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Musician Jailed Over Prank YouTube Video
An anonymous reader writes "Evan Emory, a 21-year-old aspiring musician, edited together video of him singing a G-rated song to a bunch of giggling school kids with video of him singing a song with sexually explicit lyrics, and posted it on YouTube. For this stupid joke, done many times by professional comedians (all NSFW, obviously), and admittedly done without getting permission from the children shown 'hearing' him sing naughty words, he was arrested and could face 20 years in prison as a sex offender. On the pretext of looking for 'souvenirs' of child sexual abuse, his house has been searched by police, and the Muskegon County (Michigan) Prosecutor has insinuated (with no further evidence) that Emory actually wants to have sex with children and claims he 'victimized every single child in that classroom.' Emory insists he had no such intention."
Better jail Monty Python as well.
That's the very next thing I want to watch!
Seriously, this sounds pretty ridiculous...
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Welcome to United States of Iran
He wasn't saying sexual remarks to children, how about you RTFA.
Land of the litigious.
By railroading this guy, what the Muskegon County Prosecutor is actually doing is weakening the severity of real child abuse in the public's mind by diluting it with dumb but ultimately harmless comedy.
Gee, I wonder why he would possibly want to do that....
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
The moral of the story is this: If you are a male (especially a single white male over 30) in the 21st century, do not go anywhere near children. Don't look at them, don't talk to them, don't get within 50 feet of them (especially if you own a camera, even if you leave the camera at home). For the love of God, don't be in a public toilet if one happens to come in, even if Dad is there with him and especially if Dad doesn't come in with him. Do not interact with them in any way, even virtually, such as re-dubbing a video, drawing a picture, mentioning children in an e-mail, nothing. More and more often, this includes your own children.
Remember, all men are automatically guilty even if they've done nothing wrong!
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
CSI just showed somebody shooting an underage person a dozen times in the chest. Better arrest those actors for murder, then. Idiot.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
His video depicted him saying sexual remarks to children. Whether or not they were actually there doesn't really matter.
What?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
And since it has been removed, I can't watch the video and make my own judgment about what was said. Because I think as usual, the prosecutor is doing the prosecutor thing and using the protect the children bullshit witch hunt to boost his political career.
Of course, the stupid ignorant easily swayed with two bit opinions dipshit public will crucify this poor guy and his life is forever fucked. Even if he's exonerated - he's fucked.
We are not a free country anymore, no thanks to our draconian sex, drug and terrorism laws.
A system which allows a moron to become a prosecutor, fails.
Read radical news here
Here you go folks, let those at the Muskegon Prosecutors office know how you feel about their use of tax dollars....
prosecutor@co.muskegon.mi.us
Legally, he is correct. Rationally, it's stupid that he's correct... But he's still correct.
Generally, model releases are needed for pay. You can take a picture of anyone, as long as they do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy. A school is a public place, hence no real expectation for privacy. He just can't make money, directly, off of it. At least, that is how I have read the statutes to be.
They guy made a crude joke. WAY too many people have gone WAY overboard on this. Our society is being put into a straight jacket. Humor has ALWAYS had more wiggle room, than most other forms of speech. But, the way too important people are even stifling humor. It is really pathetic.
I didn't read the book but the WikiPedia summary of the book makes it sound like child sexual abuse is no big deal when in fact it is a very big deal.
While the book's author is largely correct "that later in life, after the memories are processed, examined, and more fully understood, the experience becomes traumatic" this is precisely why child sexual abuse IS a big deal.
The fact that it is a delayed trauma does not make it non-traumatic, except perhaps to people who die fairly quickly after the abuse happened, before their sub-conscious or conscious mind reacts to it.
Another factor not addressed in the summary which I hope the book covers is the harm done by the ongoing subconscious processing of the experience before the conscious processing happens. This may come out as stress, physical ailments, physically aggressive or other socially inappropriate non-sexual behavior (socially inappropriate sexual behavior is easily explained by "daddy did it to me, it must be okay if I do it to someone else"), and the like well before the child consciously processes the fact that she was abused. I say "she" as most child-sex-abuse victims are female, but the same goes for male victims.
