UK PIM Law Research

[BLueRibbon]

PIM = Prohibited Images of Minors. This is a term used by Mu to describe criminalized media depicting people under the age of 18.

I'm doing research into UK PIM law for an article about Huw Edwards.

One of the biggest surprises has been just how easy it is for anyone to be convicted of a sex offense simply because someone sent them PIM.

According the Crown Prosecution Service, citing R v Okoro (2018), as a defining precedent:

* The prosecution must prove that the images are within the accused’s custody or control such that they were capable of accessing them
* They must know that they possess the images
* The accused need not know that the photographs were indecent.

The presiding judge referred to statutory defenses:

(2) Where a person is charged with an offence under subsection (1) above, it shall be a defence for him to prove—

(a) that he had a legitimate reason for having the photograph or pseudo-photograph in his possession; or

(b) that he had not himself seen the photograph or pseudo-photograph and did not know, nor had any cause to suspect, it to be indecent; or

(c) that the photograph or pseudo-photograph was sent to him without any prior request made by him or on his behalf and that he did not keep it for an unreasonable time.

The presiding judge pointed out that:

The Act places the burden of proving this defence upon the defendant. That means he does not have to make you sure of it (which is the criminal law standard of proof), but he does have to satisfy you to the lesser (civil law standard of proof) on the balance of probabilities, namely that it is "more likely than not".

What this boils down to should strike fear into every person subject to the UK's laws on indecent images of children. If somebody sends you a large number of files for whatever reason, and one of those files is indecent, but you didn't check them carefully for anything questionable and quickly delete, the burden of proof is you to show that you were unaware of the unlawful content. The defendant is expected to prove a negative.

But surely it can't really be that bad? Would the legal system of a 'developed' country really be that unreasonable? Is "more likely than not" such a difficult standard to meet?

The Crown Prosecution Service, who are responsible for prosecuting those accused of PIM offenses, certainly believe so. When prosecuting cases, they will demand that a defendant reach the threshold of evidence required for a reversed burden of proof defense. However, when they were ordered by a judge to make copies of 'indecent images of children' for the purposes of a legal defense, they appealed the judge's decision on the grounds that they could theoretically be prosecuted and subject to a reverse burden of proof! They even threatened not to prosecute if required to undertake any actions that would subject them to this standard! They are happy to demand prison for people wrongly accused and unable to meet the threshold, but they are so terrified of being asked to meet it themselves that they will refuse to do their jobs in such circumstances.

The research continues....

[BLueRibbon]

R v Harrison [2008] 1 Cr. App. R. 29

If anybody could locate a copy of this judgment, I would be grateful.

[BLueRibbon]

It's amazing just how much legal standards are put on hold in the service of anti-sex ideology. These laws, in theory, should be easy to challenge. Yet somehow even basic civil rights are put on hold in the name of "child protection". It's sickening.

The judgments are amusing. The judges acknowledge basic facts accurately, and then twist their interpretation to fit the western narrative on MAPs and youth sexuality.

In R v Murray (2004), the judge decided that an excerpt of a video that was made and distributed lawfully, for medical purposes, could be ruled indecent because that excerpt was slowed down at the point where a child's genitals were being analyzed and because the medical commentary was removed. The original judge and the appeal judge both acknowledged the firmly established precedent of R v Graham-Kerr (1988), which ruled that the motivations of the defendant (sexual or non-sexual) were irrelevant, but insisted that an excerpt of a lawful video can still be judged separately from the original video, and the images can be treated as different images. This is not how videos work; they are comprised of multiple frames, and these frames remain the same even if they are played back at a different speed! Some jurisdictions even treat each frame in a video as a separate image or even a separate count! And surely this interpretation contradicts the claim of every representation of PIM requiring harm to have been done?

[BLueRibbon]

R v Bowden (1999) determined that 'making' has the incredibly broad definition used today.

