A child therapist is jailed after the law decides he took the wrong pictures

The twenty-year sentence [Dr. Robert Bruce] Craft has been serving since 2000 is for "exploiting" and "molesting" children by taking pornographic pictures. The pictures include one of a small, smiling boy, fully clothed, peeing into a stream, with only the arc of urine visible - an image readily available in rural areas with tourist shops. There's a laughing youngster mooning the camera in the classic Coppertone pose, and another picture, of Craft's diaperless shots in parenting magazines. And there's the frontal torso of a pre-school girl with arms raised as she dons a dress. That one is artful enough to hang in a gallery. Others look just like snapshots kept in scrapbooks by doting parents. But Craft wasn't these kids' father, which is the main reason he's locked up now. [...]

Arguing that Craft should be given hundreds of years' hard time, the prosecutor averred that children had been unwittingly harmed by "being touched with this man's eyes." Yet not one "victim" appeared at the hearing to talk about being abused. Instead, several children came who'd already sent handwritten letters to the judge, telling him Craft was a "wonderful man" and that prosecuting him had been "wrong" and "stupid" and "I WISH this stuff would stop." "I feel so bad like if we weren't his friends this would not have happened it's like it's all our fault," lamented one girl's letter. She and the others wanted to stand up in court and talk about their affection for Dr. Craft. They wanted to stress that their real hurt came from seeing him accused and convicted. But the judge wouldn't allow it. Adults could testify, he said, but not minors. So the children sat on the benches silently, watching Craft locked up in their name.

source: Article 'The Hunting of Dr. Craft - A Child Therapist is Jailed After the Law Decides He Took the Wrong Pictures' by Judy Jackson (forensic consultant and writer) & Debbie Nathan (journalist and author); www.thenation.com/article/hunting-dr-craft#; The Nation; 10/17 January 2005