The Text Message Typo That Landed a Man In Jail 547
Barence writes "A British man was jailed for 18 months for accidentally sending an explicit text message to his entire address book. 24-year-old swimming coach Craig Evans intended to send a text message to his girlfriend asking her for sex. Instead, the message was accidentally sent to his entire BlackBerry address book, including two girls, aged 13 and 14, from his swimming class. He was subsequently arrested and charged with 'causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity,' and – incredibly – jailed for 18 months at Birmingham Crown Court in July. Yesterday, an appeal's court freed Evans, although he wasn't cleared — the sentence was merely reduced to a nine-month suspended jail term."
Blame blackberry? (Score:1, Insightful)
What stupid user interface does a blackberry have to enable that in the first place? I cannot imagine any message that I would ever want to send to everyone I know.
Also, if he would have started the text with the name of his girlfriend, I'm sure he would have been in far less trouble.
Also, stupid Brits. It was a mistake.
Re:Something is fishy (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you even send a text message to your entire address book? This sounds more like the guy used some very poor judgement, but I doubt it was accidental.
The guy sent the same message to his family members:
Agreeing and allowing the appeal, Lord Justice Elias said: "The facts of this case are rather unusual...messages reading 'Would you f**k me? Fast or slow? Skin on skin' were sent to every single contact in his phone, including members of his own family."
So it does seem like a genuine screw up.
Re:I just tried to do this on my Blackberrry (Score:5, Insightful)
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely fool-proof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
— Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Re:Why did he have them in his address book? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it's because he was their swimming instructor, and gave them a ride somewhere or something? It's not like he had dozens of minors' contacts lying around and a string of lewd messages to them in his contact history (believe me, the police will have checked with the phone company by now).
Christ, panic mongers like yourself are the reason children are increasingly living in padded isolation boxes to protect them from big scary reality, and men are terrified to so much as speak to a child lest they be accused of molesting them. It's at the point now where, out of self-preservation, I would drive right by a child alone on the side of the road in the middle of winter. I would not stop to help. Why? Because if god forbid something happened to them later, or they decided to say something about me, the world would ruin my life for the greater good.
Ask yourself if that's really the best thing for children. For every pedophile you've cowed into hiding (they don't go away mind you, and when they think nobody is looking they're still going to do horrible things) you scare away hundreds or thousands of decent human beings who would help a child in need. Your child is far more likely to be hurt by tripping and falling, getting lost, or eating something dangerous; and if you're not around, you'd best hope there's a woman nearby to help because with this attitude the men will stay the fuck away.
Re:Daily Mail fail (Score:4, Insightful)
>>> If I kill you by accident, that is alright then?
No, but I don't expect you will get charged with premeditated murder. Intention matters.
Again, the cure is worse than the disease (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously (at least if the Daily Mail is to be believed, and I do have some doubts about this), the guy does not belong in jail, nor does he belong on the sex offenders list. The worst that should have happened to him was that he had to apologize to everyone he sent this message to, nothing more, nothing less.
Negligent? Maybe, but to err is human. All too often these days a simple mistake (whether it be sending the message or buying a Blackberry in the first place) is twisted into something that it simply is not: a crime.
Where are they? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I can only assume (Score:2, Insightful)
Or alternatively, the guy's claim that it was a mistaken send to everyone was just his cover story and the jury thought there was enough evidence to that effect.
At the end of the day, this was a case overseen by a jury, and it's non-trivial to send a message to everyone on a Blackberry.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
>No, they go to the parents who transport their children to the meetings. So I'll ask again; Why did he have the phone numbers of 13 and 14 year olds on his phone?
Because they were 13 and 14 year old's NOT 6 and 7 year olds. That means they were high-school aged. Now I know in America you treat highschool teenagers that age as if they were babies but in the rest of the world they are allowed and indeed EXPECTED to take a modicum of responsibility for their own actions.
