Breast-Feeding Now Considered Kiddie Porn ?!?

[Nosmo King]

1-Hour Arrest



1-Hour Arrest
When does a snapshot of a mother breast-feeding her child become kiddie porn? Ask the Richardson police.
BY THOMAS KOROSEC
[email protected]


Mark Graham

Jacqueline Mercado, a 33-year-old Peruvian immigrant, took a few photos of her young children at bath time. A week later, Richardson police were rummaging through her house for kiddie porn, and a state child welfare worker came to take her kids away.




The service was fast, the judgments even hastier. Never did Jacqueline Mercado imagine that four rolls of film dropped off at an Eckerd Drugs one-hour photo lab near her home would turn her life inside out, threaten to send her to jail and prompt the state to take away her kids.
For Mercado and her family, last fall was a happy time, one they wanted to record and save in the venerable tradition of the family photo. Johnny Fernandez, Mercado's boyfriend, had just emigrated from Lima, Peru, ending a yearlong separation, and on top of that, it was their son's first birthday.

The photographs they took over several days in late October included pictures of Fernandez reunited with the family at their modest home in suburban Richardson. Others captured their 1-year-old son Rodrigo, and 4-year-old Pablizio, from Mercado's earlier marriage, playing in a neighborhood park. Using the camera's timer, they also took three snapshots of themselves, naked in their bed. They arranged their bodies in ways that showed less flesh than most freeway billboards.

A half-dozen others recorded the kids at bath time. Fernandez took several photos of the boys "playing around," naked and innocent, with the oldest flashing a big smile. Mercado, who says she often bathed with the kids, is in several of the shots unclothed from the waist up, holding her arm modestly across her bare chest.

In one--the photo that would threaten to send Mercado and her boyfriend to prison--the infant Rodrigo is suckling her left breast.

After Mercado dropped off the film for processing, a technician viewed the images and decided they were "suspicious," according to a police report. As required under Texas law, he immediately contacted local police. Mercado says that when she went to pick up her pictures, the clerk told her there would be a delay, and then only returned three of the four sets of prints.

To Richardson police, who arrived at the store that afternoon and apparently made up their minds from the content of the pictures alone, this was nothing short of a felony case of child pornography. "We thought they contained sexuality," says Sergeant Danny Martin, a Richardson police spokesman, explaining why two Richardson police detectives began pursuing a criminal case. "If you saw the photos, you'd know what I mean."

With nothing else to support their contention that the photos were related to sex or sexual gratification, the police and the Dallas County District Attorney's Office presented the photos to a grand jury in January and came away with indictments against Mercado and Fernandez for "sexual performance of a child," a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The charges centered on a single photo, the breast-feeding shot. Fernandez and Mercado say they took it--although the child had ceased breast-feeding--to memorialize that stage of their baby's development.

"We wanted to see if he would take it, and he did," says Mercado, explaining through an interpreter that it was a spur-of-the moment notion to which they gave little thought. "Johnny never saw the child breast-feeding, so this was for memories. For us."

Mercado, who brushed back strands of brown hair from her reddened eyes as she spoke, has a story that has not changed from the start. She told the Richardson police officer who responded to the store's call that she had always taken pictures of her children nude, and that it wasn't uncommon in her native Peru to do so. They were innocent baby pictures, taken for the family's benefit, she said.

Five days later, when a state child welfare investigator and two detectives arrived at her house, Mercado again insisted that she saw nothing wrong with the photos. She allowed the group to search the couple's cramped room, and the detectives went through everything, including their photo albums, apparently looking for more evidence of child porn. They found nothing.

"We fought so hard to come to this country," says Mercado, a 33-year-old who was a nurse in Peru and aspires to become licensed in the United States one day. "For this to happen is unbelievable."

Andrew Chatham, one of three lawyers working on behalf of Mercado and her boyfriend, says it is difficult to imagine a clearer case of over-reaching by police and prosecutors. "Their theory, which is supported by nothing, is that these pictures were taken to satisfy the boyfriend's sexual desires. These aren't pictures that were peddled on the open market. This wasn't on someone's Web site. This is just a mother who took a roll of film and left it off at Eckerd's. The state used them to arrest her, indict her for a felony and take away her kids."

