and just because a lawyer can't leave a good case alone

I have been digging about looking at both the Commonwealth and NSW Crimes Act and thinking about whether there could be a prosecution of Henson under either of those acts.

From reading the papers it seems that the NSW police have seized goods under the NSW Crimes Act which make it an offence to use children for the production of pornography. So far, so good. The act defines the 'use of a child' as pornography if the child is engaged in a sexual act, placed in a 'sexual context' or physically abused. Again, perfectly fine and laudable that we should legislate against those things.

The images of children I have seen from the Henson exhibition show children naked from the waist up. They, according to the NSW Police, are children 'in a sexual context'. Is it sexual because there is low lighting? Or is it sexual because the children are naked?

Have you ever taken a picture of your children naked? If Bill Henson is successfully prosecuted, you had better hope that no one ever sees that picture because it would be pornography. The act doesn't say, for example, that the picture must be published or disseminated. It just says that you must not take photos of children in a sexual context. So if Henson's pictures of naked children (beautiful, classically posed, children) are pornography, then so are my pictures of the kids in the bath or running in and out of the ocean naked. Those photos I took to capture the moments when children are completely unashamed of their bodies - that capture their innocence. But if Henson is guilty then so is everyone else.

Comments

[jano]

Hurrah, Elissa - all I have been hearing is "what about the CHILDREN?" on talk-back radio on my way into work and as I check the headlines in the Tele. I have no idea how they would prosecute this case, myself.

[Nick]

There was an interesting case in the UK some years ago when a relatively famous news reader was in strife for 'child porn' for taking a photo of her child in a bubble bath with her husband. Says more about the warped values of her accusers!