The evidence doesn't support the verdict of him being a predatory paedophile. The charges doesn't support the view that he's a predatory paedophile. It's just that the tag of paedo is thrown around so freely and stupidly.



So that's the stupid point you were stupidly trying to make.



If you say so. I'll just leave it for others to judge.

People distance themselves from man labelled as vile paedo?

Who'd have thought that would happen?

I'd have thought companies would have been rushing in to sign endorsement deals.

twitter/"I don't give a flying one about your injunction" blog rumours gaining momentum about a certain celeb.

Just search "elm guest house kitty" on twitter.

Had a search about the Elm Guest House. Found a website that had a list of names that the BBC supposedly "shouldn't be ignoring."

On the website they had the name of Harvey Proctor and said he was a "well known convicted paedo".

Harvey Proctor was convicted of having sex with male prostitutes between the ages of 17 and 21. At that time the gay AOC was 21. That doesn't make him a paedo.

Do people even know what a paedophile is?

Well, I'm guessing that "schoolboy punishment rituals" where the rent boys were made to dress in shorts and be punished for imaginary classroom offences ticks a number of boxes, though.

It was never argued in court that he was a predatory offender, in fact the judge accepted that his offences were opportunistic rather than predatory.

As for being labelled a paedophile - how would you describe someone who uses indecent images of children for sexual gratification and who had a sexual relationship with an underage girl ?

Again, lets be correct about this as this is how uneducated mob justice starts - there was no evidence presented in court to suggest that he used indecent images of children for sexual gratification and the evidence that was gathered during investigation was not used simply because it would not have proved such a charge - newspapers have a lot to answer for in their court reporting.

But pretty much every newspaper and TV report paints him as a vile, predatory paedophile.



The police or CPS said that Harris had some "child porn" on his computer which they had seized while doing the Yewtree investigations.

Jerry Chicken has highlighted some of the concerns about that before. I would add that if they were serious images worthy of conviction then they'd have made it into the court and he would have been done for the pictures. I think that the police or CPS knew there was no case for the pictures so that's why it never made it into court. But it's that extra bit of mud that they can smear him with. I know I'm pretty much alone in this in thinking the whole trial was a ridiculous sham, but I do think there must be some other people in Britain who read about the trial and think it doesn't hold water. Making up BS after the trial about pictures of kids on his computer seems to be like an extra layer of mud they can put on his name. They're never going to have back up this claim though. We'll never know if there is any truth to the claim. But it's on public record and will be repeated.

As for what a paeodophile is. I'm not educated in the law (or anything really) and I have a further disavantage that a lot of my life has been spent in the US which is a slightly different culture. There's also medical definition of paedophile and then legal definitions. So there are different ways of defining a paedophile. But the basic term of paedophile is a person who has a sexual attraction to children, especially pre-pubescent children. There are different ages which escalate any offences, I think the ages are 11, then 13, then there's the legal age of consent which is 16.

IMO the public hatred and vilification of paedophiles is at an extreme level and completely at odds with how men (and let's not ignore we're mainly discussing men here) actually are. There is an almost violent level of hatred to anyone who can even be slightly linked with any offences even at the borders of legality (which is where I think Harris is). If somebody can be successfully labelled as a paedo then it's throw away the key time, castrate them, hope they suffer in jail before they're killed type of mentality.

As to whether Harris had a sexual relationship with his daughters friend when she was under age. He says the sexual relationship started when she was 18 and carried on for a decade after. She alleges he abused her on holiday when she was 13, continued to abuse her on several occasions until she was 19. There doesn't seem to have been either an acknowledgement or denial of the consensual adult relationship. I've said before that I think Harris is wrong, wrong, wrong for having any type of relationship with his daughters friend, but this aspect of the case is highly troubling. Her version of events doesn't ring true to me but I guess there will be psychologists who say that an abused person could continue into adulthood with the situation between them as she claims. It just seems really unlikely to me.

explains a lot of your opinions on various subjects

The CPS prosecuting barrister used the information in her speech in court at the sentencing hearing, even naming the websites used to download the pictures from. Just as the defence can put forward good mitigating points such as charity work etc so the prosecution are entitled to refer to other aggravating points. I doubt they would have been referred to in open court as an aggravating factor if there was much doubt over the validity of them.

And then they dropped the evidence like a hot potato without giving the defence a chance to say "prove the age of the girls in those 30 photos" it is quite alarming just how much conjecture is allowed in these historic allegation trials.

Just so everyone is clear I'm not defending Harris or what he has been convicted of, but what we see now in the press is a desperate search for some padding out of the detail rather than sticking to the facts of the case - 33 photos of a pornographic nature were found on his PC but none of them involved young children and no evidence could be offered as to whether the girls were underage in terms of British law, those are the facts but the fable will be spread by a media desperate for some salacious gossip that child porn was found.

The news media are not reliable enough to report on cases such as this.

That's not how I understood it. What they said was they were not going to proceed with charges as it was not in the public interest as it would have had no effect on the overall sentence. The matter was allowed to lie on file until after the trial, it was only after conviction that the CPS decided not to charge with further offences. Had he been found not guilty he may well have been charged with the indecent images.

Easier said than done which is why some newspapers carried the story on Friday and named the web sites, they are non UK sites involving what was believed to be eastern european girls who, whilst looking to be teenagers may or may not have been under age, they made a point in court of suggesting that the names of the sites meant that the girls were under age but of course that is no sort of evidence at all - sum total of which is that he has been convicted on various degrees of indecent assaults and not child porn.

Not yet anyway.

Harris was charged with the 4 indecent images charges in September 2013. The dates to which the images were made, which simply means viewed, is in the last couple of years.

The sites were commercial porn sites. The CPS knows that they need to verify the ages of the "children". They didn't do it. IMO because they know damned well that these were actually women pretending to be teen girls and knew they weren't child porn images. I am guessing here, but I wouldn't be surprised if the CPS included these charges in with the others to pad their weak case, knowing that the pictures would never get into court, but it's that extra bit of mud to sling.

The fact that these pictures made it into the closing arguments just shows what a sorry excuse for a trial it has been. The 3 year gap between alleged crime dates, bringing the issue of pics in closing arguments that have not been brought before the court, pretty much all all the case involving his daughters friend would have been thrown out of any sensible court in Britain.

During the trial there was new evidence offered by a member of the public used to virtually prove a case (which should have been used to throw a case out). As a result of that we had the introduction of a new defence witness of Sue Cook, who tweeted that she was involved in Star Games and she had no clue where she was either.

IMO we've got a ridiculous situation where twitter and the public are invading the court rooms for a ridiculous trial by media scenario. The absolute shoddy cases presented by the CPS reminds me of times when anyone with an Irish accent could spend decades in prison simply because the cops and state needed to catch someone.