USA: Being funny could send you to prison now

Originally posted by reddwhite
He did no actual harm to the child that I have dicovered, nor will the incedent leave any lasting emotional damage,

And how do you know that?

He tied up and gagged a toddler and posted the picture on Facebook.

The guy is at least an idiot if not worse.

Read this part carefully:

prosecutors said Curry decided to tie up his daughter after he witnessed her playing with the tape on Dec. 13. Curry put the tape over her mouth and bound her wrists and ankles together. He then allegedly photographed her with his cell phone and put it up on a social networking site. A caption of the image read, "This is wut happens wen my baby hits me back. ; )"

From the prosecutors viewpoint, which I can fully understand,this was a form of punishment for playing with the tape. As I see it, he then thought after doing it, wow that looks funny! and took a picture.

To me it sounds like a form of corporal punishment, and not one that should ever be accepted. IMO.
I have a total of 4 children, and I believe in spanking, but I do not believe in taping kids up as punishment.
That is what he has done here.
That is why there are charges of abuse.

He may not of meant to hurt this child,but the matter of how he chose to discipline
is what is in question. Just because he didn't realize what he was doing, that does not excuse ignorance in a court of law.

People wonder why the crime rate is up now a days, and why a gang of boys beat up an old man on the subway. Well, it's no suprise with how we treat our young. Remember folks, teach a child their path and they carry it with them always. This society is raising monsters and we are the ones to blame.

BTW, those who are crying police state...I bet you wont have any problem calling the police state if one of these kids breaks into your car, rob your buusiness, or assults a loved one. Fact is, people only appriciate the police when they do something for them.

As I began reading this I was inclined to agree that the action taken against the father was ridiculous as I had made up my mind that the daughter was just an adult joining in with a joke with her father. Upon clicking the link and seeing that she was only 22 months old, I find his actions completely disgusting.

That poor girl must have been thinking to herself, "what the hell have I done?" That's if she could even comprehend 'daddies' actions at the time. Then comes the issue of peeling that tape from her face.

What a w@*^nker.

Originally posted by redrose123
reply to post by insaan

 

I would say he is in jail for stupidity.

I hope someone beat me to this by now, but since when is being stupid or exercising otherwise harmless poor judgment a crime? The point is, it IS a crime. First we lose our common sense, then our freedom, then our sense of humor, is that how it goes?

You never know how it made the child feel. Could have ended up as an emotional attack. It could have been done in malice with his defense being "it was a joke".

On the other hand: Fun is fun... People take things too far.

reply to post by MoosKept240


Blue tape, duct tape, scotch tape, it doesn't matter, it was still not funny. Child abuse gets a lot of media, parents killing their kids, locking them in boxes, starving them, kids getting kidnapped and murdered or simply disappearing from earth, there's no way to make something like that funny. It was sick.

Originally posted by BrokenCircles

Originally posted by insaan

A dad posts a picture of his daughter on Facebook, with her mouth, hands and feet taped, and a comment under the picture which said "This is wut happens wen my baby hits me back. ; )".

But that isn't funny.

That is not for you to decide. While it can feel obvious that something is wrong, you have no right to infringe on their pursuit of happiness. For example, smoking cigarettes is obviously harmful, but i do it because i enjoy that taste of excellent tobacco, and you have no business infringing on my right to enjoy it. If the girl was taped, hands and feet, and was muted by tape over her mouth, without any obvious physical trauma, then she clearly didn't resist. Personally my girlfriend likes the above activities, so should I or adult actors and actresses be arrested because you do not think it is funny? The O.P. is wholly right about this opening a fearful ideology with few perceived restrictions for law enforcement and judges.

This is fascism at it's simplest. from the Wikipedia.

Fascism seeks to purify the nation of foreign influences that are deemed to be causing degeneration of the nation or of not fitting into the national culture

en.wikipedia.org...

Fascism is fear, so what do you fear?

Originally posted by Magnificient
reply to post by MoosKept240

 

Blue tape, duct tape, scotch tape, it doesn't matter, it was still not funny. Child abuse gets a lot of media, parents killing their kids, locking them in boxes, starving them, kids getting kidnapped and murdered or simply disappearing from earth, there's no way to make something like that funny. It was sick.

So stop spouting sympathy, and do something about it.

It's hard to judge the situation when you don't know exactly what happened. I would think that if it wasn't completely innocent he wouldn't have posted it on facebook, seems to me like a joke. Maybe they were playing a game and the kid was playing hostage and daddy was playing hero. Don't be so quick to judge the guy.

I'm going to have to lean toward his punishment being too harsh... Of course it wasn't a funny joke but maybe they should have given him mandatory parenting classes or something of that level. Now he's going to be a felon and he won't be able to get a job after he gets out and his daughter will have a father who can't support or care for her as well as he could have because of uncle sam.

reply to post by Quyll


But I question, is it different than locking a child in the closet for misbehaving? And, then let's go further, is it somehow worse than spanking or forcing soap in their mouths, or kitchen spoon the rear or a hair brush to the head? Why is restraint not ok but corporal punishment tolerated?

