http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/humber/8102600.stm

Britain were so backward in 2002. An honest citizen is told that the old man with a dog and no friends down the road 'must be a pedo' and immediately sets out to deliver some community justice with his mates. Acting with the noblest intentions, he burns the dirty old man alive...and instead of getting a medal, the savages in the British justice system lock him up for life. I mean, Pedos don't get life!!!

But now his conviction for murder has rightfully been quashed and it's good to know we live in a civilised country once more.

WARNING : any paedotricians reading this, it might be time for you to invest in a good smoke alarm.

This sounds more like a case of a false confession due to mental illness.

You're really that sure he was actually guilty in the first place? We hear of genuine miscarriages of justice every day {or so it seems}. Why, on the face of it, should this guy be on, as it were, the other side of the page? Whatever, there's little new here anyway. Vigilante action has for a long time enjoyed popular support. What happened to the guy who killed the ex policeman on his own doorstep a while ago. His actions - lethal as they were -it seems were less newsworthy than those of his victim who had possessed pictures of children. Worthy of condemnation, certainly, but not to condemnation to death. There appears to be tacit support for an "open season" approach toward the hounding of people whose mindset is misguided in one way, but little support for the punishment of those who have a different set pathological problems it's true. However, I see no evidence of that in this case. Do you have particular insight into this one?

His murder conviction was quashed because he didn't murder anyone. He was one of those inadequate attention seekers who admit to committing crimes because they want people to notice them. They'll have to reopen the case now, as no one know who killed the guy and why.

By the way, people can't go around murdering people just because someone said that someone said that somebody else heard they were a paedophile. Besides, it is not illegal to be a paedophile and to have a sexual attraction to children. It's only illegal if a paedophile acts on those feelings and has sexual relations with a child. In fact, fifty years ago, when homosexuals could be sent to prison for two years for having a sexual relationship with another man, it wasn't actually illegal to be a homosexual...only to act on those feelings.

So the oft-quoted term in the media about "Convicted Paedophiles" is a complete misnomer, as there is no such thing in law as a convicted paedophile. If a bus driver commits a murder and is convicted for it, we don't call him a convicted bus driver, do we? We call him a convicted murderer. You'd be surprised at the number of ignorant people out there who don't know this very simple fact. Yet the media continue with this misnomer on purpose.

Belting post, DR2. The link between public attitudes to paedophilia now and public attitudes to homosexuality then is one which has struck me too before now. You are right, too, to highlight the difference between inclination and action. I would be viewed by the public at large {if I were on their radar screen at all, and I thank Christ daily that I'm not} as a "convicted paedophile" too- even though I have never molested a child nor would I ever. The failure to draw any kind of line of demarkation between those who download indecent images of children and those who commit contact offences is akin to making the assumption that any man who buys Penthouse is a rapist. Thank you, you've made good points.

Thanks for the kind words, Locked Out. At least I'm good at something. I suppose that by the twisted logic prevalent today, when I watched a documentary once about World War Two and I saw a Japanese soldier executing a POW with a bullet to the back of his head, watching that image must have made me a murderer two.

Essentially you are correct any many criminologists have pointed out that society, encouraged by authorities of all types is conducting a 'witch-hunt' against pedophiles (or suspected ones) and this is one of the most reprehensible aspects of a civilized society.

At other times in history witch-hunts have been conducted against all manner of people-from Gypsies to Jews or Catholics.

This is a badly reported story and the BBC is remiss as it's rather difficult to work out what actually went on.

One can make the assumption that the man made a false confession but it's not actually clear in the article. The report handed down must have contained more than what is reported in this piece. Another example of falling standards at the BBC.

DR2, you are way off the mark. I am assuming when you saw the Japanese soldier executing a POW with a bullet through the back of the head that you did not have to submit your credit card details on top of paying your TV licence fee to see this act as it was probably broadcast on the History channel or a terestrial TV channel for everyone to see.
I am sick of hearing that people who view child porn do not have a sexual attraction towards children and that they should not be dealt with as severely as the 'abuser'.
If there was nobody out there to view this sick material then the market would not exist, by viewing this sort of material it is just fuelling this sick and disgusting market and the abuse will continue if people are willing to view it.
As for the comments about if a bus driver was to committ murder, you say he would not be seen as a convicted bus driver. Rightly so too, being a bus driver is what somebody may do for a living.
I have never seen any job vacancies advertised for a paedophile.

No one's excusing anyone, Mr Janus. No excuses and no denying that the desire to view images of children is morally and legally reprehensible. Why do you suggest that anyone IS excusing or denying either? Incidentally, there is also a vast customer base out there for people who like watching real executions and real death... how quick are you going to be to condemn that lovely group of people?

actually I think it's you who is way off the mark.
You are making a lot of assumptions that aren't supported by facts.

No-one denies that there isn't real child abuse and some shocking child porn out there but the law isn't being administered indiscriminately.

One of the largest busts in the UK-Operation Ore resulted in 100's of arrests with many suicides and convictions. Many have now been overturned and one of Britain's best investigative reporters Duncan Campbell proved that the apparent website that those who were arrested for subscribing to didn't in fact indicate it would lead to child porm but rather adult porn.

Duncan also uncovered that despite their claims trumpeted in the media, Scotland Yard hadn't done any of the work but merely acted upon information sent by the FBI who in turn relied on an IT 'expert' who had ignored certain facts. And that is why many convicted have had their cases overturned in the courts. As usual-you rarely read in the tabloids of cases the courts reverse unless it's a sensational one.

You also ignore the huge racket in stolen credit card numbers where on-line purchases form a billion pound industry.

