ROCHESTER, Minn. — The Minnnesota State University Mankato football coach accused of making pornographic videos said he is relieved the charges were dismissed Friday. Todd Hoffner, 46, was charged with two felony counts in August for videos he made of his three young children. Now Hoffner wants his coaching job back…. The coach was accused of using his university-issued cellphone to make pornographic videos of his three children, then all under the age of 9. In a hearing last month, Hoffner said the children asked him to record a skit they had rehearsed for him while taking a bath. He said he didn’t think there was anything inappropriate about recording them.
The beautiful thing about the technology available today is that we have all manner of means at our disposal with which to chronicle the growth of our children. When I was a child, there were cameras, most of which were unwieldy and cumbersome. Today, whenever one of our kids does something cute and worth remembering, all we need to do is grab our cell phone. We can record the moment in an instant and move on. The one thing most of us never do is wonder if and/or how those seemingly innocent images might be used against us.
Todd Hoffner evidently had no reason to expect that the seemingly innocent act of capturing a skit his children performed while taking a bath would result in a criminal child pornography indictment. This is what happens when our legitimate and necessary desire to protect children is used by an overzealous prosecutor who can’t and/or won’t discern between sexual exploitation and a father’s moment with his children.
Hoffner, the football coach at Minnesota State University- Mankato, recorded 102 seconds of his children naked in a bathtub. The recording was evidently made at the request of his children. Hoffner did what any of us likely would have done- he grabbed his phone and recorded the skit his children has been rehearsing. That he did so on a university-issued cell phone probably didn’t seem inappropriate…and there’s no reason it should have been considered inappropriate.
A one-minute video created on June 26 showed [Hoffner’s] three children, one boy and two girls, with their backs to the camera and covered by towels, the complaint said. They drop the towels and turn toward the camera, exposing themselves. The boy allegedly fondles himself and the girls allegedly bend over and expose their anuses to the camera.
A much shorter video showed the girls dancing naked before the boy enters wearing only a football helmet, according to the complaint. The third video, about two minutes long, allegedly shows one of girls being woken at night by a male and told to go to the bathroom. After the girl gets up, the camera focuses in on the back side of her underwear, the complaint said.
Perhaps the downside of technology is that we now have license to record virtually aspect of life, from the truly mundane to the precious and memorable. It also means that, where children are involved, one person’s innocent childhood memory is another’s horrific example of child sexual exploitation. That it took a judge to draw the line is as sad as it is indicative of our “Ready! Fire! Aim!” culture.
It is private, family speech of a most uniquely personal kind which the state can neither inhibit nor sanction.
Well, duh. We already live in a culture which doesn’t allow teachers to hug their students out of a fear that such tender human contact may blossom into something of an inappropriate and/or sexual nature. While I understand and recognize the need to protect children, it would appear that we’ve lost all sense of context.
Because 102 seconds of video were misinterpreted by someone unable to discern the difference between appropriate and inappropriate, Todd Hoffner’s reputation was besmirched. Where does he go to get that back? To add insult to injury, the attorney responsible for prosecuting Hoffner stands by his actions and interpretation of the video. Perhaps that’s what happened when an ambitious, law-and-order prosecutor is bent on making a name for themselves and is too full of himself to add that he’s made a huge mistake.
I’m not about to defend legitimate cases of child sexual exploitation. People who engage in that sort of sick self-gratification deserve to be put away for a very long time. That said, an argument can and should be made for context and perspective, neither of which seemed to have been present in the prosecution of Todd Hoffner. When your standards of reasonableness and appropriateness are so low that a father’s video of his children taking a bath is considered pornographic, you need to find another line of work.
