PCA 1978 could entitle the courts to argue that the defence exists where a person does not know, nor has any cause to believe, that he is in possession of an indecent photograph, pseudo-photograph or tracing of a child. Whilst it would be ordinarily difficult to argue that someone would not know they were in possession of a photograph or pseudo-photograph the same cannot be said of tracings.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 08:35:42 +0000
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