POCD and Legality (18M)

I originally made a post speaking on my experiences with POCD, but since then I have developed a new fear.

(this is hard to post but I will give it a go)


I have been working on dealing with for the past 2 months what I have believed to be OCD, but in large part due to researching laws surrounding cartoon porn. I have developed a feeling of true hopelessness.
I always made sure when I viewed cartoon pornography that the characters depicted were always the same age or older than me. I have been doing this since I was 12. I largely came to terms with my actions within my teen years since I was techinically a minor within the UK. However, I realised that some of the characters I jacked off to when I was 18, were below the age of 18. Under UK law this technically means that I viewed underage cartoon characters which would categorise me as an offender in the UK. I cannot deal with this on a moral level, since I have never had the desire to harm a real life child, and In the cartoon porn that I consumed, I believe that I thought the characters were 18, but I am even beginning to doubt myself on that front believing that I am truly evil for doing this and deserve nothing more in life.
I thought I was making good progress with my OCD, but now I feel right back at Day 1. I cannot bear with the thought that I may have even unitentionally broken the law, but I have begun to doubt my character. Convinced that I must have known one of these characters was 16. I just cannot live with myself anymore.
I dont feel like a deserve remorse for what I have done as a teenager and even what I have done as a young adult. I just feel irredeemable.
I never intented to break the law, and have always thought that if the character was in my "age bracket" (around only 2 years younger than myself) that It was okay. But now that I realise the responsibility I bear as an adult, I genuily cannot live with myself.

I don't often find myself moving a post from OCD, but in this case, Remorse seems a better fit.

hopeful221 wrote:But now that I realise the responsibility I bear as an adult, I genuily cannot live with myself.

Yes, you can.

Not much choice about it.

If you're going to beat yourself up for unintentionally breaking the law, then get ready for a lifetime of it. It was said a good twenty years ago that the average American committed three felonies A DAY. Freedom certainly hasn't been restored in that time, and y'all have it worse than us. So basically if you live and breathe, chances are you're breaking some law or regulation. And that can't be helped.

As for as morality, the only person injured by this, is yourself. From a practical standpoint, you've hurt no one. You viewed some dodgy cartoon porn that may or may not have been technically illegal. You're not even 100% sure.

Even if you have proof that some of the drawings are underage, I argue that since you have no real world pedophile tendencies, then no harm, no foul. They're drawings- you can't even argue you indirectly harmed the person whose photos were placed online, because they're not real people. You regret it far more than I think it deserves, which makes you far from being a monster.

Don't do it again. If it's really that important- then resolve to stay away from it. That is the beginning and end of it. We all have to live with iffy actions and poor decisions. If this is the worst thing you'll ever have done, you'll be in a lot better shape than a lot of people.

My life is chock full of regrets, and when I die, I expect to be judged on a lot of them- I feel pretty confident that any 'bating I might have done, to any cartoons that depict underage characters-no real victim involved- is going to be pretty far down on the list, objectively. There are simply too many bigger fish to fry in the average person's life.

If you're going to be the kind to beat yourself up over things- and I am- then you need to start picking and choosing what to beat yourself up over. I try to limit mine to things that actually harmed real living beings.

I signed up to this board to reply. I think Snaga is a wonderful person from reading through the board and think they are right about this as well.

I have a very similar interest, it is OCD, and a fear of legal proceedings. I had broken a real law as a 14 year old and was upset about it for a long time, for a ton of reasons. But the reason I was upset had nothing to do with the harm done but actually to do with what the legal consequences could be if all of the pieces were put into place to be charged with a crime. Essentially, as in your case, no harm was done to anyone. I do live in the US and understand there are differences, but in the UK laws are generally much less severe than the US. Here, your life can be completely ruined in the case someone decides to charge you with a crime.

I spent hours researching cases, laws, especially juvenile laws, cases of which are all hidden from the public, meaning I have even less information to go on. The reality is that there are thousands of laws, more than anyone could ever know or even be reasonably expected to follow. Even worse, many laws have no intent requirement, meaning they can charge you whether you did it on purpose or by accident. While this type of thing happens, it does so very rarely.

I have personally had the exact same type of concern as you, since underage cartoon porn is also illegal in the United States although on shoddy legal grounds. I never looked for it on purpose either, you can find it without looking for it or even without being on a porn site. If you go to 4chan which I do NOT recommend, they have such content posted daily, apparently with no legal repercussions whatsoever. While I don't endorse looking at porn like that for the aforementioned legal reasons, the reality is that the police don't go after people for this, and if they did, you would probably have to download it to your computer for a charge to happen, and if a charge ever did happen, the punishment would be light.

In this case, I think its a dumb law that was put in place without legislators thinking through how enforceable or fair the law was. On a moral level, it may be a little wrong, and I might see an issue if it were a habitual thing, but I would say its something that you would stop doing, and move on from without guilt. There is no victim to this type of content, so the person being arrested becomes the only victim.

A real concern I have for you, having OCD myself, is that your mind will find something else to latch on to when you get over this issue. You have to understand that it is OCD telling you these lies, it isn't about this issue, it could be anything and OCD will bend reality to make you look like a bad person.

AFK22 wrote:You have to understand that it is OCD telling you these lies, it isn't about this issue, it could be anything and OCD will bend reality to make you look like a bad person.

^^ That.

And welcome to the forums, AFK....