Battle of the (Click)Bait: Underage Content Vs. Youthful Doll

The headline is alarming: “Worcester Man Found With Child-Like Sex Doll Sentenced on Porn Charges.”

On January 4, NBC Boston 10 News reported that James Stoddard of Worcester, MA had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing illegal media content that showed underage persons engaged in sexual behaviors/themes — what’s frequently and erroneously referred to as “child pornography.” Stoddard also “owned a child-like sex doll,” which police found during the initial relevant raid of his apartment in April of 2018.

MassLive.com’s coverage of the same sentencing was a bit more in-depth.

Their piece — titled “James Stoddard, Worcester man found with child-like ‘love doll,’ sentenced to 10 years on child pornography charge” — reported that, in addition to the prison sentence, Stoddard has also been ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $3,000 to a victim identified in the content he possessed. He also must serve ten years of supervised release after his prison sentence is completed.

Stoddard was originally charged in June, following the April raid. According to MassLive, authorities began investigating Stoddard in February of last year when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a tip from Google about illegal content being uploaded. This, however, was not Stoddard’s first brush with crimes of this nature. He was listed as a Level 1 sex offender after being convicted in 2015 of possessing sexually explicit material of a minor in Maine.

According to NBC Boston 10 News, Stoddard apologized to his family and the victims, saying he has dealt with a severe addiction to amphetamines.

Here’s the thing… Stoddard is clearly a vile human. He also is a person who seems to have a series of mental health issues that are not being dealt with, neither prior to his original conviction nor in the interim between 2015 and today. Most likely, he will not get any better during the next ten years.

Rather than focusing on Stoddard’s recidivism or the potential role of drug use (which certainly impacts many in today’s world), media angles in — per usual — on the most sensational aspects of the case. Now certainly, Stoddard’s current conviction is due directly to crimes related to illegal media, which obviously makes sense, language issues aside. The invocation of a “child-like ‘love doll’” however speaks more to the networks’ desire for clicks than any real crime, especially when the reference is in the headlines.

Image via the Maine Sex Offender Registry.