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The Text Message Typo That Landed a Man In Jail
Barence writes "A British man was jailed for 18 months for accidentally sending an explicit text message to his entire address book. 24-year-old swimming coach Craig Evans intended to send a text message to his girlfriend asking her for sex. Instead, the message was accidentally sent to his entire BlackBerry address book, including two girls, aged 13 and 14, from his swimming class. He was subsequently arrested and charged with 'causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity,' and – incredibly – jailed for 18 months at Birmingham Crown Court in July. Yesterday, an appeal's court freed Evans, although he wasn't cleared — the sentence was merely reduced to a nine-month suspended jail term."
I can't even figure out how to send a message to all my Blackberry contacts...
How does one make a mistake like that?
Sounds a little like the ProjetX we had here in Holland. A girl accidentally asked the whole FB community to join her on her birthday-party. She forgot to mention that it was for her friends and family only.
Thousands gathered in a small village (pop. 20.000), rioted, plundered stores, burned cars, damage ~ 1 million total.
A quick search on "projectX Haren" should suffice for more info.
On the guy... that is well inconvenient mate!
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
Only source for this appears to be the Daily Mail, not a publication noted for its accurate reporting. How easy is it to accidentally send a text message to an entire contact list on Blackberries? I've never used a phone that made such a thing possible.
He's the swim coach. That's fairly common, for quick updates about practices and meets.
i agree... fucking mormons...
Maybe it's because he was their swimming instructor, and gave them a ride somewhere or something? It's not like he had dozens of minors' contacts lying around and a string of lewd messages to them in his contact history (believe me, the police will have checked with the phone company by now).
Christ, panic mongers like yourself are the reason children are increasingly living in padded isolation boxes to protect them from big scary reality, and men are terrified to so much as speak to a child lest they be accused of molesting them. It's at the point now where, out of self-preservation, I would drive right by a child alone on the side of the road in the middle of winter. I would not stop to help. Why? Because if god forbid something happened to them later, or they decided to say something about me, the world would ruin my life for the greater good.
Ask yourself if that's really the best thing for children. For every pedophile you've cowed into hiding (they don't go away mind you, and when they think nobody is looking they're still going to do horrible things) you scare away hundreds or thousands of decent human beings who would help a child in need. Your child is far more likely to be hurt by tripping and falling, getting lost, or eating something dangerous; and if you're not around, you'd best hope there's a woman nearby to help because with this attitude the men will stay the fuck away.
>No, they go to the parents who transport their children to the meetings. So I'll ask again; Why did he have the phone numbers of 13 and 14 year olds on his phone?
Because they were 13 and 14 year old's NOT 6 and 7 year olds. That means they were high-school aged. Now I know in America you treat highschool teenagers that age as if they were babies but in the rest of the world they are allowed and indeed EXPECTED to take a modicum of responsibility for their own actions.
Including almost CERTAINLY having to get to practise THEMSELVES using available public transport, bycicles and the like.
My parents would have found the idea of "taking a high school kid to a sports practise" stupid beyond measure. They bought me a bike instead.
Even aside from that - there IS such a thing as non-sexual friendships between adults and teenagers. Teens seeking advice, role models and the like - and adults who are willing to play that role, often ones in positions like coaches, guidance councillors and such who are able and willing to give good advice to difficult questions that those kids may not be as comfortable discussing with their parents.
That's not just innocent, it's a NORMAL part of growing up and depriving kids of that thinking you're protecting them is a very good way to make them less likely to grow up into responsible adults.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
"No, they go to the parents who transport their children to the meetings."
Kids use public transports outside the US, we're not backwards morons.
>If I kill you by accident, that is alright then?
Maybe. You won't be charged with murder. You MAY be charged with manslaughter. The legal test for manslaughter is: 'caused a death where a reasonable person would not'.
So if reasonable precautions on your part would have prevented the death - and you didn't take them - then you're guilty, otherwise you are indeed innocent.
To make up a random example. You're a forklift driver. Your forklift runs downhil while you stop for lunch, runs over a car and kills the driver. Are you guilty ? Well if you had left the handbrake off - then you are. If you had pulled it up but the brake FAILED while you were gone, then you're innocent.
See how it works ?
So we can apply a similar test to this accident if it helps you feel better.
