What would you have done?

M

MagiAwen

Registered Senior Member
Here is a situation that I encountered. I'd like to get some input on what people think about this whole ethical/moral ordeal before I post what happened as a result.

One of my employees was working on a person's computer. It was a windows98 machine. In the normal course of troubleshooting he went to go to the settings option in the start menu and the mouse highlighted the my documents option which of course shot out and displayed the recently accessed docs list. Now, he wasn't snooping but when things pop out at you you tend to look and he saw this file: nine_year_old_raped.wmv

At the time there was no senior management at the shop and he stopped working on it. When I arrived he was very upset. He told me what happened and that he refused to work on the machine. I asked him if he actually looked at the file and he said no.

The machine in question belonged to the parents of a guy I knew in high school. The parents were on vacation and he had been on the puter when it stopped working and brought it in.

On the one hand I have an employee that has a sister who was molested from the ages of 7-12 by a step father who is very expectant of me. And the other...a guy I know who I all of a sudden was sickened to even think about.

My first step to try to resolve my employee's issues (I had hoped) was to view the file. I viewed approx. 5 seconds of it and knew it was what the title said it was. And there were other files that were titled similarly. A lot of them.

Technically by law I am not required to report this. However, by US State Code a citizen is considered required by law to report any information concerning crimes which may be commited upon children. Though, the man who brought the computer in had no children there was no way I was going to watch these to see if I recognized any of them or anything.

Tell me what you all think about this.
 
Could ya tell from the five seconds if the rapist was the guy ya knew from high school? If ya think so, then report it. Then again . . . even if ya can't tell, report it anyway, so the police can inspect them and go from there.
 
I cannot think of a reason why you should not report the find to the police...you should.
 
Actually, zanket has a point. This is obviously a crime committed upon a child. Definitely report it.
 
I don't see the moral ordeal anywhere. Just report it. Anything that puts a kink into the market for this kind of shit is a good thing.
 
This is pretty interesting. My business ethics class had a big moral and/or ethical quandry about it. I'll wait for a few more posts to let you know what happened.
 
report it

now, how fucking stupid is the guy. who would name a file nine_year_old_raped.wmv???
 
If you are aware of a crime and do not attempt to stop it then everyone who is victimized afterwards is partially your fault if not your responsibility because you had the power to try to save them and did not. The man is sick and needs help. I believe that he needs to go to prison forever but that is a societal decision not yours or mine report him
 
Easy. Report this. If there is a legitimate reason (should this person be working to bust pedophiles online) he will be able to prove this and no harm done.

I am curious about one thing. What was the date on the file? Did this just happen to be downloaded while the folks were on vacation? It would be a shame to get grandpa in all kinds of hot water when it could possibly have been your high school acquaintance who was out looking at these files.
 
Here is what we know:

1) child pornography is illegal

2) The computer has child porn on it
a) the porn did not get there by accident and neither did the lots of other porn

3) the guy bringing it in may have downloaded it
a) the owner need to know if this is so
b) if so that man may be sexually dangerous or not

4) the owner may have downloaded it
a) may or may not be sexualy dangerous to the community (as a rapist)

Two things you can do to help with ur decsion:

1) think of it as if you were suppose to fix his suitcase and you opened it and there were child porn photos in it ? would you than report it?

2) Do a database search on the net for known sex offenders (they have to register by law) and put all the names of people who handled it before it came into the database.


Either way or anyway you slice it child porn is illegal. It is illegal to preform, produce, buy sell or own. You letting this go means that the source of the child porn (which may have been downloaded from the net) is protected by you. Besides trust me, you can't sweep this one under the rug if your fellow employees freaked out.

You discoverd a crime (child porn) and you are doing your civic duty. That simple. Not complexed at all. If you have the ablity to stop a violent crime (like child porn) and you do not you are advocating it.

I would put a word in the ethics class called silent support: It is advocacy through non-protest or interjection of a dangerous act. Not much different than standing around as an adult and watching two 5 graders beat a first grader senseless.

Going to # 3

if you report it he gets investigated and will or will not have a history. If he checks out the investigation which is not public property (not unless there is a conviction) he goes about his life. If he is up to no good.......you are protecting the community

#4
same as # 3.

