The Tanner scale, child porn and a Government run Amok

Last edited Sun Sep 9, 2012, 11:48 AM - Edit history (5)

In the 1960s a British pediatrician named Tanner published a table of traits of sexual maturation in males and females scaled from 1-5, moving from pre-pubescent to mature. It is what anyone would expect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanner_scale

(Wiki has a diagram with drawings showing the various stages. I am not posting it here, but go check it out and see whether the female stage IV is obviously a child, and the female stage V obviously an adult.)

For instance...

Tanner III
breast begins to become more elevated, and extends beyond the borders of the areola, which continues to widen but remains in contour with surrounding breast (11.5-13)
Tanner IV
increased breast size and elevation; areola and papilla form a secondary mound projecting from the contour of the surrounding breast (13-15)Tanner V
breast reaches final adult size; areola returns to contour of the surrounding breast, with a projecting central papilla. (15+)

Tanner stage IV refers to the aerola rising above the contour of the breast. Adolescent girls tend to have "puffy nipples" where the aerola protrudes somewhat. Over time that usually flattens down, but not for everyone. There is a lot of variation in breasts and some women have "puffy nipples" for a long time, or even forever—particular if they haven't had children.

On the Tanner scale, "puffy nipples" are identified as typical in girls 13-15, and less typical as they mature.

Similarly, the Tanner scale identifies typical development of pubic hair. For instance:

Tanner IV
adult-like hair quality, extending across pubis but sparing medial thighs (13–15)
Tanner V
hair extends to medial surface of the thighs (15+)

That is, again, what is typical in British children (the topic of Tanner's work). In males and females public hair typically starts right above the genitalia and then becomes fuller and eventually reaches the inner thigh area. Of course, not everybody has pubic hair on their inner thigh, and some people have pubic hair on their inner thigh at 11 years old. Everyone is different. Different people are more or less hirsute, and develop at a different pace. Saying that pubic hair on the thigh is a trait of those 15+ is an average.

Tanner, back when he was alive, stated quite plainly that the Tanner scale could not be used to determine age. It is population averages of traits, and not everyone reaches the Tanner norms of "maturity" at any age.

But, amazingly, the United States Government has used the Tanner scale in prosecutions to try to convince juries that young women who have small breasts with protruding nipples are scientifically certain to be underage. This is the type of practice the state can use for ages until it blows up, which this did last year.

(Remember the west coast case there the prosecutor had kids testifying that most adults in town were engaged in Stanic rituals featuring child abuse? It didn't come unraveled until the prosecutor got to somebody with money who was able to hire a lawyer, and then the whole thing blew up. But the prosecuter had already gotten at least four guilty pleas for crimes that we know for a fact did not happen. It is easy to pressure people into taking a plea bargin for something they didn't do, if they have no maney believe they have no chance in the system either way.)


Using the Tanner scale is arguably sensible for stage I. It gives some scientific backing to common sense that a small child with no sexual development whatsoever is likely, an arguably beyond a reasonable doubt, to be under 18. A photo of a prepubescent child is unlikely to be a slow-developing adult. A small boy with no development whatsoever is very probably under 18, though he might be 9 or he might be 15. Both are under 18, so that's fine. (From High School gym class I can attest that there a wide range of development and some boys at 16 appear to be distinctly pre-pubescent.)

But to use a table of typical breast development or whether a girl has pubic hair on her inner thigh to argue that a given female is scientifically proved be 14 rather than 18 is utterly crazy. (And I immagine that anyone who was in a high schoool girls gym class can attest to that.)

And any prosecutor who would claim that "puffy nipples" are proof of being underage would be intentionally deceiving the jury. Anyone prosecuting a child porn case is probably aware that there are all sorts of websites and publications featuring countless 1000s of adult women with Tanner Stage IV breasts.

In fact, some folks recently did a study of the run of Playboy centerfolds (all models known to be adults) and found that many Playboy centerfolds would be classified as Stage IV, which to the federal government would mean they were, beyond a reasonable doubt, about 15 years old! This is particularly funny because Playboy has never, ever been a publication devoted to underdeveloped breasts. But Playboy does like protruding adult nipples.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/03/us-child-porn-idUSBRE88202J20120903

But if you show a jury a chart in a medical text that says, "Protruding areola (13-15)" and point to protruding areola in a photo and say, "Science proves..." you may be able to deceive a jury—particularly if the defendent doesn't have the resources to produce ten pediatricians to explain why that is nonsense.

And this brings us to Lupe Fuentes. She is a porn performer who happens the be a small woman. She is well under 5 feet tall and weighs about 80 pounds.

In late 2009 an American went on a trip to Venezuela and purchased a DVD at a flea market of material someone had downloaded from Ms. Fuentes' website. I was titled "Little Lupe the Innocent; Don’t Be Fooled By Her Baby Face," so the item was not purporting to be of someone underage, but quite the opposite. (Since the DVD was a bootleg of material from Ms. Fuentes website it probably lacked the stock 18 U.S.C. 2257 language about everyone being 18 that American adult DVDs all have, but that labeling requirement applies to the producer of the DVD, not the purchaser.) He had it in his luggage when he re-entered the USA. He was arrested at customs and held in jail for two months without bail. He was eventually given the opportunity for bail.

Fortunately for him, his public defender (!) had taken the extraordinary step of googling "Little Lupe" which led to a website called... are you sitting down, because this is a shocker... littlelupe.com, and also to Ms. Fuentes Myspace page. How's that for some Perry Mason stuff? He googled the name of the movie.

Here's her facebook, which is SFW. http://www.facebook.com/TherealLupeFuentes

Her website states "All models depicted are at least 18 years old at the time photos and videos were taken" and has the proper link to the 18 U.S.C. 2257 Record-Keeping Requirements Compliance statement, which tells you who to contact to look at her birth certificate.

So a federal prosecutor charged somebody with child-porn without making any attempt whatsoever to ascertain the age of the performer. A lot of times images of child abuse are untraceable, of course. But this was not an old polaroid in a shoebox. This was material from a commercial website, and easily identifiable as such in the space of mere seconds.

But it gets worse.

The public defender showed the prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenifer Yois Hernandez-Vega, the web site and gave her the age verification contact information, and even put her on the phone with Ms. Fuentes, but she prosecuted anyway because she thought she could make a persuasive case to the jury that this woman she knew to have a passport showing that she had been 19 in the video was underage, based entirely on her appearance. (And perhaps because Ms. Fuentes lived in Spain, so was unlikely to appear, and the defendent had no money. And yes, a plea bargain from an innocent man is a "win" for these people because it requires pleading guilty so the defendent can never effectively challenge it.)