Senator Josh Hawley chastised Judge Jackson for her sentencing an adolescent voyeur of pediatric porn to several months in prison rather than to ten years of incarceration. Her decision was wise. The boy had not acted on his curiosity. To quote Chauncey Gardener, he “liked to watch.” I am a child psychiatrist who studies serious offenders. Had this teenager been incarcerated for years you can bet that he would have been sexually victimized by older inmates. What began as curiosity would have become grooming for sexual victimization.
The question of how he became a voyeur of children was never revealed. The likelihood that this adolescent had himself been a victim was never explored. I’d put money on it.
Perhaps an even wiser decision would have been returning the offender to a safe environment and referred for psychiatric treatment.
Prison or jail are probably the worst environments in which to send an adolescent who has manifested his sexual curiosity by watching children filmed indulging in sex acts.
Of note, those children were the real victims. A quest for who created those films would have been extremely helpful to the criminal justice system.
I have evaluated many young children who were sexually victimized. We should take advantage of all opportunities to identify the creators and purveyors of these pornographic materials. The children they prey upon rarely completely recover.