Should this man have been charged?

[The Curmudgeon]

If you're in the UK, the girls in this picture need no introduction;



That would be pop saviours Girls Aloud, who pretty much do everything they should do. They sing nicely, they have great pop songs and they look smoking hot. No problems there, then.

Except if you're this guy



35 year old Darryn Walker, who was taken to court over a story he wrote about them, ("Girls Scream Aloud" )where he talked about kidnapping, raping and then murdering them.

He was eventually cleared without being charged, but he now says his life is over. He's been sacked, harrassed and now his life is pretty much ruined.

So what do you think? Are we allowed to say what we want on the internet, even if it does go into scary stalker/rapist fantasies? And if so, where does it all end? Should I be charged for some of the things I "wish" for in my Amazon reviews, for example? Where does the line in the sand get drawn? Or should free speech really mean just that?

Debate, discuss. And if you want to see the full article, it's here

uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20090629/tuk-man-cleared-in-girls-aloud-rape-and-dba1618.html

[trashcanman]

He should not be charged. Freedom of speech means exactly fucking that. How many people say things like "I'm going to kill you" to each other without being indicted on attempted murder charges? Stories are stories and writing them out should not be any more illegal then thinking them. Who thinks that they themself should be charged with every wrong thing they've ever thought about doing? Thought so. If you write the thing out, it doesn't make it happen and so there is no crime. However, common sense needs to be applied when practicing free speech. In the end, he got what he deserved: no criminal charges, but now everybody knows what a putz he is. Say whatever you want, but be prepared for the consequences. I wouldn't put anything online that I didn't want people to read and I'm suitably prepared for any nonviolent reaction to the things I say.

[Ben]

I agree with Trashcanman 100%. Say what you want, but be prepared for the backlash from those who take you seriously, or those who just think you're an idiot. I remember hearing about this college kid who called Kobe Bryant up while drunk (back when his trial was going on) and threatening to kill him (most likely giggling between each word, as people tend to do during prank calls) and the poor bastard got charged and convicted and sentenced to jail time. Common sense says he shouldn't have made the call in the first place, but common sense also says he isn't a danger to society (or Kobe Bryant), nor does he need to be locked up. People take everything way too seriously.

[InvisibleWolfMan]

Hmmmmmm...

It's easy to throw the "freedom of speech" as the shield-all but I'm gonna disagree with the both of you. Having been threatened twice now to have my life ended has changed my views a little bit, perhaps. Or maybe it's just common sense that has finally creeped up on me after years of doing whatever the hell I wanted to. Either way, what has been done is wrong.

First, because it's a "fantasy" that involves a group of legally adult women it's only natural in today's society to label it as "fantasy."

Bullshit!

If you substituted the word "women" with "adolescents" you'd suddenly find yourself calling for his head, balls and everything in between to be freely strewn about the streets just like they used to do in the old days. And rightfully so. How about replacing GIRLS ALOUD with your wife's name? Or your sister's name? Or your aunt's? Or your mom's? Hell, why be gender biased? How about your dad's name? Or your little brother's? Now we're getting somewhere, aren't we?

He has clearly broken a boundary, a line, that should NOT be crossed; he's written a carefully thought out and detailed scenario in which those "girls" are (and here's the key words here people so read them individually and pull out the dictionary if they don't strike a chord in your memory of what kind of action they represent) -

KIDNAPPED.
RAPED.
MURDERED.

All members of Girls Aloud, talented or not, have a right to exist in the world no matter if we wish them to or not. Because although they damage our ears, ruin music for eons to come and just look like they stepped off the porno blow up doll factory line DOES NOT mean that ANYONE can go along freely and type up a carefully thought out and detailed sexual fantasy scenario that involves those "girls" being:

KIDNAPPED.
RAPED.
MURDERED.

If so, they've suddenly trampled on GIRLS ALOUD's right to live. Up until he PUBLICLY posted that fantasy, he was expressing himself as all individuals have a right to. Complex and in-depth sexual fantasies such as "rape/torture" (in the select few I've seen, they are never separate...they are always hand-in-hand) require a certain amount of discretion. Just like any thing that turns someone on it's a matter of exposure and choices in life that lead up to something that sexually arouses that person.

