Kieth's Angry Scottish guy charged with Child P0rn! Arrr!

[The Chameleon]

Beer ad actor faces porn charges

Robert Norman Smith

A 40-year-old Toronto comic better known as the obnoxious Scot who berates the bartender and pub patrons in television commercials for Alexander Keith’s India Pale Ale has been charged with possessing child pornography and making it available over the Internet.

Robert Norman Smith, 40, was charged yesterday after detectives from the Toronto police child exploitation section searched his home on a warrant Tuesday. He was charged with two counts of possession of child pornography and one count of making available child pornography.

Det. Const. Eduardo Dizon said the charges stem from an ongoing undercover investigation that has already resulted in charges against another man.

Police allege that a preliminary forensic investigation of computers has found more than a thousand electronic files, including movies and still images, and that the collection was available to others online.

Some of the images involve children as young as a year old, Dizon said. Police want to talk to anyone familiar with Smith or his activities.

Dizon said the images are graphic in nature, “to the extent that the average person walking on the street would turn away immediately.â€

Smith, who toured briefly with the Second City comedy troupe in the late 1990s, is well known as the iconic, unruly Scot with a thick accent, kilt and white woollen sweater in the advertisements for a Nova Scotia brewery.

In the commercials, he berates a pub patron as a “spilly talker†for spilling precious ale and tries to incite an uprising when the bartender runs out. One critic described the character as a boorish cross between William “Braveheart†and Trainspotting bar brawler Begbie.

In a more recent ad, the Keith’s character attempts to revive bottles of his favourite beer from a snowbank outside a house party.

Officials with Labatt Breweries, which owns Alexander Keith’s India Pale Ale, did not return calls to the Star yesterday. Smith, who is married and the father of two young boys, studied in York University’s theatre department.

Earlier this month, as part of the same investigation, police laid similar charges against Robert Alexander Hagon, 22 of Toronto.

torstar news service

metronews.ca/news_detail.asp?id=14086

[color:green]------------------------------------

This is not cool. So sad. I mean what's the deal, it seems every week someone else is exposed as a child porn freak or diddler. Is it that more a re being caught with the advent of technology or is it that there are more child porn freaks out there these days.

Edited February 16, 2006 by Guest

[MarcO]

I'd say the relative availability of child porn on the internet has created more than a few connoiseurs of said filth.

Pigs.

[Guest Low Roller]

Speaking of which, where's Lazlo nowadays anyways?

[MarcO]

picking up a case of Keiths's, presumably.

[larry_llama]

'one-year-olds, Dude...'

[CyberHippie]

Hey the new MarcO looks like he means business!!

Just say no to kiddie porn...

[arcane]

I'm inclined to wait for more information. I see the potential for a lot of spin here.

The authorities have gotten themselves in a twist before, by accusing someone of child pornography simply for having pictures of his own naked baby. Remember the Wal-Mart case? Internationally speaking, remember the Pete Townshend case?

Doesn't this article say this guy has two young sons? Pictures of your kids in the bathtub sure sound incriminating when it's phrased as "children as young as a year old."

Child pornography is a deplorable industry, but false accusations of child abuse feed an equally deplorable industry.

Did you know that the annual number of child abuse investigations in Ontario has exceeded the annual birth rate? Did you know that the Ontario Children's Aid Societies are funded based on the number of children they apprehend? At $71 per day per child, his two young boys would get the Toronto CAS or Catholic CAS (cross-reference that with the Baldwin starvation case) $142 per day. Roughly $60 of that would be paid out for their foster care.

Even the Ontario ombudsman is incensed at the lack of accountability in the child protection industry. Right now, if you're falsely accused of child abuse, you have no recourse within the system. Simply put, you lose you children, and no evidence is required beyond an accusation. The laws (and case laws) are written in such a way that judges are pressured to side with CASs. The Minister is refusing to amend legislation under the current Bill 210 to allow the Ombudsman to investigate accusations of abuse perpetrated by CAS workers. Basically, parents have no protection from accusations while CAS workers have nearly bulletproof protection, regardless of the validity of the accusations.