I never use credit cards anymore except in the most essential cases where it's difficult not to. Any visit I make to Asia where I only use them in the biggest hotels still results in 2 or 3 calls months later from the card company enquiring about dodgy 'purchases'.

(PS: one tip-the latest scam sweeping credit cards is that a small purchase will be made for as little as £2 which people rarely notice and once successful a spree is done within a month-it's happened to me 3 times now)

What is legal in the USA isn't in the UK. One famous case that should disturb everyone is the arrest and conviction of the actor who played Pee Wee Herman over his art collection. Under the USA's very dodgy 'plea bargain' process which is abused by DA's he copped a much lesser conviction and a fine..but still retains his entire art collection intact. What his crime was is difficult to ascertain.Despite many big names including Gwyneth Paltrow appearing in his defence to state they had viewed his collection they weren't arrested.

And this is the great problem-what is actually childporn?. The UK has at least a grading system that puts it into different catergories which indicates that a former UK pop star given a 4 month sentence was in the lowest catergory-a fact the media persistently ignores.

As the American Union for Civil Liberties continues to state-"you can get a 3 year sentence in the USA for nearly beating a 17 year old to death but a 25 years for having a nude photo of them',

You also ignore the dozens of US teen "sexting" cases where one teen sends her boyfriend a topless snap of herself and both are hauled before the courts accused of producing child porn although several US states are now considering reversing these laws.

It's far more complex than presented in the media which gives a "black & white" view of the crime and you are assuming authorities do not make mistakes or aren't prone to exagerations for political purposes.

I would have thought that the manner in which the media aided in the sale of the illegal Iraq War in which tens of thousands of Iraqi children have been blasted to death but now ignored, but which still makes a sensation out of a child abuse case usually when it includes sex abuse-would give people cause to re-think what they read or see.

Or do I have to say yet again, The Sun regularly published topless Page 3 girls that since 2003 would now get you arrested if you had the pics stuck up on your bedroom wall.

There is something very perverse in the fact The Sun is now the greatest promoter of hysteria and that it's owner approved of the publication of these pics and still enjoys the profits made.

A couple of points come to mind from your post, Hugh.

I don't think it is only paedophiles who view child porn. There are many way that it can get on your computer (e.g. a particularly nasty trojan), or how you can stray onto a website. As Veritas points out, the main website at the centre of Operation Ore was one which claimed to show legal adult porn, and users would not know it contained child porn until they'd accessed it. Some people send a link claiming it is their personal profile, or something equally harmless, but it turns out to contain child porn.

Another thing is the unclear definition of an indecent image. Child, or Kiddie, porn is just media terminology. A photo of a child in swimwear on your computer can result in charges of posessing or viewing indecent images, even though such images are legally viewable in mail order catalogues or holiday brochures.

I think that there should be a clear distinction between nakedness (or even semi nakedness) and sex. In many cases there is absolutely no sexual content of allegedly indecent images. If sex is involved then I agree that it is indecent.

Would we call Julia Sommerville a paedophile because she was given a police caution for having a photo of her own baby in a bath? If so, then the majority of parents since the invention of the camera should also be branded paedophiles. It's nonsense of course.

There are so many grey areas, it's easy to see how there are also so many wrongful convictions. As a parent the paranoia concerns me more than the reality, because paranoia throughout history has led to such things as the famous witch hunts where many innocents were hung for nothing, and the McCartney enquiries in the USA. We came close to it with the News of the World fiasco a short while back. The thing that scared me then was how a mob intent on harming a paedophile (although it turned out he wasn't) threw a brick through his window just narrowly missing a small child sitting within. Will people never learn?

The subject of theft of credit card account numbers is something that worries me. I only use my credit card for buying DVD's and such online from big companies like amazon and HMV. But the fact that someone who is very clever with computers could hack into one of these supposedly secure sites and steal my credit card details and use them to pay online for child porn is like a sword of damocles hanging over the heads of everyone who uses a credit card this way. It could happen to any one of us at any time and it's very worrying. In fact, I read in the paper about four years ago of this actually happening to a doctor at my local hospital. He was arrested and his computer seized, but the police could find nothing incriminating on it and no evidence that he had ever visited the site in question, so he was never charged. It was obvious that someone, somehow, had gotten access to his credit card details and it could have been anyone, anywhere in the world.

In the early days of the Internet, there were numerous child porn websites, but I reckon the only ones out there now are entrapment sites run by the FBI and the police and anyone daft enough to pay for pictures on these sites with their credit card will soon hear a knock on the door.

I try to use paypal and similar services now.

I suspect that child porn sites could only exist if they had some other "front", i.e. were disguised as something else. Otherwise they would probably be snuffed out very quickly. I also suspect that there are very few online now, but rather those who like to share such images do so within limited private circles. The police would do better to try and infiltrate such forums rather than focus on the rather dodgy area of credit card use.

It isn't clear at all, is it Veritas? I realise that perhaps there are certain people who have a compulsive and all-consuming need for attention and will say anything, as may have happened in this case, but 'need for attention' would cover 90% of our pop idol generation.

Furthermore, he was convicted with somebody else, athough it is unclear what relationship the two had with each other.

I think the phrase 'convicted paedophile' is used so much because it implies that every person in the land is under suspicion, just haven't been convicted yet. Orwellian.

By the way, I did post this reply yesterday but JK the meanie, or whoever is the mod, chose not to approve it.

Great point DR2 about the distinction between viewing and doing. I think I read that 50 million Americans viewed the Nick Berg Iraqi beheading - therefore 50 million Americans are murderers.