His main trouble here is that he SPECIFICALLY made it about GIRLS ALOUD. Had he alluded to a "ghost group" that shared similarities then there would be no need for any discussion because this issue wouldn't have been raised. His fantasy would've sat there, online, being read by others who read those sort of things. Life would've gone on. He wouldn't have crossed that fine line I referred to earlier.

It's in my opinion when some takes a thought or fantasy that's directed at specific individuals/people/groups and makes such a DIRECT connection that there can be no doubt who it's aimed at in such a public fashion as posting online (or in my instance being shouted at me on a public street during broad daylight) then that person instinctively knows that that particular thought/fantasy has become something hard to contain and needs some sort of help. Hence making it clear in a public forum of expression.

Let's face it, the guy isn't a satirical cartoonist or a witty online reviewer with a hint of dark humor thrown in for spicy variety. He's a regular guy posting DAMN HARDCORE stories involving people:

KIDNAPPED.
RAPED.
MURDERED.

The more detailed and more direct connection you make between fantasies and real life individuals the more you are breaking lines and boundaries. You've only yourself to blame when someone finally puts two and two together. Sexual fantasies can be fantasies, but we all have noticed how in one way or another the internet has blurred the lines between reality and fantasy so badly that it's hard for those who haven't lived life enough to determine if TCM really happened or if it's just a fictional tale with sprinkles of real incidents.

I've spent my life having major ups and spectacular downs. I've witnessed horrible things done to those around me OR even directly to my own self. I feel I've earned my spot in life and I don't want others to suffer the same things done unto me UNLESS they have absolutely done me such a wrong that I've witnessed horrible things being done to those around me OR even directly to my own self. Then they can be tortured to no end until they die numerous deaths. Otherwise, live and let live. If someone is a skinhead and believes ALL black people are evil....well, until I catch him burning crosses, breaking windows or trying to lynch someone then I'll do my best to just stay the fuck out of his way because I know there's no way in HELL I'll agree with his line of views. If he comes around and starts to shove me around and calls me foul names because he's seen I have a black friend who comes by every so often just to visit then he's crossing those line and boundaries I keep referring to. I can just remember the first death threat from over a year ago and having an officer or two try to shrug it off. While talking to the main investigator, one of the officers who escorted said threatening individual away tapped the investigator on the should and although he was quiet, I caught him saying:

"We checked his bag. He had a knife."

[trashcanman]

So what you're saying is that you can't tell the difference between fiction and reality, then? There is no blurrage here and anybody who finds that line blurred belongs in a mental institution before they watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre and start wearing people's skins as masks. What happened to you is clear harassment, Wolfman. That is a crime. Not the same as some story about celebrities the dude has never met and probably will never meet. If he accosted them in person with his fantasies, that also would constitute harassment. Psychologically speaking, having an outlet for his icky fantasies is more likely to diminish any impulse to carry them our. This is called catharsis and believe it or not, it's considered healthy in a way.

The last Harold and Kumar movie had a celebrity playing himself shot dead in it. Somebody must have written that part and asked him to play himself getting killed. Would you throw that guy in jail if the celeb in question was offended or does calling your work a movie script make it all better? Technically, the only difference is tone and that is an oblique concept that can't be written into law. Hell, I'd be in jail right now by your standards and so would The Curmudgeon. We've both recommended death for celebs (I even posted videos of the manner in which I'd like them to die) and the perceived wittiness of the remark is unquantifiable and again can't be written into law. And you contradict yourself by saying that skinheads can go on saying what they want until they attack somebody. As long as they are real life bigots, THEN it's okay to ignore them until they hurt somebody while the retard with no verifiable real life hatred posting bullshit on the internet gets jailed? Sorry, but over here we can only charge people with actual crimes, not imaginary ones. This ain't Minority Report either. When you break the law, you get punished, and for now hurting the feelings of a person you've never even met is not criminal. It's fiction, and our criminal justice system is based on fact at the moment. Here, watch.

Somebody should kidnap, rape, and murder my sister.
......
.....
.....
I'll call her tomorrow to see if she's alright.