On November 13, the day Richardson police "tossed" or searched Mercado's house, a caseworker with the Dallas County Child Protective Services Unit of the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services took custody of the children and recommended to a family judge that they be placed in a foster home. The caseworker's notes state that a supervisor, acting on the content of the photos alone, decided that "the children needed to be removed from their mother's care."

Her hard-rubbed eyes drooping with worry, Mercado says she told the caseworker, "Please don't take our children. We love our children."

In the months since, one of the couple's most onerous problems has been resolved. In late March, a week after the Dallas Observer asked District Attorney Bill Hill about the case, he ordered the criminal charges against both parents dropped. "It has some gray areas to it, but it doesn't rise to the level of a crime," Hill said. He said justice comes from more than isolating facts and interpreting them in a way to make them narrowly fit into a criminal statute.

Still, at press time, child welfare authorities continue to maintain control of the boys, even though a lawyer appointed to represent them says he believes they should go home. In its latest legal filing, the state said it would not consent to releasing the boys until the couple jumps through more hoops, including a lie-detector test they must take at their own expense.

"They ripped out my heart," Mercado says. "Even if we get them back, I don't know how we'll recover from what's been done."

"How could they accuse me of doing something with our own children?" says Fernandez, a lanky 35-year-old who worked as a hospital technician in Peru before embarking on his disastrous start in Texas. "How can they accuse us of being something we're not?"

It wasn't difficult at all.

[Libertine]

This is ridiculous.

[mastamindz]

Shit pretty soon having a picture of a fetus in the womb will be illegal.

[delia]

I haven't heard such a stupid thing in a while.

[Fletch XXX]

you guys missed the first threads on this?

this wasnt pics of some mother holding her baby breast feeding.

she was on her knees holding her big mexican tits out while her son was standing up in front her just sucking away. like she just knelt down, flashed her tits and he started sucking.

it surely did NOT look like norturing and surely looked like a kid with his head between 2 melons licking away. a hand on each tit turning knobs.

id say if shes guilty, theyll prove so, otherwise, i dont care if some photo clerk gets suspicious about photos, i would too if they looked and deserved it.

[C_U_Next_Tuesday]

i couldnt even hold my last child when i breast fed him he was so fucking huge..i sometimes had to lay him on the bed and lean over him to feed him.....fuck you pervs for taking breastfeeding to a sick level. . babys always grab the boobs while feeding and some people feed their kids till they are 2 or 3..only in our society is it deemed child porn..we the white bred feed the kids by the bottle and do what society thinks is right...sorta makes me sick...and lets not mention the trauma the children have gone through being away from their parents for months.....why the hell arent the fbi and law going after the real criminals of child porn and the people that beat and really abuse their children. the HRS is evil..

I had my kids taken one time when my littlest broke his arm jumping from the bunk bed...the hrs and law tried to tell the courts that i snapped his little arm in half and i did drugs and drank ..they even tried to get my kids to admit to stuff that wastn true and threatened to take them to foster care if they didnt comply... thanks to the goddesses and one fantastic pro bono lawyer to step up to my defense ..the HRS got investigated and my kids returned.....i never wish that on anyone..its scary shit....

[mule]

See sig

[FetishTemptress]

Its sad indeed when Breast feeding your child is looked at or thought of in a dirty way. That really makes me so upset when the most beautiful and natural thing for a woman to do is breastfeed her child is looked at in a perverted way.
I've even taken pics of my kids playing in the tub, what parent hasnt??
Or running around the house naked, with you chasing after them??
Yes, children do grab at the breasts when they are nursing, its just like holding a bottle...
and sometimes they do it for security reasons
FT**

[Fletch XXX]

i think its obvious children hold the tits when they suck, sometimes you people take shit so literal its pathetic.

do any of you have the roll of pics developed? you seen ALL the pics? I know I sure havent. maybe they look more suspicious than you think? who knows, youre on a mesage board not a jury.

if the pics looked suspicious and were questionable, would you rather the clerk hold his mouth and go home thinking he might have just let a woman continue in her actions?

i dont care how many kids you havehad, or how often you let kids suck your nipples.

But i know if that was on my conscience, I would report it, and i wouldnt give a fuck what some mom on a message board thought either.

id rather report it than not.

