Two fathers and their kids go on a camping trip near Augusta, Georgia. Soon the adults are suspects in a possible child pornography case. What happened?
Writes one of the dads, Jody Jenkins:
Because I forgot my digital camera, I bought a disposable camera at a gas station on the way to the campground. I took pictures of the kids using sticks to beat on old bottles and cans and logs as musical instruments. I took a few of my youngest daughter, Eliza, then age 3, skinny-dipping in the lake, and my son, Noah, then age 8, swimming in the lake in his underwear, and another of Noah naked, hamming it up while using a long stick to hold his underwear over the fire to dry. Finally, I took a photo of everyone, as was our camping tradition, peeing on the ashes of the fire to put it out for the last time.
An employee at the Eckerd's photo counter, where the pictures were developed, notified the police. The cops got the Department of Family and Child Services (DFCS) involved, because "there were pictures of children naked, genitalia and alcohol" (one of the kids was allegedly shown "drinking beer"). Worse, one of the photos featured a child whose head appeared to have been "cut off."
The Savannah Police Department and the Department of Family and Child Services (DFCS) investigated us for "child pornography" and then "sexual exploitation of a minor." We suffered the embarrassment of having DFCS interview our family, friends, employers and our children's teachers, asking them whether we were suitable parents and what kind of relationship we had with our kids.
No evidence of sexual abuse was discovered, but the DFCS wasn't yet prepared to let the matter drop.
As Christmas approached, our lawyer felt that the DFCS investigation into sexual exploitation of a minor was running aground because the agency began airing the possibility of charging us with a lesser crime. Now they wanted to hit us with "endangerment of a child," the result of letting the kids be near an open campfire.
In the end, though, no charges were brought.
The photo of a child whose head had been "cut off" was simply one where a child's head fell outside the border. The photo of a child drinking beer was actually one of Rusty's daughter carrying a broken beer bottle she had found and planned to put into her makeshift xylophone.
In other words, the parents were investigated, their reputations in their community forever tainted, their kids driven to tears by the investigation, for clumsily composing a photo. And for letting a kid pick up a broken beer bottle in the woods.
And they very nearly got slapped with child-endangerment charges for allowing their children near a campfire.
Also consider this case:
In Dallas in 2003, as the result of a complaint by an Eckerd drugstore employee, a 33-year-old woman was charged with "sexual performance of a child," a second-degree felony punishable by 20 years in prison, based on a picture of her breast-feeding her 1-year-old son. Although the district attorney dropped the charges in the case, the parents had to fight for weeks to get their two children back from the Dallas County Child Protective Services.
Given that there are nearly three million child abuse reports made annually, and that roughly seventy percent are found to be without merit, it follows that every year, between two and four millions U.S. parents are investigated on false suspicions.
Think about that next time you take a picture of your children having fun in the bathtub.
Oh, and this hysteria goes back decades, of course. Good roundup here.
Finally, here's an account of when yours truly was taken for a kiddie-porn perv. The photos that got me in trouble are here (click on the thumbnails for a full view).
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