An Australian judge who could not be certain images in a child porn case depicted children younger than 16, the legal age in Australia, provoked outrage last week when he threw out a conviction.
The case involved Terrence James Wescott, a Catholic school principal and teacher sentenced to six months behind bars for possessing the images. Judge John Barnett noted in his ruling, "My experience is that I can't pick the age of the children."
Australian news reports over the weekend indicated prosecutors were considering whether to appeal the ruling. They also indicated Barnett said current Australian child porn laws are "draconian."
The reports also stated Barnett has a history of similarly controversial decisions. He urged a confessed rapist to change his guilty plea in February, on grounds the judge didn't believe actual penetration occurred in the case. He let a convicted pedophile off without jail time in 2004 despite the man abusing a seven-year-old girl. And, in 2000, he handed down only a suspended sentence to a Catholic priest who molested 20 children, ruling the priest no longer was a threat, according to reports.
Wescott was arrested and charged during Australia's nationwide child porn crackdown that began last year. He was sentenced to six months with a two-month minimum for the images of youthful-looking girls. During the sentencing hearing, police said the girls looked between ages 9 and 14.
Prosecutors are under pressure from the Australian Childhood Foundation to appeal the ruling. The group's leader, Joe Tucci, said if Barnett can't determine the ages of children in images he shouldn't be hearing such cases.
The Wescott case echoes issues in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, which addressed the thorny issues of virtual, computer-generated images of children and of legal adults who merely look younger than the age of majority. In that case, justices held that only images that could be proven to be of actual children could be considered child porn.
