"I'm confident that the 55-60 year old man who purchased this video wasn't planning on taking it home, watching it, "firing up", and heading to the school yard."

-- LemurMaster

Maybe it's debatable that men who engage in renting "innocent" images of naked children for sexual purposes will or will not cross the line into molesting real children. However, it is entirely probable that the creep who is looking at "tame" nudist videos, will want to view other types of photos as well... will want to increase his stimulation levels. Photos involving children and sexual activity.

(Analogous to the dude who is looking at Playboy centerfolds, while unlikely this will result in raping a woman, the likelihood is very high that he will look at pornography.)

Those photos with children engaged in sexual activity, staged for the purposes of adult stimulation, are not victimless crimes or innocent.

Also to "Children are erotic" poster: while children have an innate sexuality. They also have an innate innocence, which must be respected. Many pedophiles use the argument that children are erotic to justify using children for their own selfish physical fulfillment.

In the US, we seem to need to believe that there are hoards of secretive villains out there preying on some cherished belief or tradition. From witches to communists to terrorists there is always something under the bed.

A member of my family got into similar difficulty after an over-zealous employee of Ritz Camera called the police over some bathtub shots of her 2-year-old son. It never escalated into quite the ordeal endured by the author, but it certainly convinced me that something had gone seriously wrong with our sense of balance and fairness.

Recently pedophiles, pornographers and predators seem to be the new lurking menace. From milk cartons to Megan's Law we feel the need to believe that child abuse is rampant. That most kids are abducted by disgruntled ex spouses or relatives doesn't quite satisfy our need for outrage. We feel more kindly toward murderers than fondlers. Is there any evidence that kiddie porn is actually epidemic, or just our hysteria about it? People in areas where crime is demonstrably going down often feel less safe than they did when crime was measurably higher. Tabloid media has found a new villain everyone can fear and loathe.

I am also confused by people who think their disapproval of the author's camping trip activities should somehow be codified. Your family does not piss on the campfire? Mine either. OK, what does that have to do with how his case was handled and the indignity he suffered? You believe moms on the trip wouldn't have allowed this to happen? If so, perhaps it's just evidence that women shouldn't always be invited on camping trips. You believe that kids shouldn't see "certain parts" of an adult's body. Fine. Keep it zipped. You think the author should have displayed better anger management during months of faceless government harassment? Maybe. But it has nothing to do with this case. Someone even criticized his syntax and writing skills.

The essence of this article, that may readers seem to have forgotten, is not whether the author aligns with your sense of propriety. The case he makes is that there is no mechanism for any official to look at the evidence and dismiss the case before it causes every member of the family grief and humiliation. If you look at that aspect of the case, there is hardly anything you can disagree with.

"Why do you suppose the Abu Ghraib torturers got such good effect out of forcing the prisoners to be photographed in humiliating nude poses?"

Because such nudity is much more taboo in their culture than in ours.

What does this have to do with little kids? They aren't adult Muslim men. They don't care who sees them naked. They don't yet appreciate what a super humiliating big deal it is if someone's 3 year old pee pee or behind is exposed. They take pictures of each other sometimes with, sometimes without clothes on. You're seriously comparing this guy's camping trip to Abu Ghraib?

What the hell is wrong with you?

I'm a little disgusted with the flippant attitudes of some of the respondants here. I doubt that any one of you who are saying, "There were no charges, what's the big deal?" have ever been singled out for scrutiny by the government. Even if you aren't charged with anything the expense and personal toll can be enormous. Prosecutors and government agencies don't have unlimited resources but, compared to what the individual person can typically muster, they may as well be. Jody Jenkins didn't even mention the thousands of dollars in legal fees her family surely accrued.

A personal anecdote for you:

Two years ago a friend was driving on a city street in stop-and-go traffic. As she was inching along, two children on bicycles weaved their way through the cars mid-block and one of them ran into the side of my friend's truck. The child didn't fall down, wasn't harmed in any way and just backed up and rode away. The truck is a beater, so my friend didn't care about the bump, and went on her own way. Two hours later my friend left a meeting to find the police towing her truck. An officer asked her, "Did you leave the scene of an accident?"

What had seemed like a harmless mishap to my friend was reported to the police by someone who took down her license plate number and described an incident where a child was run down and the driver fled the scene. Per "procedure" both the police and an ambulance were called to the site of the "accident." The prosecutor took the case quite seriously since a child was involved. My friend's lawyer was eager to pursue a complete dismissal, but she plead down to a misdemeanor and a year of probation just to make the case go away. Oh, and in the interim the mother of the child 'victim' offered to drop the charges if some completely unrelated medical bills were paid by my friend. Charming extortion racket, no?

So ask yourself, if someone bumped into your car, walked away unharmed, and did no damage to your property would it occur to you to prophylactically call the police and report the incident? In the past, that never would have occurred to me but it does now. We're all at the mercy of someone else's interpretation of our actions.