Amra Pajalic

I heard about this story on a morning show this morning and it’s completely freaked me out. Parents took bathtime photos of their three girls and submitted the memory stick, which had 177 images on it including images of their holiday, to Wal-Mart for processing. The Wal-Mart employee processing the photos interpreted 4 of the 7 bathtime photos as child pornography as there was “portion or outline or genitalia.”

The parents are now suing Wal-Mart as they lost $75,000 in legal fees, the mother a teacher was suspended from her job and then reinstated when they were cleared, they were placed on a sex-offender register and then removed, and lost custody of their children for a month. You can read about it here and here.

This is such an awful case. While children should be protected and someone who suspects child abuse and pornography should speak up, this story just illustrates the danger about lack of common-sense. These photos being interpreted as child pornography seems to be an issue of perception about what is perversion. Especially since the photos were within a series of family snaps and were in a context where nudity is required.

Like most parents I have photos of my daughter in the bath, having a shower with each of us, and playing unclothed. Who is to say that someone won’t look at these innocent photos as perversion because my daughter is unclothed, or the ones in the shower with each of us as offensive.

These parents will have their lives forever blighted by these accusations and I don’t even want to think about how this will impact on their day to day parenting. To have this awful thought in their head whenever taking a photograph or interacting with your child would be heartbreaking, and as a parent I find this scary. It makes me re-think all the photos I’ve taken over the past 8 months and how anyone could misinterpret anything.