[FetishTemptress]

Well apparently the authorities didnt think much of it either..all charges were dropped...and if we're going to get into child welfare I wouldnt put a grain of salt into much of what they thought either...
and heres a good reason why...
http://channels.netscape.com/ns/news.../140342756.htm

FT**

[Rip]

all breast feeding should be illegal, it should be illegal for any child to touch a woman's breast, ie; hand/mouth even if it's his/her own mother. Children should not be bathed or washed by their parents, babies should have to wash themselves, even if they have dirty diapers. It should be illegal for male doctors to deliver a female newborn, likewise it should be illegal for female doctors/nurses to deliver a male baby, and therto inspect the genitals to see if they are normal and thus photogrpahs of any such activities should be illegal, even if it is deeemed necessary to teach prospective health care professionals

it should be illegal for children to get enemas, even if it is for cancer detection. All male female genital surgery whos patients are under 18 should be illegal

all quicky photo marts should be staffed by child protection workers and fbi agents

[C_U_Next_Tuesday]

Originally posted by Rip
all breast feeding should be illegal, it should be illegal for any child to touch a woman's breast, ie; hand/mouth even if it's his/her own mother. Children should not be bathed or washed by their parents, babies should have to wash themselves, even if they have dirty diapers. It should be illegal for male doctors to deliver a female newborn, likewise it should be illegal for female doctors/nurses to deliver a male baby, and therto inspect the genitals to see if they are normal and thus photogrpahs of any such activities should be illegal, even if it is deeemed necessary to teach prospective health care professionals

it should be illegal for children to get enemas, even if it is for cancer detection. All male female genital surgery whos patients are under 18 should be illegal

all quicky photo marts should be staffed by child protection workers and fbi agents

i love sarcastic humor..thank you


those without children have never have the fear of the HRS and their evil ways. fletch,I hope you never work for a photo developer..cause i would personally bury your ass if you would call the heat on me for no reason and make me lose my kids..geesh ..

[stocktrader23]

Originally posted by Fletch XXX
i think its obvious children hold the tits when they suck, sometimes you people take shit so literal its pathetic.

do any of you have the roll of pics developed? you seen ALL the pics? I know I sure havent. maybe they look more suspicious than you think? who knows, youre on a mesage board not a jury.

if the pics looked suspicious and were questionable, would you rather the clerk hold his mouth and go home thinking he might have just let a woman continue in her actions?

i dont care how many kids you havehad, or how often you let kids suck your nipples.

But i know if that was on my conscience, I would report it, and i wouldnt give a fuck what some mom on a message board thought either.

id rather report it than not.

Fuck that little $6 an hour photo clerk. Fuck the stupid ass police and the prosecutors. If a fucking newspaper hadn't brought this to light the DA would have pressed charges and those people would likely be in jail. I haven't seen these photos specifically but I have seen some from other similar cases and it's pure bullshit. This fucking country is so screwy it's pathetic. If a woman wanted to kneel down and flop out her "giant Mexican tits" in public to breastfeed you and 20 other fuckwits would be bitching. How in the hell can the most natural thing on earth be so fucking taboo now.

[PornoDoggy]

Originally posted by punkworld
This is ridiculous.

No ... it's Texas. The folks down there insist there is a difference.

[TheJimmy]

Originally posted by stocktrader23


....How in the hell can the most natural thing on earth be so fucking taboo now.

<img src="http://this-administration.blewme.com/consumeobey.gif">

[foe]

welcome to america

[stocktrader23]

Originally posted by TheJimmy




<img src="http://this-administration.blewme.com/consumeobey.gif">

[FetishTemptress]

Originally posted by stocktrader23


Fuck that little $6 an hour photo clerk. Fuck the stupid ass police and the prosecutors. If a fucking newspaper hadn't brought this to light the DA would have pressed charges and those people would likely be in jail. I haven't seen these photos specifically but I have seen some from other similar cases and it's pure bullshit. This fucking country is so screwy it's pathetic. If a woman wanted to kneel down and flop out her "giant Mexican tits" in public to breastfeed you and 20 other fuckwits would be bitching. How in the hell can the most natural thing on earth be so fucking taboo now.

They did press charges and later dropped them but, she still didnt have her kids back

FT*