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John Grisham

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16 Oct, 2014

Child porn statement apology

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Grisham apologizes for statements made during an interview with The Daily Telegraph regarding the incarceration of people viewing child porn. In a post to his Facebook page:

Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure, or who in any way participates in child pornography— online or otherwise — should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. My comments made two days ago during an interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph were in no way intended to show sympathy for those convicted of sex crimes, especially the sexual molestation of children. I can think of nothing more despicable…I regret having made these comments, and apologize to all.

15 Oct, 2014

Child pornography comments

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Grisham says that the American judicial system is incarcerating too many people from white collar criminals to those viewing child porn online, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who’ve never harmed anybody, would never touch a child. But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn.

Grisham uses the case of a friend from law school as an example:

His drinking was out of control, and he went to a website. It was labelled ‘sixteen year old wannabee hookers or something like that’. And it said ’16-year-old girls’. So he went there. Downloaded some stuff – it was 16 year old girls who looked 30. He shouldn’t ’a done it. It was stupid, but it wasn’t 10-year-old boys. He didn’t touch anything. And God, a week later there was a knock on the door: ‘FBI!’ and it was sting set up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to catch people – sex offenders – and he went to prison for three years. There’s so many of them now. There’s so many ‘sex offenders’ – that’s what they’re called – that they put them in the same prison. Like they’re a bunch of perverts, or something; thousands of ’em. We’ve gone nuts with this incarceration.