Including almost CERTAINLY having to get to practise THEMSELVES using available public transport, bycicles and the like.
My parents would have found the idea of "taking a high school kid to a sports practise" stupid beyond measure. They bought me a bike instead.
Even aside from that - there IS such a thing as non-sexual friendships between adults and teenagers. Teens seeking advice, role models and the like - and adults who are willing to play that role, often ones in positions like coaches, guidance councillors and such who are able and willing to give good advice to difficult questions that those kids may not be as comfortable discussing with their parents.
That's not just innocent, it's a NORMAL part of growing up and depriving kids of that thinking you're protecting them is a very good way to make them less likely to grow up into responsible adults.
Re:Hrm (Score:3, Insightful)
He's a swim coach. He probably frequently sent out mails for events and schedule changes to a large group of people.
This group probably contained most of his contact list.
And if he did it frequently, a smart device like a Blackberry (which I don't own, so I can only speculate) might well prioritise higher on autocomplete that group.
At that point, all that would be required would be carelessness in the heat of the moment...
Re:Daily Mail fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, he did send a sexual text to underaged children. That it was by accident makes it alright?
Mens rea is sort of a thing in common law jurisdictions... It isn't an absolute/binary matter; but it has long been the case that both act and intent are what make the crime. This is why, for instance, 'negligent homicide' is different than '1st degree murder'. If you were to kill me by accident it obviously wouldn't be 'alright', I'd still be pretty dead, and depending on the circumstances you might be on the civil and/or criminal hook for some sort of negligence, recklessness, or indifference; but, yeah, you certainly wouldn't be going down on Murder 1 charges...
Having, thankfully, not dealt with a Blackberry user interface in a while, I have no idea where on the continuum from 'freak accident, could have happened to anyone' to 'epic negligence' sending a given message to your entire address book is; but none of those places are the same as intentionally sending the message to the legally problematic recipients.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
These aren't kids. They are teenagers. You know, the age group where they are expected to be mature enough to look after their own life a little bit.
Re:I can only assume (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Daily Mail fail (Score:5, Insightful)
>If I kill you by accident, that is alright then?
Maybe. You won't be charged with murder. You MAY be charged with manslaughter. The legal test for manslaughter is: 'caused a death where a reasonable person would not'.
So if reasonable precautions on your part would have prevented the death - and you didn't take them - then you're guilty, otherwise you are indeed innocent.
To make up a random example. You're a forklift driver. Your forklift runs downhil while you stop for lunch, runs over a car and kills the driver. Are you guilty ? Well if you had left the handbrake off - then you are. If you had pulled it up but the brake FAILED while you were gone, then you're innocent.
See how it works ?
So we can apply a similar test to this accident if it helps you feel better.
We know (and an appeals court judge has declared) based on the available evidence that there was no intent here. But was the accident excusable ? Well it depends - was it an accident a reasonable person would have been able to avoid ?
For that one would have to look at the interface of the specific phone, the methods that led to this happening and the particular circumstances of the case. You cannot just universally make a declaration about it. There is even the possibility that this was caused by an obscure or sporadic bug in that version of the blackberry OS - that even RIM may not know about yet and NO action of his would have prevented it. Such bugs can and do happen - this site is full of programmer's we've all seen bugs like that. If that is the case (and we - and likely HE doesn't know that) then he would be completely innocent by the "reasonable person" measure.
I sincerely doubt the Jury ever really tried to question how reasonable his actions were since they never even asked the intent question despite the strong evidence showing there wasn't any.
Now the fact is that this question quite academic - the question of whether he had acted in a reasonable manner hasn't been answered and we don't have enough information to answer it. The appeals judge may have, and may have decided on those grounds that he did NOT take reasonable precautions to keep his sexual message away from the minors and this is why he remains guilty - but the judge DID agree the actions were without INTENT and this is why his sentence was so significantly mitigated.
But that is just a guess - I haven't read the actual court reports so don't take this as a claim of fact, just a likely explanation of the outcome.
