OK, I'm going to open up to you guys about something...

[Tom In VA]

Well Katy. I've read several security related articles, there have been cases where "Child Porn" has been found on computers due to a hack.

IP addresses can be compromised, computers compromised and used to "seed" torrents of pron - child or otherwise.

I don't know. I'll find that article and send it.


I've also heard of a union boss in Maine being set up - the claim - "child porn". If there was any accusation, any claim in the world to absolutely destroy a person - BE THEY GUILTY OR NOT - it would be -

"Child Porn".

I mean how do you bounce back from even being accused of that ?

He's 44 years old. Perhaps he downloaded and shared a clip from a well known actress in the 80's, older than me and slightly younger than your husband. Traci Lords. Owning, trading, or otherwise viewing any pornography SHE WILLINGLY MADE at the age of 15 would be considered ...

"Child Porn".


I don't know what it is. You knew him. He's the father of your child. You might have got to know his proclivities and tendencies in a sexual nature. What do you think ?


I hope he's innocent and found to be so. For your child's sake.

[Ken]

Yikes... Sorry to hear that, Katy. Will keep your son in my thoughts.

[Tom In VA]

Katy here's the story, albeit not from the same source I read it in months ago.

http://news.cnet.com/safe-and-secure/?k ... ornography

The AP story reported about the case of Michael Fiola, a former Massachusetts state employee whose state-owned work computer was found to contain illegal child pornography images. He was fired and charged with possession of child pornography which, had he been convicted, could have landed him in prison for up to five years, according to the AP.

Sexually explicit images of children--who are often being exploited--are not protected by the First Amendment because they may memorialize, celebrate, or encourage sexual crimes against children deemed defenseless victims. Although Fiola avoided a child porn conviction, he reportedly has suffered related indignities, including death threats and friend abandonment. The AP said he and his wife liquidated their savings and spent $250,000 on legal fees.

Ultimately, charges were dropped after Fiola's defense showed that his computer was infected by a virus that was "programmed to visit as many as 40 child porn sites per minute," something that a human couldn't do, even if he or she tried. Other reports about this case indicate that the antivirus software on Fiola's computer was out of date and therefore was not protecting him against malware.

And

"I've never seen it where child porn was intentionally placed on someone's computer because of a virus," Geraghty said. He has, however, seen cases where "someone was redirected to a site where it could have entered the cache." If someone were to go to a legal adult porn site, it's possible that the browser would "open 100 different windows," including some that could contain child porn. "As a result of that, any images on any of these sites would be cached, and there would be a record that you had been there."

But Geraghty said investigators can tell the difference between someone who deliberately downloaded such images and someone who may have inadvertently downloaded perhaps thousands of images because of a virus or misdirected Web site.

Totality of evidence
"A good forensics expert would try to determine how (the images) got on the computer and who was responsible for putting them there," he said. "That would be determined by looking at the totality of the evidence, not just the fact that there were images there."

Things a good investigator would look into include whether the suspect was sitting at the computer at the time the images were downloaded. Was he using the computer to send e-mail or visit other Web sites at the time? "There is always some type of trail we can follow to determine if the person were likely actively involved in the process of downloading the material," Geraghty said.

So it can happen, although according to the article it is rare.

Hoping for the best, maybe something along these lines happened to your ex.

[Tom In VA]

Well the FBI has been known to fuck up severely.

Limewire, or any sort of "sharing" program can facilitate unwitting sharing of things.

Another thing I thought of was binary newsgroups. If you use software to download and assemble binaries in a "fire and forget" mode - you can potentiall download things you don't want before the mods of said newsgroup clean out the unwanted files.

Another fun thing is when you search for a movie, think you have found it, download it and then open it to find it is something different altogether. This happened to me on WinMX when I was looking for Michael Moore's Farenheit 911. I got a movie about a whole lot of conspiracy stuff - intriguing in and of itself - but not the Moore film.

I seriously think your ex is somehow caught up in something not necessarily of his doing.

Ever the optimist, I suppose.

[Trampis]

Wow, I feel for you and your boy Katy. Very tough situation for your son to go through and I wouldnt pretend to imagine how he feels on a daily basis.

My 15 yo stepson, who lives with his mother and I, has a pretty poor relationship with his father who lives about 5 hrs away by car. After his mother and I got married his father got married to a rather unpleasant woman after a 3 month courtship. My stepson hates her, she hates him and ....well its just a mess really.

