…your stories could be illegal.
I’ve been following the Poole Case since it began in February.
It interests me because this case is a direct threat to writing fiction, to freedom of expressed thought, and to our very important First Amendment rights.
Basically, the teen wrote some stories that were violent in nature but indisputably fictional. His grandmother thought he needed psychological help, so why she called the police instead of a doctor remains amystery to me. The police decided the boy’s very badly written fiction was grounds for arresting him. While I’m sure some editors thrill to the thought of arrresting authors of poorly written stories, in reality, such an action speaks ill of the police and the country in which this occurs.
There has never been any doubt in anyone’s mind that these stories were works of fiction. This is crucial to remember.
Nevertheless, the police saw these fictional stories as a terroristic threat and arrested the boy on felony charges – for writing fiction. Further investigation in the case didn’t lead to more substantial grounds for their charges or for a better defined charge. Their entire case is built upon some fictional stories.
Yes, I am belaboring the point.
I am appalled that any person, regardless of age, would be arrested for writing fiction, no matter how horribly written it is.
Essentially, the police are saying that any piece of fiction that contains violence and involves a school is a terroristic threat, a felony, even if the school is fictional, the characters are fictional, the violence is fictional. So, SF stories set in the future that involve any space school and alien threats are grounds for arrest and imprisonment. What about writing a fictional story involving schools that were threatened – like the Russian school where the students were held hostage, or the Chinese schools where students were gunned down by the military, or the Iraqi or Israeli schools being bombed now? Had the teen based his story on reality instead pure fantasy, would he be in trouble with the law?
The way I see it, the police over-reacted when the grandmother called them, misinterpreted what she wanted, and now they can’t back down or they’ll lose face. They’d rather lock up a teen, destroy his life, over a short story, than admit they were wrong.
Later information on this case still hasn’t substantiated the police’s position, nor justified the over-reaction of the judges and attorneys in this case. If there were real evidence that the boy had tried to recruit others for his “gang”, they could have upped his charge to conspiracy. If he’d actually made threats against a real school, they could have increased their chances of convicting the boy with real terrorist charges and not “terroristic” charges.
Even the http://www.winchestersun.com/articles/2005/07/15/local_news/news01.txt isn’t convinced the boy did anything really wrong, returning a misdeamenor indictment against him.
I still have a problem with that verdict – all this fuss and punishment over a story?
The implication that any writer can be legally punished, fined, imprisoned, on felony charges, for writing any violent story set in a school or involving anything a school administrator would perceive as vaguely threatening is frightening. Talk about all the problems the writers of the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer would be in. Or J. K. Rowling and her Potter books.
The tragedy of the Poole case is not what the boy wrote, but that any writer can now be prosecuted for any work of fiction, if some person sees it as a threat against a school.
This would be terrible no matter what, but what sort of threat assessment are they using? If it’s this one, that’s been making the rounds of a few schools I know of, then I am even more afraid of our loss of freedoms in this country.
Has the author ever been in anger management classes? I fail to see how this applies to a work of fiction. As I taught my children, fiction is made up and reality is what you have to deal with. Most people can tell the difference between reality and fiction. And some very good authors have been in anger management classes. That has nothing to do with their writing or imagining skills. Did the author ever see a psychologist or psychiatrist before writing the story? Again, not relevant to writing fiction. Was the author on any mood control medications? Quite a few people these days are on prescription mood control drugs. This is so broad a net it will catch practically anybody in it, and therefore is useless in threat analysis of a fictional story. Was the author ever involved in Satanism or other strange religions? And what defines “Satanism” or “strange religions”? Catholicism is seen as a “Strange religion” by the dominionist Christians. Islam is seen as a strange religion by most Christian Americans. Most people see any of a variety of pagan religions as “Strange”. OK, maybe the pagan ones are a bit strange, but a threat? No, that’s stretching it too far and infringing upon another freedom. Was the author ever involved in role playing games, live action or otherwise? Ah, yes, did the author ever attend a Civil War Re-enactment, play in the SCA, go to a SF convention or comic book convention dressed as their favorite character? Has the author ever pretended to be Superman and tied a towel around her neck to leap off chairs? Being involved in role playing games is almost essential for a good author, especially if they write fantasy or SF. At least they didn’t ask if the author had ever written any role playing games. Did the author ever have internet discussions on violence? Well, there are worse places to get information on how to write the violence realistically. As sources go, the internet is pretty harmless for this sort of information exchange. I wonder how they’d feel about the series of books written as resources for mystery writers? Is there any evidence the author was influenced by others or encouraged in violent acts?Now, this one I can see as potentially problematic, but not for a work of fiction.
There is a threat evaluation list I would consider viable, but I’m not writing it on the internet in sort of a “pleading the fifth” move, as I am myself a writer, and very nearly impacted by the difficulties this boy is enduring.
Worse still, the fact that a person could be arrested, charged, and imprisoned over a piece of fiction is terribly disturbing. There are those in positions of authority in our society who are attempting to curtail our fantasies, imagination, and our freedom of expression, and I won’t let it pass without speaking up and protesting.