One of the key arguments from the prosecution was:

A person who either downloads images on to disc or who prints them off is making them. The Act is not only concerned with the original creation of images, but also their proliferation. Photographs or pseudo-photographs found on the Internet may have originated from outside the United Kingdom; to download or print within the jurisdiction is to create new material which hitherto may not have existed therein.

This might have been relevant in 1999, when the internet was in its infancy and people were reportedly sharing PIM peer-to-peer or on a small scale only. It has less relevance in 2024, a time when PIM are reportedly distributed en masse via massive darknet forums, way beyond the control of the UK authorities to 'keep out', and mostly already in the UK on its enormous PIM database.

An offense of distribution already exists to deal with people distributing such material, but that was the case in 1999, so it's a lesser argument in terms of suggesting a revisit of this judgment.

Fragment, could you take a look at the judgment and see if you can formulate any useful counterarguments?

[PorcelainLark]

There was this expression I've heard before that I think is relevant: "no politician loses because of being too harsh on sex offenders". From briefly looking into it the problem is that the UK lacks a codified constitution. Instead it has "Parliamentary Sovereignty", which means you can't stop a bill from being passed on the basis that it's unconstitutional. The closest you can come to it is having a "declaration of incompatibility" with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) due to the Human Rights Act 1998.
A relevant example of a "declaration of incompatibility" is found in R (F and Thompson) v Secretary of State for Justice.

Sex offenders' indefinite placement on a register and obligations thereby to report movements etc to police are disproportionate and in breach of ECHR art 8.

Otherwise, the only option is for the general public in the UK to want their politicians to go easier on sex offenders.

If you can find a way that anti-MAP laws go against the European Convention on Human Rights, you could begin to challenge them in the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamen ... ed_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Act_1998
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_ ... man_Rights
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarati ... patibility
https://privacylibrary.ccgnlud.org/case ... department

[BLueRibbon]

There was this expression I've heard before that I think is relevant: "no politician loses because of being too harsh on sex offenders". From briefly looking into it the problem is that the UK lacks a codified constitution. Instead it has "Parliamentary Sovereignty", which means you can't stop a bill from being passed on the basis that it's unconstitutional. The closest you can come to it is having a "declaration of incompatibility" with the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) due to the Human Rights Act 1998.
A relevant example of a "declaration of incompatibility" is found in R (F and Thompson) v Secretary of State for Justice.

Sex offenders' indefinite placement on a register and obligations thereby to report movements etc to police are disproportionate and in breach of ECHR art 8.

Otherwise, the only option is for the general public in the UK to want their politicians to go easier on sex offenders.

If you can find a way that anti-MAP laws go against the European Convention on Human Rights, you could begin to challenge them in the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamen ... ed_Kingdom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Rights_Act_1998
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_ ... man_Rights
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declarati ... patibility
https://privacylibrary.ccgnlud.org/case ... department

It was tried in cases in the late 90s, but the judges decided that PIM laws are necessary to protect public morals (an exception to the right to freedom of expression) and therefore compatible.

The purpose of this research is not to try to change UK laws on indecent images of children; it is for an article on Huw Edwards. Those advocating change to UK PIM laws should focus more on the cost and difficulty of enforcement. There are so many people allegedly accessing PIM in the UK, and there is a lack of space in prisons. Why go to such extreme effort to track down a fraction of a percent, to eventually give them a suspended sentence, fucking up the lives of the MAP and their families? It's a waste of resources.

[PorcelainLark]

The purpose of this research is not to try to change UK laws on indecent images of children; it is for an article on Huw Edwards.

Ah, sorry for being off topic.

R v Harrison [2008] 1 Cr. App. R. 29

If anybody could locate a copy of this judgment, I would be grateful.

Is this what you're looking for?
https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk ... /2007/2976

[BLueRibbon]

The purpose of this research is not to try to change UK laws on indecent images of children; it is for an article on Huw Edwards.