Re:I can only assume (Score:2, Insightful)
No, we sent you our scum and religious nutters. The only freedom they wanted was to persecute people of other faiths.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
See a poster above - outside the USA it's very normal for children of all ages to transport themselves to places. I was catching a bus home from school by the time I was 9.
If this guy was their swimming coach, then he had a perfectly justifiable reason for having their numbers in his phone, even if it was just so he knew which one of his team was texting him to say that she couldn't come to a training session.
Yes, he screwed up. But it doesn't justify the offence he was convicted of, which will place him on the offenders register for a minimum of 10 years, and has therefore completely destroyed his chosen career.
The ruination of a man's life is a hard price to pay for a social faux-pas.
Re:FTA... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Stupid liberal bitch"
Wow, calm down there, partisan much?
He was for the most part trying to be funny without a doubt, but that question was a question that he foolishly slipped in because he clearly genuinely didn't know the answer.
I'm not from the US, so I don't really care who wins, as I think they're both shit for the rest of the world, and when I started watching that video and saw he was talking with the tone he was I instantly assumed that it was as you say, that it was something being taken out of context. For what it's worth, I also thought Romney was a pretty decent speaker, having not really bothered to listen to him before. However when he reached that bit it was the mannerism, the way he phrased it, it was clear he was slipping a genuine question in as an aside. This is a common thing many stand up comedians actually do, they slip a serious question into their routine between the comedy to make people think, the problem is in Romney's case, it was not the sort of question you'd want a future president to be needing to slip in. Even if it was part of his routine I'm not sure that really helps much anyway as it would mean he was playing the card of celebrating stupidity, much like people seem to think it's funny that they're shit at maths. Again, you'd hope a president would encourage education, intelligence, and brilliance, if they make light of stupidity as if it's somehow cool to be stupid and ask stupid questions then that in itself is a major problem.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The way I see it you're actually making life more dangerous for children.
I pose this question to males out there: You're driving down the road and see a young child, maybe 12 years old, on the side of the road. It's cold, too cold to be safely outside, and they're trying to wave you down. You don't recognize them, but they're obviously distressed. Would you stop to help?
I, for one, would not. If it's some attention-seeking disturbed child, or just the child of some overzealous protective parents, I could wind up in jail with my life ruined for my efforts. Safer thing to do for me is pretend I never saw anything, and hope someone finds them. I'd even be nervous to call 911, because then it's "Why didn't you stop to help?" which makes me suspicious. Good luck kid, blame your parents' attitudes.
Re:Why did he have them in his address book? (Score:5, Insightful)
People like that just don't want to look at the facts. The facts are that the vast majority of pedophiles know the victim by being a family member or a friend of the family aunt or uncle). And while men are slightly more often found to be doing this sort of thing 1/3rd of pedophiles are actually women most are never convicted though and boys are far less likely to come forward if I woman makes a sexual advance).
Yet men and more so 'strange' men who are not family friends or relatives are the targets of the publics outrage over these things. It just goes to prove how irrational most people are and how sensationalist most of the media is.
Re:FTA... (Score:3, Insightful)
Stupid liberal bitch newscaster
Whether the newscaster was wrong or not, that was uncalled for.
Also, Mitt Romney needs to learn how to properly tell a joke - might I suggest he sit down with Mike Huckabee or Arlen Specter?
Re:FTA... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's a pretty good joke..
In case you were serious, making money by any means necessary means giving away no bid contracts to your friends when you get a government job. Government is not a business, you don't want it to work like one. Otherwise you get what we have now. Like any big company we have people protecting fiefdoms and making sure they always use the whole budget. This damages companies and our government.
Re:I can only assume (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather cool excuse if it had worked though.
If only there was some way of verifying his story... like looking through the texting logs from his carrier.
Re:I can only assume (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither of those things are strange to be fair. He was their coach and it's not unusual here for the coach to do that sort of thing to tell them when lessons will be or to let them know he wont make it or whatever.