We know (and an appeals court judge has declared) based on the available evidence that there was no intent here. But was the accident excusable ? Well it depends - was it an accident a reasonable person would have been able to avoid ?
For that one would have to look at the interface of the specific phone, the methods that led to this happening and the particular circumstances of the case. You cannot just universally make a declaration about it. There is even the possibility that this was caused by an obscure or sporadic bug in that version of the blackberry OS - that even RIM may not know about yet and NO action of his would have prevented it. Such bugs can and do happen - this site is full of programmer's we've all seen bugs like that. If that is the case (and we - and likely HE doesn't know that) then he would be completely innocent by the "reasonable person" measure.
I sincerely doubt the Jury ever really tried to question how reasonable his actions were since they never even asked the intent question despite the strong evidence showing there wasn't any.
Now the fact is that this question quite academic - the question of whether he had acted in a reasonable manner hasn't been answered and we don't have enough information to answer it. The appeals judge may have, and may have decided on those grounds that he did NOT take reasonable precautions to keep his sexual message away from the minors and this is why he remains guilty - but the judge DID agree the actions were without INTENT and this is why his sentence was so significantly mitigated.
But that is just a guess - I haven't read the actual court reports so don't take this as a claim of fact, just a likely explanation of the outcome.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
See a poster above - outside the USA it's very normal for children of all ages to transport themselves to places. I was catching a bus home from school by the time I was 9.
If this guy was their swimming coach, then he had a perfectly justifiable reason for having their numbers in his phone, even if it was just so he knew which one of his team was texting him to say that she couldn't come to a training session.
Yes, he screwed up. But it doesn't justify the offence he was convicted of, which will place him on the offenders register for a minimum of 10 years, and has therefore completely destroyed his chosen career.
The ruination of a man's life is a hard price to pay for a social faux-pas.
hmmm, the religious fundamentalists went to America, and the convicts to Oz, all we got left with was Charles Darwin and Alan Turing
The way I see it you're actually making life more dangerous for children.
I pose this question to males out there: You're driving down the road and see a young child, maybe 12 years old, on the side of the road. It's cold, too cold to be safely outside, and they're trying to wave you down. You don't recognize them, but they're obviously distressed. Would you stop to help?
I, for one, would not. If it's some attention-seeking disturbed child, or just the child of some overzealous protective parents, I could wind up in jail with my life ruined for my efforts. Safer thing to do for me is pretend I never saw anything, and hope someone finds them. I'd even be nervous to call 911, because then it's "Why didn't you stop to help?" which makes me suspicious. Good luck kid, blame your parents' attitudes.
People like that just don't want to look at the facts. The facts are that the vast majority of pedophiles know the victim by being a family member or a friend of the family aunt or uncle). And while men are slightly more often found to be doing this sort of thing 1/3rd of pedophiles are actually women most are never convicted though and boys are far less likely to come forward if I woman makes a sexual advance).
Yet men and more so 'strange' men who are not family friends or relatives are the targets of the publics outrage over these things. It just goes to prove how irrational most people are and how sensationalist most of the media is.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
I've been in a situation just as you describe.
A month or so ago my neighbor's daughter knocked on my door. It was raining and cold and she had been locked out of her house. I have a daughter who does not live with me full time, so I let the neighbor girl in and sent her to my daughter's room to change into dry clothes and hang out until her mom to got home.
An hour or so later her mom arrives home and was very grateful... until she learned that my daughter wasn't living with me that week. My thanks? She called the police. I wasn't arrested or charged with anything, but an officer did arrive to take statements.
Next time her kid gets locked out, she can catch pneumonia.
Rather cool excuse if it had worked though.
If only there was some way of verifying his story... like looking through the texting logs from his carrier.
Alan Turing. Who you chemically castrated for being gay. You really want to go down ths road?
I'm the father of a 13-year-old girl, and I have several of her friends' numbers in my phone. Why? Here's a few reasons:
While my daughter has her own phone, she often forgets it or forgets to charge it. Also, she's often on restriction at her Mom's house and not allowed to have a phone there, and when she is, she simply leaves it at my house. (I have her every other week.) Thus, her friends often call me looking for her. I don't have a good memory for phone numbers, so I've saved the numbers of those who call looking for her often, along with their names, so the caller ID on my phone will show me the name instead of the number. That way, I can often answer with a simple, "Hi. She's not here, she's at her mom's" or simply hand the phone over to her to answer.