I tried to thing of a postitive thing by not reporting it and cannot because

1) I would not be interested in protecting the person who recorded or downloaded those files
2) Everyone else (as nobody was neutral) was negativly affected by the files other than the person who used them for viewing pleasure, the partipant, and the filmer none of whom I can see a need to protect
3) there is no getting around the obstacle that child porn is illegal.
 
Thanks to everyone.

I wish I would have saved the newsgroup discussion with my ehtics classmates on this I am sure most of you would have ripped them all apart for suggesting that it was not my (my company's) responsibility to report it.

This all happened last year. I did call the police and it took me about 20 minutes to convince the office on the phone that it was indeed child porn and I was not going to view other files. They excused my having to repeat it over and over by the many calls they get that end up not being that.

Once an officer was sent out to the store we set up the computer in a back room because he said he was going to have to look at the files. He viewed 20 of the 100 some odd files and said he would have to have me hold the computer until he could find out when he could get an fbi team in.

So the fbi came and took it and of course questioned us and it was that he downloaded it while his parents were away using Kazaa and that the children were not local but they were going to use the videos and pics to compare against a facial database of the kids.

They searched his home and his parent home and found nothing that could be used to create the porn and of course they all denied it. I never thought they actually made it. But anyway nothing happened to him other than they never got their computer back from the fbi.

Now, this is the comment that made me very angry. The officer that first arrived to check out my allegations (before viewing said files) said, "Possessing child porn is not illegal, but making and/or distributing it is." Now....after this thing was over I stopped trying to find current and clear laws on the subject but I would be interested if someone in here knows the technicalities and specifics of the child pornography laws.

His parents tried to sue my company but did not get anywhere but I have seen many cases where the people who report it eventually get sued and they lose. :( Which is disturbing. I don't think one should be able to be sued for reporting something that looks or is illegal esp. where children are involved.
 
In most cases I've read about, the people were prosecuted for possessing child porn. That your company got sued reinforces to me the benefit of reporting such things anonymously.
 
ahh u hurt the pedophiles feelings? I am trying to cry to tears just won't come out. If you get legal pressure realize that that information on a docket is public property. Meaning (and you can ask any lawyer this) as long as it does not interphere with the potential case its knowldege is not suppressed and if it is factual (like urs was) it is not libel. What an interesting news report that could be if it ever hit the docket. :)
Just something simple like Mr. Smith tries to sue xxx company for report of child porn on computer see story page b3......

I am taking it by this post this happend a long time ago? Did you ever run him through a sex offender database?

I posted a while back on my problems with AA as an organzation and my gf made an interesting observation. She said that the anonmous part was a problem cause they were not accountable to society.

If that ever applied in theory to anyone else pedophiles would be it. Their ablity to live their lifestyle is most restricted when it is advertised to the community at large and it is disgusting that they can anonmously threaten a business for exposing them without consquences.

What a slimeball
 
robtex: I would assume what you stated about libel was in fact why we never saw a court date. When I received the letter from their attorney I read it and handed it to my attorney and basically he said..."Oh, well, this is not going to happen."

I have learned a lot since this happened about the laws and what not. It was in August of 2003 when this all went down.

He also was not in an offender database. The sheriff had said that when they questioned him about it that he had just been curious and that he knew it was wrong and hadn't looked at it since he downloaded it the first time. All I have to say to that is bullshit. I mean if he really doesn't have those urges wtf was he doing with it in the first place. It makes me sick just remembering it all. Plus this guy has kids. :/
 
To make a mistake as dumb as this I've gotta think the guy is testing you! "I know I'll send in my computer full of kiddy porn to be repaired by someone else!" Doesn't make sense to me. He just wants to see what kind of man you are! Report him, it builds character!
 
Mystech:
To make a mistake as dumb as this I've gotta think the guy is testing you!
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Could have been a test. If it would have been a person that I thought could actually come up with that idea I might have thought that. Yes it does sound pretty stupid to know it is on there then send it to someone to fix. Possibly his fear of his parents having to get it fixed then them finding it on there scared him more than a stranger finding it.

He just wants to see what kind of man you are!
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One without a penis :)
 
MagiAwen said:
One without a penis :)
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Oh well yeah I've known plenty of good men without penises! Uuuh besides, it's just a figure of speech!
 
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