At the bottom of this page the reader will find links to a letter I wrote to the Crown Prosecution Service in December 2003, and the final letter in reply from a CPS lawyer named Esther George. The correspondence is self-explanatory, but nevertheless a few words are in order.
It all started when I received a spam advertising (what I thought was) a slightly ambiguously worded website. At the time I was receiving several hundred spam messages a day, and most were deleted without a second thought. I clicked on this one, expecting to see a link to a website, and to my horror was greeted with a photograph of what appeared to be a young boy performing oral sex on (presumably) a man.
My immediate instinct was to phone Demon, my ISP, and the guy on the helpline told me to forward the headers – but not the full message – to Demon abuse.
I started a thread on the subject in uk.legal, but the result was not encouraging. Finally I wrote to the CPS. It was nearly two months before I received a definitive reply, and that was even less encouraging. According to Esther George, one click and you are a paedophile. All Internet users beware. In Britain, that now means the majority of the adult population. The consequences of one thoughtless click can be catastrophic, and if someone else has access to your computer, the carelessness needn’t even be yours.
Letter To The CPS Re Child Porn On The Internet
Reply To The Above Letter
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