[InvisibleWolfMan]

I'm saying there are PLENTY of mental cases out there that don't have that "tsk, tsk, tsk...is that really the RIGHT thing to do" boundary in their heads when it comes to sexual fetishes. Certain violent sexual fantasies can be expressed with willing participants to some degrees...but most time they are NOT.

No, you and The Curmudgeon are not guilty by any stretch of the imagination. You're not doing the same that he has done. He's clearly detailed out CRIMES.

CRIMES...........

Here we discuss movies and music and "geeky" stuff that we like and we have opinions both good and bad. If we call for "death" to some celebrity, it's usually out of annoyance of things like poor quality entertainment, media whoring or just downright stupidity on public display. We operate within rules and boundaries though occasionally they stretch the limits.

Detailed crimes against well known public figures, real or NOT, will always be taken seriously. Or have we forgotten how the police failed against people like Rebbecca Schaffer because real stalkers who made real threats weren't taken seriously at the time?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Schaeffer

And he became fixated on Rebecca because why?!? The original object of his fixation, age 13, DIED.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith

You can bet there was lots of fantasy problems running through this man's head and I guarantee that those problems violent sexual fantasies to some degree. So...we find ourselves back to square one.

Again, this guy's "problem" is that he directed at PUBLIC FIGURES. I'm sure the same would've happened if it had been [insert random public figure's name here at your own leisure]. Celebrities, unlike the rest of us "Joe Schmoes" out there, aren't necessarily able to keep themselves out of the news. And how many murderers, rapists, kidnappers are reported by their neighbors, family, friends as "a person who could never harm a fly."

If he was in better health, he would've created a fictional group with fictional names because his healthy mind would've allowed him enough rope to realize that "Hey, this is just fantasy." Because in the end, though stories, they are detailed CRIMES.

And that, my friends, involves PLANNING. He's no screenwriter, no author of any sort other than violent sexual fantasies. THAT ARE CLEARLY CRIMES.

[trashcanman]

But again, those people actually threatening the person directly and not just writing stories for their own amusement. Stalking should absolutely be taken seriously. Stalking is a crime. In real life. Sting wrote a song about stalking his ex, but he shouldn't be charged with a crime because he never actually did it. If celebrities didn't want to be on the news, they wouldn't be celebrities. Being famous is something you work extremely hard to attain and this kind of garbage is to be expected once you get there. Show me a wiki where somebody posted an innocuous (though twisted) story about a famous person they never met and then carried it out on them. To my knowledge, it's the people who who actually go out and hurt people and have documented troubled histories of doing such things that are the prepetrators of crimes. Sick bastards in real life, not just in personal fiction.

[InvisibleWolfMan]

Here's the bottom line, because we can debate about the colors of his shirts and how they related (or not) to the crime;

If you allow that he can write about ANY celebrity in such a fashion, then what's wrong with reading stories of regarding pedophilia? Well, for one thing IT'S AN OBVIOUS CRIME.

Such as this. Freedom of speech protecting him and his "rights" would open up a whole new can of worms.

Back to my death threat, you know after filing all the charges and them finding the knife in his bag? Let me just quote this:

"The court finds the defendant not guilty. By his own admission, his mental facilities were impaired at the time. He has since gone for treatment and has assured that the anger which he displayed during the time his mental facilities were impaired was addressed and he bares no ill will. He also made clear that the weapon found in his backpack was for hunting use only. I see no reason to grant the plaintiff's motion for a restraining order as the court believes that the individual poses no real threat."

Hmmm....a year later and now he'll "spill my blood all over the streets, man!" All because I happened by on my bicycle. Alone. Not even trying to be remotely NEAR the guy. Let's take a look at what we are talking about here for SURE with the guy who's threatening me and potentially for the guy in this news story:

www.dummies.com/how-to/content/practicing-psychology-pinning-down-criminal-psycho.html

Now, please remember I've taken great pains to stress that IF this guy from the news story really had a hold on his "reality" like he should, then he would have NOT made it DIRECTLY about Girls Aloud...he would have created a ghost group with similarities to allude to. And no one would have bothered him. He tempted fate, and fate wrapped that rope right around his neck.

HIS FAULT for all of this. His fault for bringing on himself.

