Derwent wrote:
It was never argued in court that he was a predatory offender, in fact the judge accepted that his offences were opportunistic rather than predatory.
But pretty much every newspaper and TV report paints him as a vile, predatory paedophile.
As for being labelled a paedophile - how would you describe someone who uses indecent images of children for sexual gratification and who had a sexual relationship with an underage girl ?
The police or CPS said that Harris had some "child porn" on his computer which they had seized while doing the Yewtree investigations.
Jerry Chicken has highlighted some of the concerns about that before. I would add that if they were serious images worthy of conviction then they'd have made it into the court and he would have been done for the pictures. I think that the police or CPS knew there was no case for the pictures so that's why it never made it into court. But it's that extra bit of mud that they can smear him with. I know I'm pretty much alone in this in thinking the whole trial was a ridiculous sham, but I do think there must be some other people in Britain who read about the trial and think it doesn't hold water. Making up BS after the trial about pictures of kids on his computer seems to be like an extra layer of mud they can put on his name. They're never going to have back up this claim though. We'll never know if there is any truth to the claim. But it's on public record and will be repeated.
As for what a paeodophile is. I'm not educated in the law (or anything really) and I have a further disavantage that a lot of my life has been spent in the US which is a slightly different culture. There's also medical definition of paedophile and then legal definitions. So there are different ways of defining a paedophile. But the basic term of paedophile is a person who has a sexual attraction to children, especially pre-pubescent children. There are different ages which escalate any offences, I think the ages are 11, then 13, then there's the legal age of consent which is 16.
IMO the public hatred and vilification of paedophiles is at an extreme level and completely at odds with how men (and let's not ignore we're mainly discussing men here) actually are. There is an almost violent level of hatred to anyone who can even be slightly linked with any offences even at the borders of legality (which is where I think Harris is). If somebody can be successfully labelled as a paedo then it's throw away the key time, castrate them, hope they suffer in jail before they're killed type of mentality.
As to whether Harris had a sexual relationship with his daughters friend when she was under age. He says the sexual relationship started when she was 18 and carried on for a decade after. She alleges he abused her on holiday when she was 13, continued to abuse her on several occasions until she was 19. There doesn't seem to have been either an acknowledgement or denial of the consensual adult relationship. I've said before that I think Harris is wrong, wrong, wrong for having any type of relationship with his daughters friend, but this aspect of the case is highly troubling. Her version of events doesn't ring true to me but I guess there will be psychologists who say that an abused person could continue into adulthood with the situation between them as she claims. It just seems really unlikely to me.
