Michael Jackson's dangerous liaisons
We might note that in 1984 one Luis Johnson was given a jail sentence of 527 years in the US for a sexual offence involving a child. Sentencing on such a scale, calibrated for Methuselahs, cannot even be taken to imply a particularly serious case. Three-figure terms are not that unusual for offences involving neither violence nor penetration. In May 2006, the state Supreme Court of Arizona upheld a sentence of 200 years merely for downloading child pornography from the internet. In August 2002 Thomas Reedy made it to four figures when he was sentenced to a total of 1,335 years for distributing child porn. All Reedy had done was to run an age verification service, which offered codes to subscribers who could then access over 5,000 adult sites. Reedy and his wife Janice had been assured by their lawyers that they were not responsible for content. Just two of the sites, located in Russia and Indonesia, turned out to be offering underage material. [...]
The Coxell team examined a non-clinical sample of nearly 2,500 men in Great Britain, recruited from general medical practices. They inquired about sexual activity prior to age sixteen with someone at least five years older in which they had willingly taken part, finding that 7.7% had had what the researchers termed consensual sex prior to age sixteen with persons significantly older; 5.3% of the men reported having had non-consensual sex. The men were asked whether they had reported a psychological problem of at least two weeks' duration sometime in their life. The consenting group reported no more problems than the control group but the non-consenting group had significantly more problems than either of these groups. [...]
Bashir continued to probe his position relentlessly with a barrage of sceptical, hostile questions. Michael kept talking about love, Bashir kept refusing to believe it. Eventually, the star's distress was apparent, but in a trembling voice he quietly and gently, but resolutely, stuck to his theme, drawing on some of the thoughts behind his Oxford lecture. Speaking of kids in general in modern society, he said: They don't even eat with their father any more, or their mothers. The family bond has been broken. There's an outcry for attention. It's why kids are going to school with guns. They want love, they want to be touched; they want to be held. But they're busy off on their day job and maybe at home on their computer and they do all kinds of crazy stuff, and that's destroying our world. We need to bond again. It's very important, Martin.
source: From the book 'Michael Jackson's Dangerous Liaisons' by Carl Toms (Tom O'Carroll); Matador; 2010