And who can argue with that? He chose to write a twisted fantasy that already pushes him into the darker recesses of human life. And let's be honest here...it's HEAVY already with just kidnapping and rape. But murder? Ahhhhhh...there we go. That pushes it far enough that you limit yourself to only two types of people:

1) Sexually charged people who enjoy reading of death instead of orgasms.

2) Sexually charged people who enjoy causing death instead of orgasms.

Pretty small group, eh? So fuck the talk about shit like the book PSYCHO or the movie 8MM or even Eminem's song about his ex-wife/Moby/etc., etc. because hey...those are meant to mainstream the subject we are actually trying to get to here;

Was there a crime committed? Yes, be all means there was. This man condemned himself for this by writing a twisted sexual fantasy about GIRLS ALOUD. And if the public sees fit to punish him though he's been found NOT GUILTY...well, cry me a fuckin' river because I didn't write that story...the public didn't write that story....GIRLS ALOUD didn't write that story.

HE DID.

END OF FUCKING LIST.

[The Curmudgeon]

Heh heh, I knew this thread would cause some heated debate. Keep it comin' chaps.

Anyway, I disagree with you, Ben, when you say the guy phoning and threatening Kobe Bryant shouldn't have been charged - yes, he should. The second you cross a line and call someone, joking or not (we didn't hear the call) and threaten their life then that IS an offence. Hell, it's the reason a million TV shows have some smarmy guy asking "are you threatening me?" - because it is, quite rightly, against the law. There's a difference between saying "I'll fucking kill you" during a heated drunken arguement or something, but calling someone up (that you don't even know) and saying that shit - no, that's not on.

Saying that, should that beardy, fat obsessive loser who wanted to kill Girls Aloud have been jailed? No. Frankly, I think you can write anything you want - from sex fantasies to murder fantasies. And that includes kids - I'm pretty sure there's some websites devoted to that sort of thing. But, again, as soon as you cross the line and attempt anything close to reality - THAT's when the law needs to get involved.

And on THE most important note in this conversation, Wolfman - "Girls Aloud damage our ears? Destroy music?"

[trashcanman]

There is no law regarding fiction involving famous people, Wolfman. That means it is not a literal crime. Seriously, look the word up. The law is not written based on any one person's opinion and you are basing this on absolutely nothing but your personal opinion, which you are very much entitled too. You haven't addressed a single one of my arguments yet. Unless you can debunk the points I'm making, this is all just tail-chasing. I'm waiting. The dude's life is fucked due to his own poor judgment and awful sensibilities and Girls Aloud are still wildly successful (I assume) and have led rape and murder-free lives; justice has been done. And let us not ignore the fact that pretty much every person who gets put into the penal system comes out a violent criminal regardless of what got them in there. Guy goes to prison because he writes some retarded story as a twisted fantasy, he comes out a hardened Neo-Nazi who's stabbed and raped several people now and has crossed over to literal crime instead of fictional crime because of his incarceration adn would gladly put what was once nothing more then a thought in his head into practice on anybody he felt like. The irony is, shit like this happens. In real life. A lot. It's happened to people I know. The system as it is creates violent offenders out of non-violent ones on a daily basis. In prison, you have no choice but to be violent if you want to survive. The list of reasons to focus on real crimes instead of imagined ones is never-ending. Believe it.

[InvisibleWolfMan]

Ahhh, Trashy. You finally caught the wind of my discussion. I figured we'd finally hit the right area of the conversation where you'd state clearly that the dude fucked himself over.

NOW, to address your claim that's I've yet to prove anything about laws against this sort of thing:

writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20080818.html

Interesting, and it falls along a different parallel line of the UK dude which is by far MORE tragic but just as incredibly stupid.

