This was the worst story of stupidity and injustice. My

heart goes out to both families who were put through such

an unwarranted nightmare.

I am glad this story has been published here at Salon. It

should be published everywhere, with names changed to protect

the innocent.

Imagine a little three year old girl being hauled off for

questioning about her own daddy.

Jody Jenkins - name changed, I know - stay as strong

as you obviously are. You did nothing wrong but enjoy an

outing with your children in the great outdoors.

Good God. What a nightmare. The idiot clerk who called the

police is obviously the one with the "problem". I would suggest

a major lawsuit, but you and your family have been through enough.

Go camping again. Don't change a thing about what you do on your

camping trips. They sound like great fun! Keep taking photographs

of your happy times. Use a digital camera.

Give your children a hug from me. They'll be fine, and when they

are older, you can talk it all through with them, and probably

end up laughing together about the stupidity of some people.

Really.

Wow. That letter pissed me off. I couldn't believe how victimized the writer was by a DSS investigation that was unfounded.

He showed poor judgment, someone was concerned about it, the police and DSS investigated and it went away.

He wasn't charged with anything. The children weren't removed from the house during the investigation (which they would be in my state).

Yet he rails and fumes against the system for actually doing an investigation that the children are okay and safe. He and all the other letter writers talk like that's a *bad* thing.

Yes, it's a bad experience. Yes it's unnerving, but he was not charged and he didn't spend 10 years in jail like Dean Tong who he quotes.

He seemed upset that the Police are 'fairly aggressive' in investigating child pornography. I am pleased that the police are 'fairly aggressive' in this. I think most people would be.

While I understand that this was a bad experience for the article writer, there *are* bad people out there. There *are* child pornographers out there. There *are* people doing bad things to kids. The government does need to investigate allegations.

In this case the allegations were investigated and the case was closed. Get over it.

Reading this as a non-american, it just seems like something out of bad B drama movie. Those arguing that taking picture of a naked 3 or 8 year old is a bad tasteless idea, are the very people who are twisted and morally sick. It is morally sick because only these people would even look at such a picture and see a sexual content (hence that's why they think a 3 year old needs clothes). I have lived in several countries and nobody would question such pictures when taken by the parents of the children. In fact, I currently live in Asia and children run and play naked in about every place you look. As I was reading the story I was thinking how great the pictures must be, capturing the happy innocence of childhood. Considering that these pictures were taken on a camping trip, only a sick mind would think these kids should have clothes on. Now in France, I hope the author knows he can take all the pictures of his kids he'd like, naked or not.

I am a photo lab technician at a chain drug store. I was horrified that an employee would call the police over what sound like normal family photos. At my store, we are trained that unless a photo shows actual sexual contact with a child, we do not call the police. It actually says in the training manual that we are to treat nude photos like we do any other photos: print them and don't talk about them.

I am so sorry that this happened to your family, and I am relieved that you were finally able to go back to living your lives.

The story had me, but then it lost me the moment he quoted Dean Tong a hugely discredited right wing asshole.

With no qualifications, Tong has set himself up as a self-declared abuse expert who works for the right wing men's rights movement. He specializes in helping guys escape charges and penalties, especially abusive husbands who are seeking custody of their kids. These guys are not like the ambiguous case mentioned here, but men with a history of violence and complaints from their estranged wives. Quite often they are just seeking custody as a form of revenge or intimidation. Tong also is a major figure in denying rape cases and other forms of abuse, which he claims rarely happen at all and are a conspiracy of feminists.

Tong has gotten a lot of unwanted attention recently after he acted as a "forensic consulted" (again, no real qualifications) for Darren Mack in a divorce case. Tong used his expert tests to proclaimed Mack non-violent, despite complaints of abuse from his wife. A few months later Mack stabbed his wife to death and shot the judge and a clerk in his divorce case becaise he didn't get everything he wanted from an "unfair" system - even though he'd been granted joint custody and gotten full custody of kids from a previous divorce. Bomb making equipment was found in his dwelling. He was a fugitive until he surrendered in Mexico.

Mack was heavily active in the father's rights movement, which is now trying to claim he was a victim of the system. And Darren Tong has been spinning like crazy to both explain why his expertise failed, largely by blaming the victim and excusing Mack by blaming the system with grotesesque statments like, "You know, this was a situation where he—he wasn‘t going to take justice delayed is justice denied. He felt like the fox was guarding the henhouse. And—and he wanted justice now."

The man shot two people with a snipers rifle and hunted down his wife and gutted her, and Tong makes excuses.

I understand Mr. Jenkins feels like he got done over for what was merely a stupid decision. Although he never admits he made a mistake - it doesn't take a genius to realize taking nude photos with a disposable camera developed by a chain store is a danger.

Yet when I see him giving a large amount of publicity to Mr. Tong, I begin to wonder about the agenda of this writer. I also wonder how Salon could be so lax as to not investigate the bona fides of a source in an essay, especially when about two seconds on Google would reveal Tong's shady background.

Salon has built it's rep on exposing the dubious quailfications and hidden agendas of so called experts - like revealing the crazies behind What the F--- Do We Know?. So why are they giving Dean Tong a pass?