Furry artist Mitch Beiro sentenced to prison and probation
Furry artist Mitch Beiro has been sentenced to ten years in prison and lifetime probation, after pleading guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor under fifteen. The charges relate to his arrest in October 2012, following a police investigation into the sharing of child sexual abuse images via peer-to-peer Internet networks.
In December 2011, police detectives in Tucson, Arizona, learned that child pornography was being shared or downloaded to a house next door to where Mitch Beiro was living. They subsequently discovered that Beiro had been using an unsecured wireless network to download the files.
Detectives obtained a search warrant for Beiro's home. When the warrant was served on October 3, 2012, Beiro confessed that they would find "hundreds" of child porn videos and images on his computer. When the case went to court, evidence was given detailing nineteen videos found during a forensic examination of the computer, including some of children who were "barely old enough to walk".
Beiro pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor under fifteen, and was sentenced to ten in years in prison by Judge Michael Cruikshank. After serving his sentence, Beiro will be on lifetime probation. According to court documents, Beiro has never been arrested before, does not use drugs or alcohol, has "serious health issues", and is remorseful. "I welcome treatment of any kind," Beiro told a probation officer. "I want to be a productive member of society."
In the furry fandom, Beiro was an artist whose works were published in Huzzah, Wild, and several other publications. He frequently attended furry conventions, and was a guest of honor at ConFurence 11 (2000). At a joke wedding during ConFurence 12, he married the character Minerva Mink.
About the author
Higgs Raccoon — read stories — contact (login required)a (No longer a Flayrah contributor)
Comments
Well God damn. I'm glad he's going to prison and is at least on lifetime probation.
"including some of children who were "barely old enough to walk""
That literally made me sick.
At least he wants to get better.
At least he realizes his urges are harmful. =/
His life is effectively over. Even if he survives prison, as a registered sex offender no one will hire him, and he will be extremely limited about where he can live. No one will want to associate with him, if only to protect their own reputations. A person can't be 'cured' of being a pedophile any more than someone can be 'cured' of being gay. For whatever reason a person gets wired to be sexually attracted to kids, it's there forever. Some people can resist their wiring, most can't or don't. It may all be moot-- with his poor health and the way other prisoners feel about pedos, wether he'll survive 10 years in prison is iffy.
That's one of the problems with the "justice" system in many countries. It's too focused on retribution rather than rehabilitation. Even if a criminal does try to change his ways the stigma he's given and lack of opportunities often force him back onto the same path. Ironically, people's dislike of criminals winds up creating or perpetuating lives of crime.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
I saw a movie about prison once, too.
Yay, lazy assertions about "wiring" and other things that even people who study them don't agree on.
Stupid posts about sensational topics make us feel better. Let's speculate and gossip next time there's a story like this.
Actual item of interest: Beiro plead guilty.
Are THESE the spotlights we want to cast on fandom members? Not "So-and-So the Fox promoted to senior art director at well-known animation studio" or "Bloggs the Wolf becomes chairman of children's hospital board", but "Pedophile furry artist sent to prison"? How many of these damn articles do we need before we've properly spread the message that those furries are NOT trustworthy people?
We did not cast that spotlight on this particular individual, they did that themselves. I think it is important to show the evils as well as the good (which we do do, more often then ills because they're less common). The last thing we want is to portray ourselves as an institution where nothing can go wrong, where EVERYONE is wonderful and wouldn't take advantage of another, and then try to cover it up when it does (Like the Vatican or Boyscouts). That promotes it as a haven for those who would do ills.
People in any group should know. If you do something wrong, it'll be noticed and it will have an impact. If there are no consequences for ill, ill continues.
If someone thinks that a they'll stay away from any group that has had a pedophile in their ranks they'll have to live on a desert island. There have been child predators of all races, religious affiliations and nationalities. If one doesn't believe their group can have one, they're in for an unpleasant surprise. The sooner people get over this delusion that if one just ignores these issues everyone will like your group better, the faster they can draw attention to them without the fear of "stigma" allowing them to go about.
For example, Bill Mahar is going to blast fun at the Vatican whether they oust their pedophiles or not, so why not just do it and let him laugh about it? At least at the end of the day they would have done something.
At least Higgs kept it to the arrest and trial outcome. With Alan Panda it was once every time a charge was changed or something or other.
BTW: Isn't it sort of selfish to take ownership of the good others do in the group as if it is your own while not taking the bad? The positive stigma of a furry becoming the chairman of a hospital should not be passed to other furries who have just sat on their ass. Same as the label of pedophilia shouldn't be passed because a particular one was arrested for it.
Praise the individual for what the individual accomplished. Shame the individual for the wrongs the individual does. Take not what isn't yours, praise or scorn.
I'm not in favor of whitewashing the fandom, or in overlooking the wrongs people commit. But this is a fandom without publicly known members, advocates, role models, or spokespeople. Until someone respectable does us the favor of being an out-and-proud furry, these convicts become our spokespeople.
Flayrah isn't just our private news site, to warn ourselves about our peers. It's publicly available for everyone to scrutinize. Articles like this one will be linked to by someone who wants to prove a point. Here is an article about someone known to be a furry, and known to be a convicted child porn collector. People who want to prove the opposite point, finding someone known to be a furry, and also a successful, well-mannered member of the community, will have a tougher job finding an article.
I'm sick of our image. And articles like this remind me why our image exists. I want the stigma of being a furry to disappear. The Catholic Church may have its share of cover-ups and pedophilia, but at least there are still people shameless to say that they are pious, church-attending Catholics. We furries hold our breath every time a journalist visits a convention.
