A CANADIAN Supreme Court judge ruled on Tuesday that a man
who wrote about children having sex with adults was not guilty of
possessing pornographic texts because the stories had artistic
merit.
But the Supreme Court Judge also ruled against retired
bureaucrat John Robin Sharpe on two counts, saying he was guilty of
possession of child pornography for various photographs of boys in
sexual poses.
Sharpe (68) was charged under the federal child pornography law
in 1996 with possession and intent to distribute.
Since then, he has challenged the federal law on child
pornography, saying it was too vague and unreasonably restrictive
of freedom of expression as protected under Canada’s Constitutional
Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
In a January 2001 ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the
1993 federal law prohibiting possession of child pornography, but
made two exceptions, including self-authored text materials that
have artistic merit and are intended for private use.
”The Supreme Court of Canada … decided that any objectively
established artistic value, however small, will suffice to support
this defence. I find that there is some objectively established
artistic value to Boyabuse. The second defence therefore succeeds,”
the judge, Supreme Court Justice Duncan Shaw, said in his ruling.
Sharpe, who is widely recognised in Canada for challenging the
nation’s definition of child pornography, will be sentenced on the
two remaining possession counts on May 2.
”They have an extremely broad and inclusive definition of child
pornography … and yet at the same time they provide a very
generous artistic merit defence,” Sharpe told reporters following
the ruling.
”In a sense the artistic merit defence is almost that it makes a
mockery of the main thrust of the law,” he said.
Sharpe’s lawyer, Paul Burstein, told the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation that he was unsure whether or not the government would
appeal the judge’s decision that his writing, which describes
torture scenes involving children, had artistic merit.- Sapa-AFP