Acclaimed author, youth baseball philanthropist and front-row UVA basketball fan John Grisham is under fire today for controversial comments he made to a British tabloid defending a friend who got caught up in a child porn download sting.
“We’ve got prisons now filled with guys my age, 60-year-old white men, in prison, who have never harmed anyone. Who would never touch a child, but they got online one night, started surfing around, probably had too much to drink whatever and pushed the wrong buttons, and went too far and went into child porn or whatever,” Grisham said in an interview with The Telegraph.
Grisham brought up the case of an unnamed friend that he said was nabbed in an online sting run by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The friend, he said, went to prison for three years.
“We’ve gone nuts with this incarceration,” Grisham said.
At one point the best-selling author did try to walk his comments back a bit, saying he has “no sympathy for real pedophiles – god please lock those people up.”
“But so many of these guys do not deserve harsh prison sentences,” Grisham said.
Update: 1:12 p.m. Statement from John Grisham: “Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure, or who in any way participates in child pornography—online or otherwise—should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.
“My comments made two days ago during an interview with the British newspaper “The Telegraph” were in no way intended to show sympathy for those convicted of sex crimes, especially the sexual molestation of children. I can think of nothing more despicable.
“I regret having made these comments, and apologize to all.”
– Item by Chris Graham
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