As for having a phone, well, this is the UK, most kids now seem to have a mobile phone by about the age of 5.
Re:I can only assume (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet he was found guilty meaning the jury obviously felt there was enough evidence to convict.
You can't suggest there is a more simple explanation when it suits you and ignore it where it doesn't.
The most simple explanation in this situation was that he was in fact trying to groom the kids and that the jury felt there was enough evidence to that fact to convict, hence why he was convicted for it.
Re:Why did he have them in his address book? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm the father of a 13-year-old girl, and I have several of her friends' numbers in my phone. Why? Here's a few reasons:
While my daughter has her own phone, she often forgets it or forgets to charge it. Also, she's often on restriction at her Mom's house and not allowed to have a phone there, and when she is, she simply leaves it at my house. (I have her every other week.) Thus, her friends often call me looking for her. I don't have a good memory for phone numbers, so I've saved the numbers of those who call looking for her often, along with their names, so the caller ID on my phone will show me the name instead of the number. That way, I can often answer with a simple, "Hi. She's not here, she's at her mom's" or simply hand the phone over to her to answer.
Secondly, and relating to number one, sometimes she needs to call her friends, and doesn't have her phone. Having their numbers in my phone allows me to hand it over to her and let her call them, without having to go through the hoops of calling their parents. (Some of whom are divorced, and thus it can be a guessing game as to which parent one needs to call to reach the child.)
(And parenthetically here, that's part of what led me to start saving the kids' numbers in the first place. After having done the game of "Oh, you need to talk to Jenny? Okay, I'll call her mom... hi, Angie, Margie needs to talk to Jenny... oh, she's with Mark? Okay, I don't have Mark's number, can you give it to me? Thanks. Hi, Mark, this is Margie's dad. Margie Andrews. She's a friend of Jenny, and she wants to ask her about... oh, she's over at Alicia's? Do you have the number there? No? Oh, Alicia has a phone? Okay, let me write that down...." two or three times a month for several months, I found it was much easier when she wanted to contact one of the other kids to just have her call that kid directly.)
Third, when she's out with friends and has forgotten her own phone (or it's out of charge), it makes it easy for me to call and get her, since I know who she's with. Even if they've gone out walking, or have walked over to another friend's house in the neighborhood, I can still get her, since I have the numbers of people she's actually physically with.
Now, I don't go around asking for these kids' phone numbers -- I just tag them with their names after they've called me, or save them after I've been given their number and had to call them. (I'd hope by now that in a world of Caller ID, all parents are teaching their children that if you don't want someone to have your number, you shouldn't call them directly.)
I also have the phone numbers of a few older teens who are in my weekly D&D group that meets at a gaming store. I'm the GM, so people have given me their numbers so I can let them know if I'm not going to be able to make it for some reason, or if I'm going to be late, or for similar things. Some of their parents I know; some of them I don't, since these are high school kids who have their own cars and get around on their own. I'd actually prefer to use email for that, since I usually know well in advance, but one of them especially checks her email very rarely, but always gets texts -- and, of course, sometimes I don't know I'm going to be running late until only an hour or so before the game, and many people don't check their email that often. (Usually in that case I actually just text two of the people, and ask them to text everyone else... but one of those is the girl who's the social hub of the teen group.)
Re:Something is fishy (Score:2, Insightful)
The benefit of the doubt should always go to the suspect, not the plaintiff, unless you take the risk to send innocents to jail for crimes they *might* have committed or intended to commit, which is unacceptable.
Re:I can only assume (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that nearly every member of his family also received the message, it is very unlikely that he had intended to solicit sex from all the recipients, “skin on skin”. Remember, if the prosecution accuses him of “causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity,” they have to prove their case, not the other way around. That is what "innocent until proven guilty" means.
