Pro-pedophile lobby group to be disbanded

[Beau]

I moved it.

 

[Gwenllian]

I actually am kind of shocked by the supreme court decision. It usually is a highly valued ideal is modern democracies that the state doesn't interfere or prevent the forming, of peaceful law abiding groups who's values it disagrees with. This ruling seems to go against that. With the same logic, they could ban advocacy/lobby groups that advocate the repeal of smoking bans in restaurants and bars.

I think, what should have been done, is to prove just 1 instance this group encourages/abetted/aided someone to commit a criminal act against a child. If the police spent any resources on this I suspect there is examples to find. Then I think they could have brought charges against the organization. Instead, how I take the above is the Court decided to argue the limitation of freedom of speech to Dutch values.

the rhetoric: "the organization should be banned because the protection of children should weigh more heavily than freedom of expression" I think is completely off base because it implies the group is harming children, but then they should have made criminal charges. It seems at one point these were made, but the group was found not culpable of "social disruption" i.e encouraging the breaking of law.

I think the good news, is not so much this ruling, but the change in culture in the last 30 years. I think since the lawsuits against the Church, the Sandusky scandal, the Savile scandal, many people are more likely to see what this group for what it is and to reject the arguments. This group exists in a fantasy world, and I think the public is much more discerning of reality today in this regard. I know in the UK there was similar groups decades ago, but there is hardly tolerance any more for such a group in the public sphere.

If this group in Belgium, did make national attention in 2007, you would think they would have targets on their backs, and I would have thought they would have disbanded already. So, I see perhaps it was a public outcry that pressured the Supreme Court to take the case, and rule the way they did.

Apparently, according to the treaty of Lanzarote an association can be banned if a director has been indicted for possession of child porn. The former chair of Martijn Ad van den Berg has been serving time for possession. Seven more members and members of the board of directors have been indicted. Martijn had published "nude photographs" of kids on their website, but removed them after cyber attacks. One can hardly speak of a " peaceful law abiding" group and this is an understatement.
The Secretary of Security and Justice Opstelten didn't think it was necessary to prosecute this association at the time. Opstelten has also done his best to protect his former employee Demmink, who is accused of child sex abuse.

Added: According to a Dutch article in 'Elsevier' Martijn has been wanting to create a subculture. The writer of that article also wrote that normalising ideas about sex with children/child sex abuse has no place in a civilised society.
Really, I can't see how this has anything to do with freedom of speech.

 

[Mrs.Tigersoap]

I think, what should have been done, is to prove just 1 instance this group encourages/abetted/aided someone to commit a criminal act against a child. If the police spent any resources on this I suspect there is examples to find. Then I think they could have brought charges against the organization. Instead, how I take the above is the Court decided to argue the limitation of freedom of speech to Dutch values.

"the organization should be banned because the protection of children should weigh more heavily than freedom of expression"

Added: According to a Dutch article in 'Elsevier' Martijn has been wanting to create a subculture. The writer of that article also wrote that normalising ideas about sex with children/child sex abuse has no place in a civilised society.
Really, I can't see how this has anything to do with freedom of speech.

I think the problem lies in the fact that the choice of words - 'freedom of expression' - is rather unfortunate. Perhaps it is indeed a mistake-made-on-purpose by the Court for ulterior nefarious purposes, I don't know. Because in no instance can paedophilia and the expression thereof (having sex with children) fall under the 'freedom of expression' category. This definition is exactly what paedophiles want, however.

The aim of paedophiles and the groups that represent them is to mainstream. They would love nothing better that no one bats an eyelid when you talk about paedophilia, that the man in the street thinks that paedophilia is 'just another sexual orientation'. It isn't. Their aim is to lift the 'taboo' around children's sexual relationships. Basically, they are just trying to make it easy for them to abuse kids. And the lobby group was certainly helping them in that respect.

Paedophiles' interests are detrimental to children's rights and well-being (to put it mildly). Their aim is not to regroup to seek therapy (and if they claim so, they are usually lying), their aim is to defend their interests which are linked one way or another to abusing children, which is against the law. Usually when a group of people is formed in order to carry out illegal or criminal offences (as many paedophiles' activities are), it's called a criminal association. And these are illegal.



Edit: grammar

 

[Gwenllian]

I think the problem lies in the fact that the choice of words - 'freedom of expression' - is rather unfortunate. Perhaps it is indeed a mistake-made-on-purpose by the Court for ulterior nefarious purposes, I don't know. Because in no instance can paedophilia and the expression thereof (having sex with children) fall under the 'freedom of expression' category. This definition is exactly what paedophiles want, however.

TBH, I was surprised when the Supreme Court decided to ban this pedogroup.
I did a bit of reading these past few days and earlier the Court of Appeal had stated that Dutch society was resilient and flexible enough in dealing with this group. What kind of statement is that? Is that up to a court to decide? What does that have to do with the law? The Court also stated that the group did not cause threatening societal disruption. I couldn't help thinking that this Court was compromised and I had expected the Supreme Court to rule in the same way.

I think this statement -"the organization should be banned because the protection of children should weigh more heavily than freedom of expression"- is an oversimplification of the verdict which can be read here ;):

_http://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:HR:2014:948

It is not bad, not bad at all.