I ask all of this completely dispassionately and with no formal decision taken. Spare the rod and spoil the child.

Time out, grounding, no dessert, NO DINNER??

Denying nourishment seems quite a punishment compared to restraint. Physical pain seems also harsh. So, what makes restraint so much more. Was the tape over her mouth for a long period of time, or just for the photo? Do we assume all photos, in their permanence, denote permanence in real time? Was the child still bound 1 minute after the photo, 5 minutes? The next day when the police arrived?

What's my point, right? Well, what is the difference between a "spare-the-rod-spoil-the-child" correctional spanking and absolute physical abuse? What is the difference between episodic correctional restraint and psychological abuse through imprisonment (such as the man in Austria a few years ago)?

I find our culture a bit cockamamie sometimes, in that this father who took a picture of his child with duct tape is in such hot water, while people are currently held by the State in year-long or more solitary confinement in a box barely big enough to stretch out.

So, what exactly is the formal, uniform measuring stick?


EDIT: On second thought, I'll also add:

After reading people's opinions on how we should expect such children to grow up and what they will be like based on experiencing such episodes in the future, I wonder why it is we cannot see the same human being for who they are now as they were as a child. I mean to say - without any sort of empirical research vis-a-vis duct-taping a child and how that child will be as an adult - that, for example, we have no problem wishing holy hell on pedophiles without asking ourselves how their own childhood sexual abuse may have shaped their adult actions. I just wonder why our humanity is temporally measured and why we have such care for the child, but discard the adult like trash. This is probably a tangent, but it came to mind.

reply to post by BrokenCircles

The real problem I was trying to point out is that it is a subjective matter so far.

I chose my point of view with common sense on my side which seems to be sadly lacking these days many people seem jump to the politically correct view as edicted by whatever bureaucracy or quango is flavour of the month and seen to be good to follow..

I was particularly amazed that so many people jump to the conclusion he is abusing his child that is what worries
me and compelled me to post on this item in the first place.
Too many people it seems to me are jumping to conclusions in a napoleonic (guilty until proved innocent) sense what happened to innocent until proved guilty?
Never mind I suppose I am guilty of stoking the flames a bit by taking the side of "it's only a joke" as a rebuttal of my own to some of the nonsense spewed by people regurgitating the tv and government edicts because not to do so is branded as strange, so please accept my deepest apologies for that.
I am fully aware of the process of critical thinking and the Left Right Paradigm as is so sir/madam I am not ignorant in the slightest.
You appear to have misgudged me and the fault lies with neither myself or yourself the truth of the matter is while they keep people like you on your moral high ground of sorts in direct conflict with people like myself who are sick and tired of the left,right,black,white reality imposed on us all at the moment by the the big money people at the top they have kept us busy doing nothing and keeping the status quo. Again Bravo.
Mods if you wish to move this to rants i will understand.
So Sir/Madam you see I am not in the slightest bit ignorant I am all to aware.

You are all so quick to dismiss this as "not funny"

Ever consider what the young girl thinks? Something tells me she didnt think it was abuse...

I remember back in about 1985 a teacher taped a student to her chair in our class and she pissed her pants... None of us students thought it was funny... I wish I could remember the name of that woman teacher, maybe I could still testify against her....

Anyone who uses Face Book should be locked up period! :

reply to post by BrokenCircles


Doesn't really matter what you or I think.
Do you really think it's the governments place to tell you what is funny?

If the daughter was in on it, the man should not have been arrested, end of story. Whatever anyone's moral judgments are is beside the point.

The bottom line is this: Regardless of what the prosecution is claiming to justify this arrest, we here in this thread are not judges, nor are we prosecutors, we are, in effect, fiat jurors. It is incumbent upon us to presume innocence until proven guilty, and certainly no one in this thread, nor any prosecutor has proven this man guilty of anything other than bad taste.

I think your a little off base with this one. Apparently someone in his group of friends on Facebook who was a friend of the family and familiar with the home situation for this child turned him in. That isn't funny, and it's not joking. What did you expect him to say?

In on it? She was not even 2 YEARS OLD! In what way could she possibly have been in on it?

I imagine he'll not do the time, but get a hefty fine, as he should. To the guy who said it's not up to us to decide what is "funny" or not.. it actually IS against the law to tie up your kids with tape. And it doesn't matter if anyone found it funny or not. I imagine the 2 yo kid didn't find it very funny at all, but rather confusing, and if she saw her picture on facebook tied and gagged, humiliating, even at that age.

Some of you decide to be outraged on the most ridiculous things. Go find something legitimate to be horrified about. Not a father taping up his daughter.