Clearly he did send the message, which is why he could not be exonerated from the crime that he was accused of... However proving intent was always going to be an uphill battle given how indiscriminately wide his message went.
I think that Judge Elias' conclusion that “it is difficult to conclude that he was targeting anyone” is the only reasonable conclusion (unless you have evidence that the prosecutors did not have).
Re:I can only assume (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually you can. You simply don't have to in this situation.
The law in question probably doesn't make any exceptions for an *accidental*, or *unintentional* solicitation. Simply sending the message to the under-age target, even by mistake, is likely enough to trigger the law. At least in the US, judges and lawyers spend a *lot* of time convincing the jury that they have to apply the law as written, regardless of common sense (even though that isn't actually true [see jury nullification]). I suspect it's the same elsewhere as well.
Well known English legal principle (Score:5, Insightful)
British juries are about as intelligent as American juries, however British judges are not political appointments and so don't have to grandstand to keep their jobs.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Next time her kid gets locked out, she can catch pneumonia.
Piss off the little girl and you could be even more fucked now that her mom has shown her what's possible.
Re:I can only assume (Score:5, Insightful)
Or the jury were raging retards.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you sure about that? Sentencing someone to 18 months in prison for a mistakenly sent text?
I think I would temper the condescending tone a bit. The reason why kids get driven to events in the US is largely because they are far away and too close together to school or other obligations to make it on public transportation and/or a bike in time. There is also the problem of early sunsets in the winter time (when school is in session) where a lot of sports events are held after dark making riding a bike a bit dangerous. We also aren't crammed into boxes living assholes to elbows from each other like a lot of people are in Europe..
Besides, this is all pointless because the coach probably asked for a contact number and the kids gave him their cell numbers instead of the home phone or their parent's cell number. At least with the kid's number, they didn't have to worry about if Dad or Mom was taking them or if they were riding with someone else or whatever could happen when you can't contact someone directly.
Re:Daily Mail fail (Score:5, Insightful)
IANAL, but: intent may be irrelevant in this case. The current fashion is to make so-called "strict liability" laws, especially in the area of "child protection". For example, in the UK, if there are child-porn pictures on your computer, then you are guily of an offence, regardless of how they got there. I don't know, but the same may apply in this case.
The beauty of this is that it allows the police to arrest people like this unfortunate person and put them in jail without all the tedious arguments about whether they intended do harm or whether it was an accident. A jury will be told "if he sent the message then he is guilty, even if it was a mistake".
Indeed, it is even possible for a policeman to force someone to do something against their will, and then arrest them for it. Google the case of "Winzar (1983)" if you don't believe me.
Re:FTA... (Score:2, Insightful)
"You assume ultra-conservatives must be better?"
What nonsensical drivel, that doesn't even make any sense. I don't assume anything, I merely pointed out that her political leaning is largely irrelevant unless you're trying to naively attack one political leaning.
"You mortals are so narrow-minded"
This statement implies you are immortal. Tell me, do you also wear a superman cape whilst you run round in public too?
"There must be balance."
Agreed, but this is precisely why your mention of her political leaning is stupid. There are many liberals who would disagree with her, so what was the point in pointing out she was a liberal as if it was liberalism that was part the reason for her being stupid?
"The being funny part is what the psycho on TV was arguing he wasn't doing."
Sure, and I don't defend that, but attack her on her ineptitude, not her political leaning else you simply appear just as partisan as she is.
Re:I can only assume (Score:5, Insightful)
Leaving the question hanging in the air: why was he convicted at all? This should have been thrown out and laughed at the moment someone tried to press charges.
Re:I can only assume (Score:5, Insightful)
Cop 1 to Cop 2: "So, uh, do you think this should be prosecuted?"
Cop 1, thinking: "Damn, I hope Joe doesn't think I'm a pedo for suggesting this might not be worthy of prosecution."
Cop 2, thinking: "Damn, Pete will think I'm a pedo if I don't say yes."
