If you've ever found yourself investigating the concept of class privilege or perhaps arguing about it with the upper class white men in your life, have I got a story for you. Brace yourself though because it’s a rough one. Last week, 18-year-old Eton College student Andrew Picard was allow to use his mother’s maiden name while on trial for child pornography in order to protect his family’s reputation.
Last year, detectives discovered that Picard owned 1,185 indecent images of children, as well as videos of a three-year-old being raped and children being forced to have sex with dogs. So all of that is objectively fucked, but guess what? Picard was spared jail time and instead given an 18-month suspension sentence for ten counts of possessing child pornography.
Andrew Picard’s real name is Andrew Boeckman, and it was recently discovered that the UK courts allowed him to use his mother’s maiden name in order to protect his wealthy family’s reputation. Yes, in this completely fucked-up situation, the thing that the courts went to great lengths to protect was the reputation of some rich people. Doesn’t really seem like priorities are in order here.
Picard’s father is Phillip J. Boeckman, is an extremely wealthy lawyer, whose clients include Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan. During the trial, the judge said, "Your family didn’t deserve that (suffering) but it is a consequence of this sort of offending. Inevitably your privileged background and where you were going to school added a degree of frissance to the reporting." So let me get this straight. The court found it neccessary to protect this kid from unfair media coverage he might experience due to his class privilege? Can we all take a minute and acknowledge how insane that is??
According to an article from Evolve Politics, "Allowing a defendant to use a false name is only acceptable with agreement from the court, and is usually reserved to protect identities of family members in extreme danger." Not sure humiliation qualifies as extreme danger. Class privilege strikes again.
Image via GGE.CO.JP
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