From a press release dated 15 Feb 2006 ( http://www.ombudsman.on.ca/PR_details.asp?PRID=220 ): '"We are the only province in Canada where there is no independent oversight of our child protection system, which is in private hands," [Ombudsman Andre] Marin said in an interview.'

Also from that release: '"There is absolutely no oversight mechanism, yet we cut these private agencies $1.2 billion a year with no checks and balances on the administrative decisions they make," [Marin] said.'

False accusations are part of a big business. When someone can make an accusation and no evidence is required to make it stick (and that is the way the child protection laws are written), it degrades the relevance of true child protection concerns. The way the Ontario laws are written and applied (and the application is the important thing), *every* parent and caregiver can be seen as a child abuser.

In short, the notion of "innocent until proven guilty" simply does not exist where allegations of child abuse are concerned. The accused is expected to prove innocence. How can you be expected to prove something you didn't do? If you can't, and a child protection worker says you're guilty, chances are that a judge will assume you're guilty. That's the way the laws are written--rather than taking any chance that a parent might be abusive, the courts will force a child into foster care. Without independent oversight of the child protection system, the rampant child abuse in foster care is pretty much hidden. The courts assume that the CASs do their jobs and there is no abuse in the system.

In this case, the fact that this is a police investigation rather than a CAS one indicates that there is some merit to it. The police have some oversight and public accountability. Still, I'm cautious for two reasons: This guy is a public figure, hence he's a good attention-getter; and the system is unanswerable for false accusations of child abuse.

If the charges are dropped, the guy still has to live with the stigma of an accusation of child abuse without so much as an apology.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not defending anyone here, and I'm certainly -not- in favour of child pornography. What I *am* saying is that there is so much incompetence in the system that the coverups are getting blatant (cross-reference with a recent scandal about parents of autistic children having to relinquish custody as a condition of getting help for their children), the financial incentives for seizing children are significant, and the government is steadfast in its determination to avoid public accountability. The number of child protection investigations has become ridiculous because every rumour has become a "child protection concern."

Maybe the guy is guilty, maybe not.

[Velvet]

Hooray for Arcane!

[ollie]

Thanks Arcane.

[MarcO]

no, not a hooray for Arcane.

Robert Norman Smith, 40, was charged on Tuesday with two counts of possessing child pornography and one count of making child pornography available on the Internet after police officers searched a Toronto residence.

Investigators found more than 1,000 electronic files on a computer containing child pornography images and videos, Detective Constable Eduardo Dizon of the Toronto Police child exploitation section said yesterday.

Globe & Mail

that's a lot of photos of his young children in the bathtub for the family scrapbook.

Edited February 16, 2006 by Guest

[Cully]

This is almost as disturbing as..

The movie KIDS!!

[bouche]

I'm very afraid of the scenario that if your computer isn't properly secured and it gets hacked, hackers setup a server on it and begin sharing illegal stuff, YOU would have a very hard time proving your innocence.

Either way with Mr.Keith, innocent or not, he's probalby never goign to get a job like that again.

[d_rawk]

Good point, Bouche. People don't realize how easy it is for their computers to get "0wned".

[ollie]

no, not a hooray for Arcane.

Yes, hooray for Arcane. She provided an excellent point of view. I don't think she exonerated Smith or anything like that.

[AD]

Hooray for everything!!

[Cully]

[arcane]

that's a lot of photos of his young children in the bathtub for the family scrapbook.

And as I said, the charges could have merit. Or not. We haven't been given enough information to say for sure. Right now we're playing armchair judge, and we're playing with limited material on the field.

One of the ways that people get nailed with child abuse that they didn't commit: Put out enough just enough information--preferably vague and sweeping--to condemn someone, and suppress any details that might mitigate or counter the allegations.

