Millions of family have pictures of baby in various states of undress. It may be chronicling baby as he or she is , dressing, having a bath, at play, toilet training and a myriad of other childhood activities. It can be a totally innocent cataloguing of the child’s development. However, it can lead to accusations of sexual exploitation, as it did for the Demaree family.
“… Lisa and Anthony “A.J.” Demaree lost custody of their three girls for over a month last fall after a Walmart photo clerk found nude photos of the girls on printouts from a camera memory stick and turned the images over to police. At the time, the girls ranged in age from 1 ½ to 5.
The Demarees are defending the images as innocent bath and playtime snapshots and filed suit against Arizona, the state Attorney General, Peoria and Walmart over the incident.”
link: Prosecutors: Convictions in Peoria nude-photo case unlikely
This raises the long running debate over privacy and security. There certainly is no argument against the safeguarding the young against child predators. However, with all due respect to Walmart photo clerks, it seems like a shaky first line of defense for child exploitation. In the days before digital photography, how many millions of baby photos in various states of undress were processed daily?
Clearly, one of the lessons from the Demaree matter is that everyone is suspect. Innocence needs to be proven.
Catherine Forsythe