So far, after a few days of searching through COUNTLESS law sites...I found this short topic which address the main aspect of our conversation (is an extreme sexual story illegal or not) though it's not the EXACT sexual story subject;

ask.metafilter.com/47240/Is-a-text-sex-story-that-involves-kids-considered-child-porn

So, let me quote from the link directly above this statement:

In the US, the First Amendment generally protects speech and publication of all sorts. The child pornography "exception" to the First Amendment includes only pictorial material, videos, etc. - not textual fiction, which by definition is a product of the imagination and thus does not require the exploitation of an actual child to produce. In theory it is possible for textual material to be adjudged "obscene" and thus excluded from legal protection under the First Amendment, and this has happened in the past, but to the best of my knowledge no such prohibition has been upheld in at least forty years, and I doubt any textual material could be banned under the obscenity exception under current First Amendment thinking. Other First Amendment exceptions such as libel, threat, etc. don't obviously apply here.

[/b][/i][/quote]

So, it IS possible. Just refer back to the very first link where the rape survivor got charged for fictionalizing her own stories and publishing them online. That's an obvious case where free speech didn't protect her. Apparently, if there's a risk of stories "inciting" actual incidents, writers CAN BE HELD RESPONSIBLE. Of course, there's been tons of school / parental shootings and no one blames Stephen King too harshly. He, however, self-imposed a ban on RAGE:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachman_Books

Back to the subject at hand...remember, the UK dude's written about HIMSELF doing the kidnapping, raping and killing of GIRLS ALOUD. How many other stories has he written where he's doing this sort of thing in a fictionalized way? This is almost akin to O.J. Simpson's IF I DID IT with the glaring difference of O.J. having the death of his ex-wife and her lover more or less on his hands in more ways than one. And what of him personally? We don't hang around the dude and I wouldn't know where to begin asking because these days you can buy testimonials from "friends" a dime a dozen.

Also, let's remember we're dealing with UK law, so there are things that may be in there about such things that are not in US law. And to boot, if the case obviously went to trial to judge whether he had committed a crime or not there was OBVIOUSLY SOMETHING, no matter how remote, that got those charges pressed against him and his ass hauled to court.

So now we're basically down to that he's crying that he was found not guilty and people hate him. Well, tough shit. He chose to write the fuckin' story, he chose to publish it online, he chose to put GIRLS ALOUD in there as the group of women he kidnaps, rapes and kills...please tell me if there's anyone else out there with half a working brain cell that doesn't think that story would NOT have found it's way eventually to GIRLS ALOUD (directly or INdirectly)? No? Good, that's what I thought.

And look at Girls Aloud,



They are young women, two of them which look barely 18. Do you think that the public would defend this guy:



after reading he wrote stories involving kidnapping, raping and murdering women...including a specific one where he HIMSELF does it to the members of Girls Aloud?

Honestly, do people want that man to trim the hedges while their daughter plays outside after they've learned he writes shit like that daily? Should women smile and say "Thanks!" when he opens the door for them after they know he'd vandalize them like a freshly painted white wall located in gangland territory...even if it's "just in a story?"

No. So he can go hang himself if he's so upset what he wrote got him into trouble enough that the places where he lives are full of "haters" now. He wrote the story, so he can live with the consequences of his choices instead of whining like a fuckin' rape victim.

Honestly.

[trashcanman]

I mentioned he fucked himself and deserved it in my first post. In my opinion, public free speech polices itself pretty well that way. All it takes to haul somebody to court is the will to do so and incur the debt if there's no basis for it. One organization threatened to charge Miley Cyrus over a supposedly racist picture which has been discussed within these virtual walls, but didn't have a case so it went away just like this will. Excellent research, man, but the justice system is massively imperfect and prone to human error. Look at what happened to the West Memphis Three: children charged with murder with no evidence whatsoever and sentenced to death for wearing black and listening to heavy metal music in the same town where a child murder happened. I don't put much stock in what a judge's opinion is; they have their own political allegiances and hang-ups to think about. Give me the cold hard factual law of the Constitution. And the fact that they let the guy go indicates that UK law differs little from ours on the subject. The system is tied up enough with factually violent offenders without clearing room for crimes committed in public daydreams. Hell, I just saw half a dozen or more real celebrities die horribly in the South Park movie yesterday. No charges were filed. Once you're 18, age matters not even a little bit in the eyes of the law. There's the embarrassing bullshit Letterman is putting up with after telling an unfunny offensive joke about Sarah Palin's teenage daughter, though. What a doofus. No charges, though. Great discussion, InvisibleWolfMan. Thanks