Cop 1 and Cop 2 in nervous unison, "Uh, yeah."
CPS agent being passed the case from Pete and Joe, thinking: "Well, this must be an honest mistake, right? But I'll lose my job if it's not."
Prosecutor to jury, "You're a pedophile lover if you don't think that sending gross text messages to children is wrong."
Juror 1 to others, "Uh, yeah, I'm not a pedo, so I can't condone this behavior."
Juror 4, thinking: "If I say no they'll all think I'm a pedo. Gotta vote guilty. Maybe someone else will stand up for him."
Judge, thinking: "If I don't throw the book at a convicted pedo I'll look like an asshole..."
Appeals judge, thinking: "Well, Judge Green and a jury found him guilty. I'll look like a pedo asshole if I don't uphold. At least I can give him a break and suspend the sentence, right?"
Slashdot: "How the hell could this possibly happen? Obviously an honest mistake, right?"
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Next time the kid gets locked out call the cops about a neglected child locked out of her home.
Re:I can only assume (Score:3, Insightful)
For the country that really made the enlightenment a reality
Do you mean France or the US? Because in Britain both the monarch and the clergy are still in power.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can only assume (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet he was found guilty meaning the jury obviously felt there was enough evidence to convict.
You can't suggest there is a more simple explanation when it suits you and ignore it where it doesn't.
The most simple explanation in this situation was that he was in fact trying to groom the kids and that the jury felt there was enough evidence to that fact to convict, hence why he was convicted for it.
So you're really suggesting that someone came up with the bizarre plan of texting every single person they know to attempt to "groom the kids" on a mere hope that it would work? Seriously? What's the best case (for him) scenario here? It works, the gets the girls but then has to explain the mistake over and over again to everyone he knows and likely hearing about it for years after?
That's simpler to believe than he accidentally sent it to everyone when meaning to send it to one person? Really?!
While admittedly not knowing if they do this in UK courts, a far simpler explanation is that the judge explained the law to the jury in such a manner that it invalidated the explanation of the accused (sending such a message to a sub-legal girl is illegal no matter what for instance) and they convicted on that alone.
Either that or this guy just came up with the most complicated method to attempt to contact young girls for sex ever. Since they were in his swimming class, wouldn't it be a million times easier to just talk to them in private sometime there? With no evidence laying around?
Re:I can only assume (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there's the question of why he had 13 and 14 year old girls' in his blackberry.
Why not? I have more than a dozen phone numbers for 13-14 year old girls in my cellphone. They are my daughter's friends, and I occasionally carpool them home from school, or need to find them at a mall, or whatever.
Then there's the question of why a 13 or 14 year old even has a phone
So they can call people. My daughter has had her own cell phone since she was eight. In addition to the convenience, it is a matter of safety. If she is ever lost or in an uncomfortable situation, Dad is just a button push away. She is not allowed to leave the house without it. Why would any 13 or 14 year old not have a cell phone?
Re:I can only assume (Score:4, Insightful)
What the people in positions of power do have very little correspondence with what they *should* do.
We have kids here in the US getting put on the sex offender registry for creation and distribution of child pornography because their boy/girlfriends sent them naked pictures of each other. And the judges and prosecuting attorneys feel that this is a perfectly rational, reasonable thing to do -- to destroy these kids' lives before they're even out of high school to so that they can be protected from themselves.
An appeal to the authority of the judge isn't a terribly convincing argument.
--Jeremy
Re:I can only assume (Score:4, Insightful)
Lynching is a form of communication. If someone dies, even myseriously, or simply disappears, there is no specific message sent. Plausible denability is preserved, and ambiguity remains. A lynching sends a very explicit message from a community regarding some perceived threat.
Re:I can only assume (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can only assume (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly? Whenever the topic comes up and I defend innocence until proven guilty or that convicted sex offenders should be allowed to live a life where they are not constantly persecuted I /do/ worry that others will see me as defending the pedos and vilify me for it.