Ah, sorry for being off topic.

You're welcome to discuss efforts to change the law here. There are clearly changes that ought to be made. I was just explaining that the purpose of my research was different.

R v Harrison [2008] 1 Cr. App. R. 29

If anybody could locate a copy of this judgment, I would be grateful.

Is this what you're looking for?
https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk ... /2007/2976

Awesome! Thank you.

[BLueRibbon]

R v Harrison threw up something absolutely massive, that I and most other commenters on this topic had overlooked.

The two offences prosecuted in this case are making indecent photographs of a child and having such photographs in one's possession. The more serious of them, the making offence, arises under section 1 (1) (a) of the Protection of Children Act 1978. The maximum sentence is 10 years. There is no defence in the legislation for this offence.

If a defendant is found to be in possession of an indecent image, they have the aforementioned defenses of having been sent them without request and not keeping them for an 'unreasonable' time. To be convicted of a possession charge, you need to have stored the image in a way that you can access it.

If a defendant is to be convicted of 'making' an image, there only needs to be forensic evidence of it having been downloaded. There is no need to prove that the defendant was able to access it. There is also no statutory defense.

If a person sends you an image that you did not request, and you open it without realizing that it is 'indecent', and then you delete it, are you guilty of 'making'?

A summary of Atkins v Director of Public Prosecutions (2001) suggests not. The judges whose summary only I was able to access seem to have been extremely lucid, realizing the massive inconsistency:

The court was bound by Bowden: ‘it seems to me problematic enough to construe s.1(1)(a) (an offence to which no defence whatever is available) as encompassing the intentional making of copies. To construe it as creating an absolute offence in the sense contended for by the DPP, i.e. to encompass also the unintentional making of copies, in my judgment would go altogether too far. It would, moreover, as Miss Malcolm points out, represent a striking oddity in our criminal law: a situation where the self-same set of facts involves the commission of two quite distinct offences, possession under s.160 and ‘making’ under s.1(1)(a), no additional ingredient being required for proof of the more serious offence. In short, it is my conclusion that whilst ‘making’ includes intentional copying (Bowden), it does not include unintentional copying.’

This decision came from a higher court whose decisions lower courts are supposed to rely on. I am not a lawyer, and I have neither the time nor energy to become an expert in legal process, but according to the admittedly poor source Wikipedia:

Generally speaking, higher courts do not have direct oversight over the lower courts of record, in that they cannot reach out on their initiative (sua sponte) at any time to overrule judgments of the lower courts. Normally, the burden rests with litigants to appeal rulings (including those in clear violation of established case law) to the higher courts. If a judge acts against precedent, and the case is not appealed, the decision will stand.

This presents a serious problem. A poorly represented person, who has been sent images they did not request, may be unable to defend themselves unless their lawyer mounts an appropriate defense citing Atkins v DPP (2001). While in theory, all lawyers tasked with defending a client against such charges should be aware of the relevant case law, the reality is likely to be quite different, especially for those who cannot afford a specialist lawyer. There remains a very serious risk of a person receiving a life-changing conviction for having evidence of images found in their cache, whether or not these were intentionally accessed.

It's also worth asking why there is a statutory defense for the possession of indecent images, but not for making. The offense of making was not intended to cover the ridiculous concept of 'making' a copy of an image on a screen. If it was, the same defenses would 'apply' as to possession of images. The prosecutors in R v Bowden were playing games in their interpretation of the law, desperate to 'put away a pedo', endangering the freedom of the entirety of the British public in the process. If the statutory defenses for possession were necessary, they were equally if not more necessary to protect those accused of the equivalent yet easier to wrongly accuse offense of 'making', an offense for which anyone without advanced knowledge of computer file systems could easily be accused.

The British public should be terrified of this threat to their freedom. If someone sends them an indecent image, they rely on a specialist lawyer citing Atkins v DPP, otherwise they are fucked.