Regardless, I always tell the boy to "be his own man". Ignore the jackassery of his father(and me for that matter) and do whats best for him. Be honest, work hard and above all, have a sense of humuor about it all. Thats all we can ask of each other as humans. Because theres a lot of bad shit in life that other people do that we have no controll over. But you do have controll over your own actions.

[Mikey]

That's really tough Katy. If it were just you and your ex you could say fuck him and good riddance, but the father will always have an effect on his son. Just try always to reinforce his "self of steam" and keep reminding him that "like father like son" is only a proverb.

[Terry in Crapchester]

Yet another stepparent story . . .

My wife was married once before me. That marriage didn't last long, and she wound up leaving her ex because he was physically abusive toward her. That marriage produced one child, a daughter who is now 21. She and I get along okay now, but there were times . . .

Among other things, she blamed me for her parents' marriage splitting up, nevermind that I didn't even meet her mother until seven years after she had left her father. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "you're not my father" come out of her piehole, I'd probably own my own island somewhere in the South Pacific. Her own father's relationship with her ran hot and cold, which might very well have been the worst of all possible worlds. She was never interested in boys her own age; rather, she was interested in boys who were about 7-8 years older than she was, which was a nightmare scenario during the teen years. The stories I could tell. Most of this, I suspect, had something to do with trying to find a surrogate father figure. The stories I could tell . . .

Anyhow, somehow we managed to steer her through high school. No easy task, that -- she was never much of a student (could've been much better than she was, but she never had much interest in it), and no less than six of her high school classmates (this out of a class of about 100) got pregnant before graduation. She went to college for a semester (or maybe less, but it was at least long enough to get her financial aid check), then decided it wasn't for her.

She had a baby about seven months ago, which I guess makes me a grandfather of sorts. She has an on-again, off-again relationship with her daughter's father. He's had a rough life but seems genuinely not to be the same person he apparently was about 10-15 years ago. He's very good with our son, even refers to him as his brother -- not his girlfriend's brother, HIS brother. So hopefully things will turn out for the best.

[smackaholic]

I feel for you katy. Hopefully Tom is right. Perhaps he is being railroaded.

Glad I'm married just once as is my wife. Life's tough enough with out the dramas that come with that situation.

[Katy]

Yet another stepparent story . . .

My wife was married once before me. That marriage didn't last long, and she wound up leaving her ex because he was physically abusive toward her. That marriage produced one child, a daughter who is now 21. She and I get along okay now, but there were times . . .

Among other things, she blamed me for her parents' marriage splitting up, nevermind that I didn't even meet her mother until seven years after she had left her father. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "you're not my father" come out of her piehole, I'd probably own my own island somewhere in the South Pacific. Her own father's relationship with her ran hot and cold, which might very well have been the worst of all possible worlds. She was never interested in boys her own age; rather, she was interested in boys who were about 7-8 years older than she was, which was a nightmare scenario during the teen years. The stories I could tell. Most of this, I suspect, had something to do with trying to find a surrogate father figure. The stories I could tell . . .

Anyhow, somehow we managed to steer her through high school. No easy task, that -- she was never much of a student (could've been much better than she was, but she never had much interest in it), and no less than six of her high school classmates (this out of a class of about 100) got pregnant before graduation. She went to college for a semester (or maybe less, but it was at least long enough to get her financial aid check), then decided it wasn't for her.

She had a baby about seven months ago, which I guess makes me a grandfather of sorts. She has an on-again, off-again relationship with her daughter's father. He's had a rough life but seems genuinely not to be the same person he apparently was about 10-15 years ago. He's very good with our son, even refers to him as his brother -- not his girlfriend's brother, HIS brother. So hopefully things will turn out for the best.

Being a parent is hard, being a stepparent is harder. My first husband was older than man by 11 years. He had a child when he was 17. At 20, I was a stepmother to a 14 year old girl. Talk about your drama. She hated my guts and moved in with us 3 months into our marriage.

Anyway, she's a great sister to my son. She has children of her own now and the two of them are very close. She lives 3 hours from here and my son goes to see her at least once a month.

[poptart]

Being a parent is hard, being a stepparent is harder.

Yes and no.

A stepparent is always walking on eggshells and has to be cautious to not say (or do) things to a child that a real parent can easily say.

SO often, a steppparent has to bite their lip.

It's very tricky ... and stressful.

On the other hand, the REAL parent has more ultimate responsibility toward the child then than the stepparent does, so the stepparent has it easier in that sense.


Being a 20 yr old stepparent to a 14 yr old who hates you?

Yikes.

Welcome premature grey hair.

[Katy]

I've been coloring my hair since I was 28 out of necessity. Being a brunette sucks...premature grey shows faster.