This is only relevant to cypherpunks as it involves child porn hysteria and abusive cops... Let me start by saying the attached message from warwick.com is wildly incorrect: * Zona film labs employees did not lead the child away until afterwards. The police grabbed Angeli, beat her, choked her -- while her child was just a few feet away. * The mother flipped when the Cambridge cops said she was going to be locked up and her child taken away. * The lamp was knocked over when the Cambridge cops wrestled her into the back room. * Zona film lab employees willingly participated in this sting operation and willingly lied to Angeli. Last week, I went to Angeli's attorney's office and saw the (unpublished) pictures that the Cambridge cops and Zona thought were "child porn." They're not "child porn" -- any more than the similar photos my grandparents have of me and my cousins naked in a bathtub when we were three years old. I urge you to check out Bob Chatelle's web site at http://world.std.com/~kip/, which says what actually happened with the Angeli case. I've attached an excerpt from his pages below. -Declan Excerpts from internet.cypherpunks: 4-Mar-96 Re: Zona Labs Was: Cambrid.. by news@warwick.com
Ayse Sercan wrote:
At any rate, if I were the mother, and my kid was being led away by a clerk who could have been the very pervert who thought that those nude pictures meant child pornography, I'd certainly do everything in my power to protect my child from such an individual.
That's rediculous. The mother did not flip because Zona led the child away. The mother flipped when asked about the photos. This caused Zona to not want the child to see argument. The mother just has serious problems in general. She feels justified in trashing the place and throwing the lamp, which is why she refused the punishment and took 30 days in jail. She, in the presence of her child, was wrong to get violent. She has a lack of control.
Toni Marie Angeli, for a Harvard photography course, decided to make her four-year-old son Nico the subject of her final class project, The Innocence of a Child's Nudity. After discussing the project with her professor, Angeli began her project with a few shots of Nico and made the fatal mistake of taking her roll of film to Zona Photographic Labs on Rogers Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Zona owners were "alarmed" and called the Cambridge police, who went to Zona, looked at contact sheets prepared by Zona without Angeli's authorization, and decided that the pictures were "gross." Zona and the Cambridge police set up a sting operation, requiring Zona employees to lie, so that the police could come to Zona and confront her about her "pornography" when she came to pick up her negatives. On November 2, Angeli went to Zona, accompanied by Nico and by her husband, Luke D'Ancona. An altercation ensued when Angeli realized why the police were there. Angeli was handcuffed, manhandled into a back room, beaten and choked. During the scuffle a lamp was knocked over, and a picture fell off the wall. A hollow core door was also damaged when Angeli kicked out as she was being escorted to the police van. Angeli was never charged with child pornography, but she was charged with disorderly conduct, malicious destruction of property under $250, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. (The police claimed that Angeli threw the lamp.). Angeli's trial began on January 24, 1996, and a verdict was brought in on January 30. She was acquitted of the assault-and-battery charges, but convicted on the two other counts. The judge sentenced her to pay damages, to 50 hours community service, and to 18 months of probation. Angeli refused to sign the probation contract, stating that she wished to make no admission of guilt. The judge then sentenced her to 30 days at MCI Framingham. We are currently trying to raise money to pay for her appeal.