South Boston priest arraigned on child-porn charges
Andrew Urbaniak, 39, a priest at Our Lady of Czestochowa in South Boston, was arraigned today in South Boston District Court on one count each of possession of child pornography and distributing images of a child in the nude, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. Urbaniak was arrested by Boston and State Police yesterday. In a statement, the DA's office says:
Urbaniak was arrested at the Our Lady of Czestochow church yesterday evening. The investigation began in June, while Massachusetts State Police assigned to the Massachusetts Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force were investigating the use of peer-to-peer networks to share and distribute child pornography.
In the course of that investigation, State troopers observed files with names that included terms such as "pre-teen," "young," "little," "pedo," "pedofilia," and "lolitas." The files were hosted by a computer with an Internet Protocol address later linked to Urbaniak's computer at the Dorchester Avenue rectory.
Troopers downloaded one suspect file and found it to contain a sexually explicit photograph of a child who appeared to be under the age of 14.
Based on the apparent violation of Massachusetts statutes outlawing the possession and distribution of child pornography and the location of the IP address within the City of Boston, State Police provided their findings to detectives of the Boston Police Crimes Against Children Unit. Those detectives obtained a search warrant for computers and file storage devices at the rectory.
Detectives executed that warrant yesterday and recovered a computer that appeared to be in the process of sharing and downloading files. While a comprehensive forensic examination of Urbaniak's computer has not been completed, a preliminary review suggests that the computer contains multiple images depicting what appear to be images of both child pornography and child sexual abuse, [DA Dan] Conley said.
His bail was set at $10,000.
Innocent, etc.
Comments
Now, see if only Bernie Law was still the Capo regime
around here, our young pedophile would have gotten to move to the Cape or New Bedford. All expenses paid by the suckers who keep filling those collection plates every week, of course.
porn
I think we prosecute people who acquire child porn rather than people who commit illegal sex acts on kids becuase its easier to track on the internet ... but I'm afraid we sentence child-porn owners as if they raped kids -- for example jail time.
There is evidence that people attracted to child porn use it in lieu of acting on their desires, which I think is a good thing. IMO, We shouldn't jail child porn owners but we should jail child rapists.
But by purchasing or downloading the porn ...
The consumer is encouraging and abetting the rapists who make it - with actual children.
I've been thinking about this....
And I think that argument is weak. Get the rapist. I'm sure there's pretty disgusting porn out there where adult women and men are abused, raped, etc. and that's OK?
The Globe had a front-page article this Sunday about a guy that got convicted of having kiddie porn on his PC, and he got sentenced to 18 years. 18 years???? Are you serious? 18 years for simply having this crap on his PC? People with much more serious crimes - real rapists - get sentenced to less.
Now, I don't believe I have to say this, but some people on UHub require this type of statement, and I'm going to have to state the obvious now. NO, I do not support kiddie porn, OK? This guy is a slimeball, absolutely no doubt. I didn't even finish reading the Globe article because it was pretty sick stuff. One more time - I think kiddie porn is disgusting stuff, and I can't believe I actually had to declare that.
But, 18 years for guy that never touched a kid? Do you know how long that is? Of course, no lawmaker is going to risk their political career and suggest that maybe sentences for simply having kiddie porn on your PC should not be so harsh. Heck, I even contemplated even making this post for fear of being accused of being an advocate of kiddie porn. I just think things are a little out of whack and having such a harsh sentence is a very lazy way of controlling the problem. It makes it look like something is actually being done to curtail the problem when in effect, it does nothing of the sort.
Sorry for the morning rant....
Save the sympathy for the people in the can for weed
a harmless plant that the good Lord put on this planet and therefore cannot be stopped. Anyone having anything at all to do with kiddie porn deserves to be locked up and forgotten.
Riddle me this, caped crusader; say a guy you've known for 20 years or so has kiddie porn on his computer that you discover inadvertently. Vile, nasty stuff that repulses you to the core.
Do you keep your mouth shut or turn him into the cops?
Curious to hear your answer.
Ask yourself this
This guy downloaded and viewed child pornography and probably knew the sentence was about 20 years long if he got caught.
Do you think there's a term long enough that would have dissuaded him from downloading and viewing the child pornography? 30 years? 40 years? At what point do you think the dopamine centers of his brain would have said, "Whoa, buddy, I wanna get off like the next guy, but 55 years in jail is like a life sentence! Better click 'cancel' on this download"?
So, of the three main reasons for jail: deterrence, rehabilitation, and societal protection, jail time for child porn is not a deterrent, we put no money or effort into rehabilitation for much of anything other than drug use these days, and while the pedophile is in jail, society is protected from his downloading ways.
But if all we get is societal protection, then why let him out? Why not just kill him, right? Also, getting the users and not the creators is only indirectly protecting society (locking up all the drug users sure has dried up the drug trade, right?). And if the argument is that I'm wrong about rehabilitation being so infrequently used, then, what use is extreme jail time if rehabilitation will fix him in a much shorter time frame?
Instead, we've got this middle-of-the-road solution of long (but not lifetime) jail time with little to no rehabilitation attempted. So, it's not a deterrent, it's not rehabilitating, and it's ultimately not protecting society. So, then it's purely for the fourth most common reason for jail: retribution. It makes us feel good to see pedophiles locked up for their distorted psychological predilections...and, really...what does that say about us?
I know where you're coming from
But I think it's indicative of a bigger problem in our "no legislator ever says no to upping crime penalties" society. When was the last time you heard someone say that a politician was "soft on crime" as a positive? Never. Tough on crime really means...tougher on crime than the opponent. So, we end up with these absurd mandatory sentencing guidelines that put people with 20 year old child porn away for 18 years. Or the recently enacted 3-strikes law, that put felons away for life after 3 felonies...without funding any way for them to learn how not to commit felonies (some would say time in jail among other inmates actually trains you how to be better felons).
We end up with child porn being the equivalent (or in some cases even worse) than actually abusing a kid. We end up with white collar crimes destroying whole segments of the economy or whole neighborhoods of housing and paying a monetary penalty (if that!) while a street crime like selling dope can get you years in jail.
Meanwhile, if your brain is malfunctioning due to some past abuse or whatever reason, and you find yourself liking child pornography, what are your options? Download it and hope nobody ever finds out...or download it and get found out...or pay for your own mental health counselor to try and break whatever underlying problem there is. And I'm sure every pedophile has the money to go get treatment...right.
So, they roll the dice and depending on why or if they get caught, they face whatever new penalty we put in place. They're always going to face those odds and take their chance regardless of the penalty on the one hand versus stimulation and freedom on the other, because their brain is not working right. They can't help but take the chance without an affordable way to kick whatever underlying problem they have...and only if they identify what they have as a problem.
Jail for having child porn, unless they're the one making it, seems like a solution that makes society feel better that they did something about "the problem of child porn" and not the actual problem. But find a politician who's going to try to convince the general public that sentences should be lowered and commuted to mental health causes instead, and you'll have found a one-in-a-million (particularly now that privately-run public jails now have lobbying interest in keeping any and every criminal in jail). And unfortunately, one-in-a-million won't even be enough for quorum anyways.
Perfect example
Just noticed the rabbi that got 10 years probation for actually sexually molesting kids.
Sorry, but I find that a bit back-asswards.
This isn't a comment on anything else you said. I just happened to see the verdict right before I read your post. I believe we're on the same page when it comes to lawmakers.
Consider this
Many child pornographers aren't just consumers - they are fairly often looking at the kids or young relatives of other child pornographers.
Just as when junkies deal drugs to support their habit, child porn is not just a demand-side game.