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Comment by bb88 | Hacker News Reader

IRL I knew someone who was charged with child sexual abuse. He went to prison awaiting trial, but the prosecution dropped the charges before it got there. He was released and went about his life.

Meanwhile his mug shot photo in the local paper was the number one google search result for his name. And then it reached syndication for other news sites as well.

Ideally those news paper articles should be updated to say the prosecution dropped the charges, but the reality is that at where I live, the arrest makes news but the prosecution dropping charges does not.

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I think libel laws should be updated, so entities are compelled to correct the record when requested. News media have gotten away with publishing "well we thought it was true at the time" (or "we didn't say it, we said someone else said it") for too long.

Publishing the name of a suspect should generally not be tolerated. Particularly in the case of mass shootings or general terrorism.

Unless the person is a politician or an active danger, no good comes from publishing their name. In the case they are guilty, you are giving notoriety which encourages copycats. In the case they are innocent, you've seriously harmed the reputation of an innocent person.

The only reason I'd make a carve out for politicians is because well connected politicians have a way of wiggling out of responsibility and electing someone that may spend the next two years behind bars is generally worse for the public they'd represent.

> Unless the person is a politician or an active danger, no good comes from publishing their name

What do you think of the case in my comment, tldr: suspected CSAM offences by a scout group leader. I think it was right that the scout group were notified so he could be suspended... but that is only a very small step from publishing the name, unless you put recipients under NDA and/or criminalise further publicity.

I'm honestly fairly conflicted overall. Obviously the malicious publication we see in general is bad, but I'm not sure where the line is.

He was already being held in prison so I see no reason to further publish until a trial or settlement hit.

But let's assume he's charged and released on bail or otherwise. In that case, I think it's reasonable for the cops to notify the organizations he's involved with of the pending trial and for a judge to put a restraining order on him. I didn't think anything further needs to happen until he's found guilty or settles with a guilty plea.

My kid's school recently had a related event happen. A guy with a CSAM conviction was released from prison so the cops went around to all the schools to let them know about the dude. (We are friendly with the school secretary and noticed an unusual amount of cops around the school).

Edit: oops, looks like I mixed up your case with the OPs.

But I think what I said still applies and is ultimately what happened in your case.

My main issue is with a public permanent record in the form of a newspaper or news broadcast and not with responsible disclosure by cops.

Yeah in this case the guy wasn't being held.

I'd like to be able to differentiate between "permanent record in a newspaper" and "responsible disclosure", but I'm not sure where the line is.

In your case for example, what if a parent went to the media? Or what if one of the hundreds of affected parents started publicly campaigning for the person to be locked up? I think there should be limits, perhaps such as criminalising the sharing of that information unless it's from the police/courts. I don't think it even matters if the secretary at your school kept the person's name a secret, as people will jump to conclusions and start accusing others, and the whole problem here is that unfounded accusations can still cause real harm to people.

> what if a parent went to the media?

I think so long as the media outlet isn't publishing the name of the accused then I don't know how much I care about what they are publishing. Stuff blows over and is especially hard to put together if there's not a name/face with a story. I'd suspect that without a name/photo that a media outlet would simply not publish anything. If it's linked to an org I could see a "Boy scout leader accused of CSAM" and I'm not entirely against that. I think conversations about what orgs in charge of kids are doing to prevent abuse are valuable ones.

> Or what if one of the hundreds of affected parents started publicly campaigning for the person to be locked up?

I think that campaign is probably fine and publishing "100 parents calling for the arrest of a boy scout leader" is also probably fine so long as the name isn't published. There is a bit of a fuzzy line, though. For example, if a TV news station decided to cover the issue it might be easy for a parent to slip in the name which wouldn't be great.

To me, the biggest problem is how long such a name ends up staying in the public consciousness. Particularly if the individual ends up with a not guilty ruling.

> I think there should be limits, perhaps such as criminalising the sharing of that information unless it's from the police/courts.

I disagree about the police/courts as that's too early in the criminal justice process. In my book, the name getting published should happen after a conviction/guilty plea and not before.

> I don't think it even matters if the secretary at your school kept the person's name a secret, as people will jump to conclusions and start accusing others, and the whole problem here is that unfounded accusations can still cause real harm to people.

I agree. But I also don't think it's a huge problem because I've, frankly, already forgotten this individual's name. I'm sure with a bunch of extra effort I could find them and a photo (since they were convicted). If someone is accused and not convicted, then the absence of their name in a newspaper/news report would mean that it'd be quite hard to actually link their past accusation to themselves. That, IMO, is the ideal balance. That the public knows the name isn't as important as it is that if I google "cogman10" it doesn't come up with an old arrest record with my photo and "cogman10 accused of murdering a health insurance CEO" even though I wasn't found guilty.

Where this gets tricky is what do we do with a parent that decides to setup a "cogman10 accused of murdering a CEO!" webpage. Part of what's tricky here is such a webpage would be factual. Further, for very powerful people/orgs I don't like the idea that they could sue into the ground anyone that publishes something negative against them. For example, imagine an organization with rampant problems of sexual abuse but whenever it comes up they immediately settle with an NDA to silence the victims and then sues anyone that publishes information about it.

I don't have a perfect solution here. I think this is probably something better handled not by the legal system but rather journalistic ethics... but I get that that is already the system we have and it currently sucks.

He was a Scout leader, so he obviously sought ways to be close to children. Another group that does that is Catholic priests.

We know how that turned out – no one hears about abuse by priests, and they are silently moved by the Church to another parish, to continue their abusive ways for decades.

In other words, enforced secrecy does not protect potential victims. There's a balance to be found, but it is hard to know what that is.

> He was a Scout leader, so he obviously sought ways to be close to children.

