DALLAS – A Dallas-area woman and a Panhandle prosecutor want the State of Texas to change existing obscenity law to criminalize the actions of parents who show images of explicit sexuality to their children.Current Texas law exempts parents and guardians from prosecution when they expose their children to “harmful material” that “appeals to the prurient interest” and is “utterly without redeeming social value for minors.” Reportedly, the intent of the law was to allow parents and legal guardians ample latitude to educate their children about the facts of life in ways they thought most appropriate. Texans historically have been devoted to avoiding governmental interference in parental rights.
“Our discussion was about the invasion of privacy into the home” and “being a parent and wanting to teach my child about sex,” former state Sen. Tati Santiesteban [D-El Paso], who led the subcommittee that wrote the 1973 legislation, told the Dallas Morning News. Santiesteban is now a criminal defense lawyer. “Who in the hell is the government to come and tell me what I can show to my children?”
Crystal Buckner said that attitude may have been fine in the 1970s, but in today’s world it doesn’t hold parents accountable enough. The 30-year-old stay-at-home mom recently received court-ordered temporary custody of her 7-, 8- and 9-year-old daughters after she accused her ex-husband of exposing the two older girls to hardcore internet porn in the middle of the night while he was intoxicated. She told investigators the girls mentioned their father’s behavior to a counselor and said their father asked them to keep the incident secret.
Buckner wants her ex jailed, but according to police and prosecutors in Amarillo, where he lives, state law tied their hands.
When police informed Buckner her ex-husband had committed no crime, “I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’” she told the Associated Press. “There’s no way. This can’t be right.”
She now is working with the Rockwall, Texas-based Lillian Smith Family Violence Foundation to get the law changed.
Randall County District Attorney James Farren agrees with Buckner. It was his office that could find no reason to prosecute the ex-husband, although he said he’d be perfectly willing to revisit the case if he has misinterpreted the law. Farren has asked Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and the legislature to review the matter.
“The statute in question has defenses built in,” Farren told ConnectAmarillo.com. “One defense is, for instance, if a school were to display a video that was for sex education purposes, and it absolutely was for that purpose, obviously that’s a defense. The second defense is that if a parent chooses to show apparently any pornographic material to their children, then it’s a defense; they’re immune from prosecution. We can file the case, but we’re just going to lose…. I don’t think that’s necessarily what the legislators intended, but that’s what [the law] says.”
Farren also said even in conservative communities that detest the intrusion of big government, some things simply have to be codified for the protection of the innocent.
“The government should and does respect the right of parents to raise their children, but that doesn’t mean a parent can do anything they want to their child,” he told ConnectAmarillo.com. “Obviously, the government can step in when parents are acting in a way that is sufficiently detrimental to the mental health and the physical health of children.
“I don’t want government too intrusive, and I certainly don’t want government intruding into the family more than necessary,” he added. “But at the same time, I don’t want to live in a society where parents can murder their children, and then there’s nothing the government can do because it’s ‘family,’ so the government can’t step in. We have to find some balance between those two extremes, but I don’t think very many people would believe that it’s appropriate to show true pornographic material to their children simply because they’re the parent and they choose to do that — just because they’re twisted enough, they want to watch it, that they then want to subject their children to it.”
Republicans in the state legislature are lining up behind the cause, Farren said. State Sen. Bob Deuell [R-Greenville], a physician, has promised to push for stiffer penalties and tighter controls on parental conduct when the legislature reconvenes in 2011, but he admitted change won’t be easy to accomplish. Although sexual material parents show their children must have legitimate educational value, not everyone agrees on the educational legitimacy of any given image.
As things stand now, violations of the code are considered Class A misdemeanors punishable by as much as one year in jail. According to Farren, parents are exempt from any charges. Abbott’s office has not commented, though it received Farren’s request in mid-September.
Buckner said she will not rest until the law is changed. She is seeking as much publicity as she can get for her cause by handing out fliers, writing legislators and law enforcement officials and speaking to as many people as she can in person.
“I want people to know about this,” she told the AP. “I want parents to be mad and say, ‘No!’ I understand in the ’70s everybody wanted the government to stay out of their homes. I don’t want to stop parents from having that right to teach sex education, but there’s a big difference and there’s a line you should not cross when teaching.”
