The Text Message Typo That Landed a Man In Jail

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."

Something is fishy

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Wait, what?

[aliquis]

Yeah clearly if you know how to contact someone underage you're a pedophile.

Now let the government go through all your contact lists.

Re:Hrm

[hairyfish]

My Bullshit detector went off as soon I read the summary. You can't send a text to all contacts with BB (just checked mine now). The only way to do this is to create a group, add all your contacts, then send a txt to the group. Hardly the sort of thing you would do accidently. Also the Daily Mail is one of those "President Kidnapped by Aliens!" publications. Why we keep getting Daily Mail stories on Slashdot is beyond me. Wake up Slashdot Editors.

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Re:Wait, what?

[artfulshrapnel]

This. Even as an American I had contact with my several of my teachers outside of school. They were role models and sources of advice when I was in school, and friends now that I am an adult. Heck, last time I was in town I had a beer with my old art teacher and we bitched about clients together.

Re:I can only assume

[Xest]

That's not the point, it looks like he really did send them to everyone.

The point is that it offers him plausible deniability as a fishing expedition - send it out and if one of the teen girls replies then he's got what he wanted, if they don't and he gets reported, he can pretend it was all an innocent mistake because hey look, he even sent it to family members, so it must have been unintentional right?

Re:Wait, what?

[Kahlandad]

I've been in a situation just as you describe.

A month or so ago my neighbor's daughter knocked on my door. It was raining and cold and she had been locked out of her house. I have a daughter who does not live with me full time, so I let the neighbor girl in and sent her to my daughter's room to change into dry clothes and hang out until her mom to got home.

An hour or so later her mom arrives home and was very grateful... until she learned that my daughter wasn't living with me that week. My thanks? She called the police. I wasn't arrested or charged with anything, but an officer did arrive to take statements.

Next time her kid gets locked out, she can catch pneumonia.

Re:I can only assume

[flaming error]

Your plausible deniability story sounds possible.

For use as a bizarre story plot in a tv crime drama.

But this is reality, where simpler explanations are more likely explanations. Where people are generally decent and compliant with social norms, and those rare few who aren't try not to broadcast it to everyone they know.

Re:I can only assume

[Stargoat]

Them Englishmen aren't so big on justice either. For the country that really made the enlightenment a reality, the English have very strange notions about what constitutes a free society. Look at the atrocious mess they routinely make out of free speech cases. And then the anti-cosmopolitan mess that is English "justice". As an obvious example, the vile job done to Luis Suarez for using a word in a foreign language that happens to sound like a naughty English word. And even worse, look at the John Terry suspension (4 games for using obvious racially abusive language) in comparison to the Suarez suspension (8 games for speaking in a foreign language using a word that sounds like nigger). In England, the real, systematic, government and media supported racism is against immigrants. The FA and English newspapers make all good men ill.

Re:I can only assume

[tmosley]

I would bet if he had accidentally killed those two girls with his car, he would have gotten less jail time.

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Re:I can only assume

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_Rea [wikipedia.org]>Mens Rea is required for all crimes.

I don't know about the UK, but in the US this is patently untrue. This is a lot of panicked law research suggesting that well over two thirds of our criminal laws now required no intent (aka mens rea) to convict.

Re:I can only assume

[GodfatherofSoul]

We had a rich kid here in town who killed a pedestrian and fled the scene (probably a DUI) and ended up with a month in the slammer.

Re:Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

true story,

young teenage girl standing at the corner going to cross the street with headphones on.
she steps off the curb, and would have been killed.

well-meaning 30-something guy pulls her back from the road a fraction of a second before she gets killed.

girl is grateful, what does the guy get for his good deed?

he was charged with sexual assault, put in jail, and is now marked for the rest of his life as a sex offender.

so as hard as it would be, if I ever was in a situation like that, I'm sorry, you're kid is dead...

Re:Daily Mail fail

[gutnor]

I did google - ended up here [helpwithlawexams.co.uk]. This is scary beyond belief. I don't even know how that can be called justice. I know that is not at the same scale but that certainly put our outrage against some aspect of justice in other countries in perspective.