Also, the Wikipedia article says "[Susan] Clancy [the book's author] concludes that since sexual abuse of children is not violent per se." If Clancy does indeed say this then she is just plain wrong or she restricts himself to only certain definitions of violence. In my book, violence does not have to be physical or even overtly coercive. Any act which violates another person without being, on balance, good is in my book an act of violence. Parents and other caretakers frequently violate the personal autonomy of children, it is a necessary part of proper child-rearing. The "on balance good" test covers things like forcing a child to endure pain while he gets his vaccinations, forcing a child to go to bed at a certain time, and all the other things that parents and others can and must to in order to be responsible caretakers.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
... has to have its witch hunt. What I find really odd about it is that some of the same people who now recoil in horror at the thought of what happened during the McCarthyism era will happily toss gasoline onto the pyre of anyone who is accused of pedophilia. Proof isn't an issue anymore; the accusation itself equals certain doom.
It sure seems that modern "crime" investigations need to start with these words: "alright, first: everyone kindly calm the fuck down".
I'm tired of hearing about cases where there is OBVIOUSLY no real victim, yet the "trial" marches on. And it appears that we have a hard time presuming innocence when there's insufficient evidence to convict.
I hope that this isn't an upward trend...maybe this has always happened to some degree, and we only hear about it more now because of the Internet. Either way, it scares the hell out of me and makes me feel like we should be putting the prosecutors on trial instead of the "criminals".
"Microsoft killed my company, I hold a personal grudge. I don't use Microsoft products and neither should you."-JWZ
What's even bad taste about it? TF summary links to six examples of the same thing. It's a common joke. Having a character do or say something inappropriate in front of children has been done forever.
This is just some retarded prosecutor thinking a clip of someone using dirty words in front of children is the same as a clip of someone actually fucking the children. This is just moronic. Saying "fuck" in front of little Billy is not the same as fucking little Billy.
Nice pun. See you in jail.
Table-ized A.I.
As ridiculous as it may sound, replace "Santa Claus" with "God" and all of a sudden we're not that far from reality anymore.
c++;
When did "sexually explicit" go from participating in sexual acts to just saying sexually themed things? Next thing you know, thinking dirty thoughts near children will be a crime.
The fact of the matter is, whether the guy actually did it in front of the children, or merely post-edited to make it look like he did, he should not be considered a sex offender. He didn't actually have sex with the children, or even have sex (with an adult) in view of the children. He is facing 20 years in prison for making a bad joke. People who actually had sex with children have gotten shorter prison sentences.
This hysteria has gone too far. It's one thing to investigate this video, determine that not only was no sexual act involving children committed but in fact the video was edited after the fact, and then drop the investigation. It's entirely another thing to decide to charge the creator of the video with sexual abuse of a minor. If successful, this will literally destroy this person as a human being. Assuming he survives the prison time (which most likely will involve frequent, genuine sexual abuse), he will be placed on the sex offender registry, which is essentially a life sentence. He will not be able to live or approach anywhere near any place that has anything to do with children (i.e., most of the country), his name will be publicly and legally slandered in perpetuity, and he will be unable to secure any meaningful employment. Even if the prosecution fails, his name will have been dragged the mud so badly that he may be disowned by his family and forced to move.
All for what? Because some child somewhere may have possibly been exposed to some slightly disturbing words? Even if the video genuinely showed some guy talking trash to children, chances are they didn't understand it or found him silly and ridiculous. Children are remarkably resilient to such things.
While I agree that it should be illegal to tell bad jokes, and a 20-year prison term sounds like a pretty sufficient penalty, I... wait, what? Are you retarded? We can't have comedic material unless it's suitable for a child audience?
Go hide under your bed. This world will scare you.
Haida Manga
(a) "Appears to include a child" means that the depiction appears to include, or conveys the impression that it includes, a person who is less than 18 years of age, and the depiction meets either of the following conditions:
Everyone had the "impression" that the child was still in the scene while Randall was ordering the pornography. Not that i agree, but that all these retarded legislators need. Normaly the "and the depiction meets either of the following conditions:" should be fine.
(B) The reasonable person would find the depiction, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
Because i am a reasonable person and "i find it to be fucking hilarious" is suffisent artistic value to me.
Pot heads roll joints, junkies use needles. Lets not lump them into the same category shall we?
Then charge him with criminal trespass. Charging him with creating child pornography is ludicrously overboard and beyond idiotic as I seriously, seriously doubt he had any kind of sexual motivation whatsoever. It was a joke and he never actually sang the explicit lyrics to the children. The guy's a dick, and perhaps prosecution is in order, but let the charges actually fit the crime.
Potentially jailing someone for 20 years after making a parody is a slap in the face to victims of real child rape.
What a terrible world that would be! Imagine, a place where people posses the unrestricted right to free expression. The horror!
