John Grisham apologized for statements he made to the Telegraph about the United States court system that has apparently run rampant over the past few decades with its harsh punishment of “white collar criminals” charged for watching child pornography.
Grisham claimed to have “no sympathy for real pedophiles,” but approached the issue by defending curious and potentially intoxicated 60-year-old men that reportedly wouldn’t lay a finger on an adolescent.
“We have prisons now filled with guys my age — sixty-year-old white men in prison who’ve never harmed anybody, would never touch a child,” he said. “But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn.”
The novelist then went into depth about his Canadian friend who was imprisoned for three years after he downloaded a video of teenage girls that apparently “was stupid, but it wasn’t 10-year-old boys. He didn’t touch anything… We’ve gone nuts with this incarceration.”
Grisham issued an online apology this morning for his statements regarding the moral structure of pedophilia.
He wrote:
Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure, or who in any way participates in child pornography–online or otherwise–should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
My comments… were in no way intended to show sympathy for those convicted of sex crimes, especially the sexual molestation of children. I can think of nothing more despicable. I regret having made these comments, and apologize to all.
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