Not necessarily. Mormon scout leaders didn't get the assignment by their own volition, a church leader would pick them instead. Depending on the scout sponsor group how the leader is chosen could vary.

> We know how that turned out – no one hears about abuse by priests, and they are silently moved by the Church to another parish, to continue their abusive ways for decades.

The issue with the Catholic priests was twofold. First, instead of involving cops and prosecutors early on, church goers would instead reach out to church leaders about the problem. If it did make it's way to the cops, the church would go through extra efforts to make the priest go away to a different perish. (of course without informing the parishioners about the past).

Then of course there is an issue with cops and prosecutors treating religious abuse with kid gloves. Slap on "this is a religion" and all the sudden laws matter a lot less.

> In other words, enforced secrecy does not protect potential victims. There's a balance to be found, but it is hard to know what that is.

And, to be clear, I'm not trying to say we should have total secrecy about these sorts of abuses. I think a news report about a priest or a scout leader being charged is appropriate and that cops disclosing to anyone related to the incident that they are in the process of charging the individual is also appropriate and indeed necessary (after all, the individual could have injured their kids as well which would be a part of collecting evidence). A news organization naming the priest or scout leader would likely not be appropriate.

What I'm against is things like mugshot sites publishing every arrest and name associated with the arrest as an arrest is not a conviction. It's something that can hurt innocent individuals.

I don't even have a problem with sites like this publishing the mugshots of convicts.

One could argue that a newspaper is continuously publishing something on its website. And therefore it has a duty to keep any archives it keeps available to the public updated.

Obviously that might just lead to most publications deleting all their archives...

There was an arrest. The alleged crime was published -- but since it was alleged, the news outlet doesn't have to prove it was true, they were reporting on what was alleged by the police. So libel laws had little to do with it.

It's possible the police "juiced" the story in the media, only then to try to sweep it under the rug when it didn't play out the way they were hoping. Or maybe the police thought it was all true, but the victim recanted when questioned about inconsistencies.

Whatever happened afterwards, it didn't make the papers. There's no conviction, just the arrest and allegations.

That's why they said updated. It means to change the laws.

But again, that's not libel. Libel is publishing something untrue on purpose. Everything published was true and is still true today. He was arrested and alleged of a crime.

Requiring media to update every news story they publish is untenable.

Then maybe we should change the law that defines what is and isnt libel.

I know that there is the saying that goes something like “a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich,” but at least there is an acknowledgment there that being publically accused of a crime can come with a pretty high cost to the accused, and that is worth some process.

I served in a grand jury in NY and it was overall a pretty positive experience. Yes, the standard is lower and at times it can feel like a rubber stamp, but we did refuse to indict in two cases where we decided the DA failed to get us to “more likely than not.”

In the Netherlands media never names suspects.

But it's more of a cultural thing people just mind their own business.

To clarify, we name them partially. The first name and then the first letter of the lastname. So John Doe would be John D.

"Minding their own business" means that thousands of children are abused by Catholic priests and no one does anything to stop it.

Of course, this is not limited to the Netherlands, but it's the point of the discussion: how to prevent more abuse, more of whatever crime.

I knew someone charged with having large amounts of CSAM. He was also named in local media before conviction, although you really had to go looking for it to find it.

More importantly perhaps, he was a scout leader and his scout group were informed, I believe by the police, as early as the investigation began - i.e. before being charged, let alone convicted.

Given the topic of the investigation, as much as I think people not yet convicted should be treated as innocent, I also think the public has a right to protections in cases where there is a plausible threat. In this case regardless of his guilt, there was a plausible threat to children under his care.

The problem is that if you tell a scout group you're telling the parents, and it only takes one to make a stink about it for it to spread. Sadly, although perhaps expectedly, the nuance of plausible threat vs conviction is often lost in times like this.

Were they convicted? It seems irresponsible to let someone strongly suspected of harming children to continue to have close contact with children. “Innocent until proven guilty” is a criminal justice concept. It actually doesn’t apply to civil matters.

I don't think the conviction matters to the point. They were convicted, but my point is that a suspicion that causes an investigation should probably warrant telling those who could be at risk, even if the investigation ends up going nowhere.

Not sure what you mean about the civil matter, CSAM offences are criminal, so I'd expect "innocent until proven guilty" to apply in this case. If you mean that for other civil matters there's no need to notify those at risk, I would agree, I doubt anything civil meets the bar of risk.

I think I misunderstood your point. It sounded like you were arguing against telling the scout group prior to the conviction, because they were innocent until proven guilty. But from your follow up, it sounds like you agree with telling the scout group prior to his conviction. In that case, I agree with you.

In the UK, at least, I think if you were charged with this they limit your access to vulnerable groups until the charges have run their course and there is a verdict either way.

Just because charges were dropped doesn't mean they were innocent. It could mean there wasn't enough reliable witness testimony, physical evidence, or the evidence was tainted in a way that the prosecution did not believe they would get a conviction in a court of law.

You're innocent until proven guilty by a court of law

In the eyes of the law, yes. But that does not mean that a child wasn't damaged due to the abuse by a person the law could not convict.

Or are you of the opinion that that 100% of sexual abusers have been caught, tried, convicted, and have or are currently serving time?

Edit: typo

This is true, for sure, but there is also the flip side where evidence is wrong, mistaken, planted, framed etc, which comes out during the trial. Where do you balance it?

Here's a scenario.

You get into an argument. The other guy is a cop it turns out. He arrests you for a trumped up charge and makes sure to tell the media. Child sexual abuse is the charge.

Now what?

Sue the police department for false arrest odds are good it would make the media.

> Ideally those news paper articles should be updated

They cannot do this, their reputation is at stake. I've seen very few newspapers who recognised they made a failure.

Your right, their reputation is at stake. So, they should recognize their failures.

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