I live here in Muskegon, Mi. These are the same people who tore down an 80 yr old retired WW2 veteran's home (basically) because they could not afford to take it by eminent domain @125% of value. It was an historic home. The home was built by the first mayor of the city and was on the city's precious historic trail. The man was a hoarder - a known mental illness- so the house was filthy on the inside. After the first hit by the wrecker the city declared the house structurally unfit and finished demolishing the home.
These people have a nickname -- Gestapo. They are extremists in their puritanical beliefs, and this musician knows this. Therefore he wasn't just being a moron, his actions went to the level of recklessly - moronic - imbecile. He should have moved to Detroit first then did this using a willing classroom out there. Does he deserve 20yrs in prison and the reputation afterwards? Does a guy who puts his hand in a running lawnmower blade deserve to keep his hand? I guess fate plays it's part in these kinds of cases. He lost.
---- Don't be irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted.
The article is using old information. Emory was arrested initially and released on a $5,000 bond. On Wednesday 2/16, he was arraigned on a felony charge of manufacturing child sexual abusive material. http://www.woodtv.com/dpp/news/local/muskegon_county/YouTube-singer-charged-with-felony
He lied to the school to gain access to their kids.
Debatable. He probably didn't lie per se, but rather simply failed to volunteer some key details. "I'd like to come sing for the children" vs " I'd like to come sing for the children, and then edit the video to appear as though I sang a much less appropriate song for comedic purposes". IANAL, but both are true in the technical sense.
That is criminal trespass under almost any jurisdiction you could name.
Even if we were to conclude he lied, and what you say here is true -- two big if's -- it still wouldn't matter. Criminal Trespass is not what he's being charged with and it's not a crime which carries a 20 year prison sentence and listing on a sex offender registry.
Without permission, he used an empty classroom as a stage for his sexually explicit performance. That again is criminal trespass.
He had permission -- not necessarily from the school itself, but from an employee of the school who was his friend.
Without anyone's informed consent he edited videos of six and seven year old kids into his adolescent and obsene music video.
Poor judgment perhaps, but at *worst* this is a civil matter -- not a criminal one.
The video makes these kids part of the performance ---
and that is all that Michigan law requires for prosecution on the felony charge.
A court will decide that, but expect that if it agrees with you that another court will be asked to decide if the law itself can possibly be constitutional.
The video was posted to YouTube and played to a local comedy club. That looks less like a prank and more like commercial exploitation.
Irrelevant to anything. Again, if he's using people's likeness for a commercial gain, that might be a civil matter -- but never a criminal one.
This guy sang in front of kids, then modified that video to appear as if he was saying vulgar things instead. Somehow, this ludicrously construes child abuse or some nonsense. Ok, whatever.
Here's the missing puzzle piece... what if someone ELSE had taken his video, redubbed it, and posted it like that?
Lesson: if you want to do what this guy did, make sure that the redub is posted by a different user that isn't traceable. Apparently this 'crime' only happens if you are both the person who sings to high school kids with permission of the school AND the person who makes the humorous redub later- just don't be BOTH of those people (traceably) and you should be fine.
In the meantime, of course, this is an absurd travesty of the legal system.
Very wise words.
Our very western society is going down the drain because our law-givers want make rules for everything and every conceivable situation. That is not freedom. Nor does it promote acting responsibly towards one's fellow man, let alone towards children.
The most important factor in dealing with people is using one's common sense. Unfortunately, when emotionally hot topics are concerned - like child abuse, terrorism presently, and the famous non-existing WMDs in Iraq, the Red Scare or the fear of nuclear holocaust in the past - our common sense is the first thing to go. This is because our society is programmed to lash out against anything or anyone that even remotely insinuates those things.
Why? Because of the age old saying: "The great Masses of the People..."
Not every Muslim is a terrorist. Heck, not every terrorist is Muslim. There are terrorists in every flavour and every vocation or religious belief system. Not every man or woman who works with children and enjoys it is a child molestor. In fact, the enjoyment part is often exactly what keeps these people going for twenty years or more. Being an educator or (surrogate) parent is a hard job and usually only pays off on the long term. I know of teachers and foster parents who were burnt out long before that!
And here I am, quoting someone who was arguably one of the most evil people in our history. Not because I agree with his ideas, or with his motives - let alone his actions. No, because unfortunately for us, with regard to this, he was absolutely right.
And on the Eighth Day, Man created God.