ABC reports that Karen Fletcher, a woman who wrote sexually explicit stories involving children is now being prosecuted for obscenity. The woman claims that she wrote the stories to deal with her own abuse as a child, and that she charged the 29 subscribers to her site so that she could run it and to ensure that children wouldn't be able to access the material. The stories were apparently not accompanied by any pictures and this is one of the few instances where the written word alone has been attacked. The lawyers involved in the case say that the trial will probably focus on whether the stories have any literary or artistic merit.
I can see how writing such stories can be cathartic although I'm not sure if it's a good idea to post them on the Net but posting them online seems to have more to do with bad judgment / poor taste than with criminal intent. Also, I'm not sure I understand the artistic merit argument: does it mean that if you are a particularly good writer, you can write about 'obscence' subjects and that if you aren't, your writing about exactly the same subject would make you a criminal?
Although I do sympathise with the author, I hate the idea of child porn. The result is that I don't know what to make of this particular case (other than to say that when it comes to child porn, I'm sure that there are many other people around who deserve to be prosecuted far more than Ms. Fletcher).
Link: http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/Story?id=4222798&page=1
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