I'm not saying that the guy isn't guilty, because frankly, I can't tell. That's the point. This article was phrased in the same manner as a false allegation designed to stick by virtue of its kneejerk emotional impact. Unfortunately, this has become acceptable practice--even common practice--to the child protection system. Worse, the system has reason to condone it and is actively trying to prevent any means of external accountability for its actions (as is evident in statements from the Ontario Association of Children's Aid Societies, which represents 52 of the 53 CASs in Ontario--I can dig up the references upon request).

The bottom line is that its easy to make someone look guilty of child abuse and condemn them, and it's damned near impossible to counter or correct a false allegation.

If this guy is guilty, then prosecute him to the full extent of the law.

I should point out that even if he's exonerated of all charges in a court of law, the CAS could force him into family court during the criminal proceedings and remove his children. I suspect they will. Regardless of the outcome of such a family law case, the CAS could put him on a child abuse register. I've certainly heard of cases in which that has happened, under the pretense that the CAS has a higher standard than the court. CASs don't like losing cases, and some workers tend to get vindictive about it as it reflects on their compentence. Some of them seem to take great pride in their ability to "take down" parents, so much so that the scoring is more important than the truth. The children, well, they get lost in the wash. If the government cared, they'd listen to the children being abused by the child protection system. They don't.

[Velvet]

Hooray, even if just to remind us that folks are innocent until proven guilty.

[MarcO]

Police allege that more than 1,000 electronic files, including pictures and movies, of "prepubescent children engaged in sexual activity" were found on a computer. Some of the images - showing children having vaginal, anal and oral sex with adults - involve girls and boys as young as one year old.

canada.com

Are we still playing with "limited material on the field"? Is this information "vague and sweeping"?

non-hooray.

[d_rawk]

Well, he has been charged, not convicted.

I'd put my money on 'guilty' (a lot of it, actually, if anyone is willing to take that offer up), but then I'd just be betting ...

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

The bottom line is that its easy to make someone look guilty of child abuse and condemn them, and it's damned near impossible to counter or correct a false allegation.

High-tech witch-hunt age, in other words. We have slipped increasingly into a guilty-until-proven-innocent time. It's probably hard to find anyone completely innocent of anything in the eyes of the law (except, of course, for Dick Cheney).

This stuff has put daycare workers and teachers in a bit of a bind - what do you do with kids who show up with bruises, that might have been innocently caused?

And then there's the question of settling grudges. There's no shortage of cases from the medieval witch-hunts of tavern-keepers getting put before the committee on the flimsiest of accusations, just because as tavern-keepers they were privy to lots of people's secrets and were in someone's eyes better off dead.

I'm looking forward to that CBC I special on surveillance on Sunday morning.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Are we still playing with "limited material on the field"? Is this information "vague and sweeping"?

I do think with you that something desperately needs to be done. The problem is when not enough is done beyond just identifying someone who may or may not be innocent. If it turns out the guy has, say, run off printed copies of this shit, then that should make their work easier, and he should be duly disembowelled.

[Barry White]

People, this is not the kind of love Barry was talkin' about!

[Velvet]

Police allege that more than 1,000 electronic files, including pictures and movies, of "prepubescent children engaged in sexual activity" were found on a computer. Some of the images - showing children having vaginal, anal and oral sex with adults - involve girls and boys as young as one year old.

canada.com

Are we still playing with "limited material on the field"? Is this information "vague and sweeping"?

non-hooray.

So, he's guilty then?

[bradm]

No, he's not guilty. But MarcO's point is important: we're not talking about a few photos of the guy's kids in the bathtub, these are (alleged to be) unambiguously sexual images of children involved in sexual activity (so there was an actual crime committed when the photos were taken), and there are a lot of them.

arcane makes a lot of valid points, but I think the situation with the accused is different from the kind she's talking about. He was arrested as part of a criminal investigation, that also nabbed another actor (who apparently used to appear on Polkadot Door), rather than having had his children taken away by an overeager CAS worker.

Since there shouldn't be any dispute as to the nature of the images (e.g., as there would be with bathtub photos of his kids), I think the main question is whether he consciously and willingly downloaded them (and shared them).

Aloha,

Brad