Japan Today - News - Tokyo teacher fired for uploading dead children's images
According to the bureau's findings, Watanabe uploaded images of children, who died in accidents and natural disasters, which he had obtained from the Internet, onto a website he opened in April 2001. He attached to the images "inappropriate comments that inflict emotional distress on the bereaved families," and kept the images and comments posted even after he moved to the western Tokyo suburban city of Akiruno in April 2006, it said.
Arrested on suspicion of sending images of naked boys by e-mail to visitors of his website in violation of the anti-child pornography law, he was later indicted on the charge, and was also served a fresh arrest warrant over the uploading of deceased children's images in breach of copyright laws.
The board also said it has fired a 24-year-old teacher, effective the same day, for having sex with his junior high school pupil from November to January.
2007 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.
I always thought there was somthing militeristic about the school system.
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He was not convicted apparently. I would not be surprised if they were stretching the definition of child porn and that the images were just of shirtless boys in shorts or something, and they know the case will fail. Not sure about that, but it seems that they are now stretching the copyright law.
The images, at best, belong to the people who took them, not the parents of the subjects of the pictures. If the photographers are not charging for copyright infringement, nor did they file for a clear copyright on the pics, then I DO NOT see a case here. I would think the principal could just order him to take down the web site or be severly fined or fired for not doing so, just like the teacher ordered to play Kimigayo.
Do we live by laws or by the authorities making up the rules as they go along? I think I know the answer to that.
for having sex with his junior high school pupil from November to January.
That's because it wasn't a factor in letting him go. Putting up images of dead children was the factor here. This is Japan, and unfortunatley, there are many sickos in administrative positions, such as the Tokyo Metropolitan's Education Bureau, that don't deem child pornography as a bad thing.
A few years ago a friend of mine was celebrating his birthday and his boss gave him a 'porn' magazine. The magazine was just packed out with pictures of children under the age of 10, wearing swim costumes or naked! My friend was arrested for beating up his boss and charged with assault (since gone back to his home country several years ago), but the boss was not charged with indecent behaviour or anything.
The police didn't deem a magazine with naked children in it as an offence!
We've gone through this argument before on another thread, and while I agree with you that the definition of child porn is problematic, in this guy's case he was caught with photos that he had taken himself, of naked schoolboys getting changed in lockerooms and on field trips.
Whether or not you consider it child-porn is one thing, but I'm sure you will agree it is not really acceptable behaviour for an elementary school teacher to photograph students getting changed without their permission, then sending those photos via email to other people? Context is everything. The Led Zeppelin album "Houses of the Holy" has several naked children on it.
As they are not shown in a sexually explicity manner, its legal even in the U.S. I do.
I most certainly do NOT agree with willy-nilly application of the law however.
It IS strange that the Education Board doesn't consider such behaviour serious enough to warrant any punishment. It is their job to protect kids, not exploit them.
How many kids were harmed by this guy? How many traumatized? How many scarred for life by this guy`s actions?
I think the BOD might have considered these questions and more.
in this guy's case he was caught with photos that he had taken himself, of naked schoolboys getting changed in lockerooms and on field trips.
There are naked pictures of children on the cover of "Houses of the Holy" by Led Zeppelin.
Some would call that art. I dont know in what context he took the pics, but just because some people may find them sexually stimulating does not make them sexual. I dont find pics of feet be stimulating at all, but a foot fetishist would.
And how naked is naked? Japanese people consider shirtless to be naked. I am totally serious.
Until I hear about pictures of genitals, I am going to assume there were none or at least at quite a distance. Certainly food for thought. As others have mentioned, I am not sure that punching the other person was your friend's best option.
As to the photos in your story, since we cannot see them, it is truly hard to comment directly. I would say that things are a lot different now than they were years ago. After all, years ago the age of consent was much younger than it is now.
I am of the opinion that raising it was a good thing and the decrease of child pornography that was much more prevalent years ago is also a good thing. I agree, and I wouldn't consider Houses of the Holy cover pornography. There was a BBC documentary a few years back called The Human Body.
It has scenes of fully naked children/teens, and I wouldn't call that pornography either, though I'm sure there are some people out there who USE it as pornography.
And how naked is naked?
In this case, I do not know, but the police seem to think it was naked enough to warrant an arrest.
I presume they wouldn't act if it was just kids with no tops on, but you never know...
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