Secondly, and relating to number one, sometimes she needs to call her friends, and doesn't have her phone. Having their numbers in my phone allows me to hand it over to her and let her call them, without having to go through the hoops of calling their parents. (Some of whom are divorced, and thus it can be a guessing game as to which parent one needs to call to reach the child.)
(And parenthetically here, that's part of what led me to start saving the kids' numbers in the first place. After having done the game of "Oh, you need to talk to Jenny? Okay, I'll call her mom... hi, Angie, Margie needs to talk to Jenny... oh, she's with Mark? Okay, I don't have Mark's number, can you give it to me? Thanks. Hi, Mark, this is Margie's dad. Margie Andrews. She's a friend of Jenny, and she wants to ask her about... oh, she's over at Alicia's? Do you have the number there? No? Oh, Alicia has a phone? Okay, let me write that down...." two or three times a month for several months, I found it was much easier when she wanted to contact one of the other kids to just have her call that kid directly.)
Third, when she's out with friends and has forgotten her own phone (or it's out of charge), it makes it easy for me to call and get her, since I know who she's with. Even if they've gone out walking, or have walked over to another friend's house in the neighborhood, I can still get her, since I have the numbers of people she's actually physically with.
Now, I don't go around asking for these kids' phone numbers -- I just tag them with their names after they've called me, or save them after I've been given their number and had to call them. (I'd hope by now that in a world of Caller ID, all parents are teaching their children that if you don't want someone to have your number, you shouldn't call them directly.)
I also have the phone numbers of a few older teens who are in my weekly D&D group that meets at a gaming store. I'm the GM, so people have given me their numbers so I can let them know if I'm not going to be able to make it for some reason, or if I'm going to be late, or for similar things. Some of their parents I know; some of them I don't, since these are high school kids who have their own cars and get around on their own. I'd actually prefer to use email for that, since I usually know well in advance, but one of them especially checks her email very rarely, but always gets texts -- and, of course, sometimes I don't know I'm going to be running late until only an hour or so before the game, and many people don't check their email that often. (Usually in that case I actually just text two of the people, and ask them to text everyone else... but one of those is the girl who's the social hub of the teen group.)
British juries are about as intelligent as American juries, however British judges are not political appointments and so don't have to grandstand to keep their jobs.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Or the jury were raging retards.
I would bet if he had accidentally killed those two girls with his car, he would have gotten less jail time.
Cop 1 to Cop 2: "So, uh, do you think this should be prosecuted?"
Cop 1, thinking: "Damn, I hope Joe doesn't think I'm a pedo for suggesting this might not be worthy of prosecution."
Cop 2, thinking: "Damn, Pete will think I'm a pedo if I don't say yes."
Cop 1 and Cop 2 in nervous unison, "Uh, yeah."
CPS agent being passed the case from Pete and Joe, thinking: "Well, this must be an honest mistake, right? But I'll lose my job if it's not."
Prosecutor to jury, "You're a pedophile lover if you don't think that sending gross text messages to children is wrong."
Juror 1 to others, "Uh, yeah, I'm not a pedo, so I can't condone this behavior."
Juror 4, thinking: "If I say no they'll all think I'm a pedo. Gotta vote guilty. Maybe someone else will stand up for him."
Judge, thinking: "If I don't throw the book at a convicted pedo I'll look like an asshole..."
Appeals judge, thinking: "Well, Judge Green and a jury found him guilty. I'll look like a pedo asshole if I don't uphold. At least I can give him a break and suspend the sentence, right?"
Slashdot: "How the hell could this possibly happen? Obviously an honest mistake, right?"
Next time the kid gets locked out call the cops about a neglected child locked out of her home.
When were gays ever lynched in America?
Seriously? I lived in a small college town of about 30k and while I was growing up, there were *two* openly gay guys that ended up either dead or just disappeared.
Perhaps you're just trying to nit-pick that technically, most gays don't get lynched -- they just get murdered by one person, a la Matthew Shepard -- but the end result is about the same. And no, it's nowhere as prevalent as the lynchings of black people in the south ... but just because it isn't as bad or as visible, doesn't mean it should be ignored.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
You obviously read Kafka as fiction, yes?
May the Maths Be with you!