"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Friday, April 29, 2005

The other day I blogged on a story about pedophiles and Star Trek fans, which quoted an officer stating that all but one of the pedophiles they’ve arrested in the past four years was a die-hard Trekkie.  Apparently that might not have been acurate.

So, I called the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit and spoke to Det. Ian Lamond, who was familiar with the LA Times article.

He claims they were misquoted, or if that figure was given it was done so jokingly. Of course, even if the figure was given jokingly, shouldn’t the Times’ reporter have clarified something that seems rather odd? Shouldn’t her editors have questioned her sources?

Nevertheless, Detective Lamond does claim that a majority of those arrested show “at least a passing interest in Star Trek, if not a strong interest.”

They’ve arrested well over one hundred people over the past four years and Det. Lamond claims they can gauge this interest in Star Trek by the arrestees’ “paraphenalia, books, videotapes and DVDs.” I asked if this wasn’t simply a general interest in science fiction and fantasy, such as Star Wars or Harry Potter or similar. Paraphrasing his answer, he said, while there was sometimes other science fiction and fantasy paraphenalia, Star Trek was the most consistent and when he referred to a majority of the arrestees being Star Trek fans, it was Star Trek specific.

A weird factoid. Nevertheless, it is not correct that “all but one ... in the last four years” was a hard core Star Trek fan.

I don’t think for a second that there is anything in Star Trek that particularly appeals to pedophiles.  But pedophilia requires a high degree of imagination, such as imagining that little children can and will be receptive to sexual advances, that sort of thing.  Nobody gets the idea in their head to molest a child and then immeidately runs out and does it.  The action comes after years of fantasizing and imagining various scenarios involving children.  So it seems to be to be completely reasonable that a large number of these type of criminals would have a passing to strong interest in Star Trek, a show which has always appealed to the imaginative.

I remember reading a book about behavioral psychology and profiling, in which an FBI profiler made the claim that in the early days of profiling they noticed that most serial killers (Ted Bundy, for example) drove Volkswagen Beetles.  There really wasn’t any specific reason for it, in the sense that there was a cause and effect relationship between the two facts.  This could well turn out to be something smiliar. 

(Link via Instapundit.)