This may have been true a decade ago. Today, journalists seem to find plenty of furs to talk to, when they want.
If people are linked here, I'd hope some take the time to read the comments in this and the prior article, in which the full range of the fandom's response may be seen. Those with less of an open mind are unlikely to click the link.
There are out and proud furries, there are certainly ones that are more forward with it then myself. I think pretty much everyone where Kage works knows who he is and what he does during his vacation time. His face is all over the television every time it comes around (that and he goes to so many of them).
The thing is the stigma will never go away entirely. There are those in the media biased against particular groups because the "media" is people, just as fallible as anyone.
If Joe Public comes onto this page sees the article and then goes "well that means furries are all like this guy." then I'll show you a person who didn't get the full story, who didn't scroll down a few ticks to read a few comments. Notice that people are sick of bad things happening in the fandom. Bad things. They consider this a bad thing.
However, they may also read into your comment : "How many of these damn articles--" and they might go "Oh there are more?" or conclude "Oh this is pretty frequent" even though it just feels frequent to you and you were merely expressing that feeling. Ironically your statement could paint the picture that this is common occurence more than the original article did, as well intentioned as it was.
"People who want to prove the opposite point, finding someone known to be a furry, and also a successful, well-mannered member of the community, will have a tougher job finding an article."
Really? That just means you haven't bothered to look. Just go to the Flayrah homepage now. It's mostly reviews, unfortunately, but there is one story about a negative event, this one. In contrast there are two stories showing positive furs. There's the death of Lemonade Coyote who we heard had just finished studying and was working as an EMT. That's a fur who did public furry things and who made a positive contribution. Then we have the Wild Nights newsletter who have a contributor to Rowrbrazzle, one of the early aspects of the furry fandom, who helped do work for Lord of the Rings. I even wrote about a fur being nominated for an award at Comic-Con.
Your image problem isn't real. There are plenty of good furs out there. Your problem is you fixate on the bad things and ignore the good, even looking at the front page of this site contradicts you.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
You're welcome to submit such stories; indeed we happen to have something similar in the queue already. They are less common than you might think because many take pains to avoid associating their real lives with furry fandom.
Articles like this are posted primarily for members of the furry community, who might otherwise be unaware of the situation, not for the benefit of the general public. But you are right, of course – some people do notice:
Furry fandom wins far more respect from others by reporting criminal acts than it would by concealing or belittling them.
Considering the context, I think this is a Sci-Fi Fandom (which is what "Fandom" means in that quote not Furry Fandom) rant showing furries as the example of how things should be handled?
Yes, that was my understanding of the passage.
Reporting criminal acts is good thing.
Sensationalist ambulance-chasing and piggybacking onto criminal acts that have already been reported, not so much.
Up until Beiro was arrested and publicly revealed as a pedophile, he was one of the most respected artists in Furry fandom. He had favorable pages devoted to him on WikiFur, Fur Affinity, and deviantArt. There have been respectable mentions of him in other articles on Furry fandom, such that he was a guest of honor at ConFurence 11 in 2000 and at ZonieCon in 2011 (which was cancelled, but Beiro was still publicized as someone that Furry fandom considered worth being made a guest of honor of at its conventions).
Now Beiro is “outed” as a pedophile – and this is noted prominently throughout Furry fandom. It is updated onto his WikiFur page.
If this had not been done, anyone looking online for information about Beiro could find out that he was a respected member of Furry fandom up to his arrest in October 2012. And after that? There have been many other articles about his exposure that anyone searching would find; The Daily Dot.com news, the Arizona Daily Star, and Tucson News Now. Will a searcher find that this negative news has been ignored by Furry fandom? On the contrary; it has been reported prominently on all Furry news sites, with plenty of commentary that makes it clear that Furry fandom does not approve of such activities, or of deliberately downplaying or ignoring them for the sake of our public image. I would say that Furry fandom has handled this Just Right.
Fred Patten
Minor quibble. You might want to use child molester. Being a paedophile is neither a crime nor reason to impose sanctions on someone while child molestation is. I would highly recommend reading the short piece Paedophilia is not (yet) child abuse. People should not be punished for being born with any specific desire.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
The way Furry fandom has handled this is giving people inside the fandom the impression that this fandom has a higher percentage of pedophiles (or zoophiles, or murderers, or whatever the scandal du jour is) than the general population.
What do you suppose the people outside the fandom think?
Given that I work with plenty of people who are outside the fandom, who know me, they're watching the Ed Kramer thing with Dragoncon, and honestly their words to me are:
"Furry, you guys may be weird, but you have your shit together on kicking out these perverts."
That's what people outside the fandom think.
Mitch Beiro was arrested, not "kicked out."
There's a small, loud minority in this fandom that's been throwing their imaginary weight around since the late 90s unsuccessfully trying to kick out the perverts, but the reality is you can't kick people out of a fandom anyone can join.
Nope. You lose.
He was kicked out of the Tuscon Mob, asked not to attend gatherings in many areas around Arizona.
The Tucson Mob is not the fandom.
And neither are you.
Look, you're a bitter old queen has-been who is clearly jealous that other people are not irrelevant and you ARE.
Everyone KNOWS it, bud. EVERYONE SEES it. But you. You don't seem to get that the fandom isn't yours to pontificate on anymore. You don't get to write your USENET missives and be all squeeky everywhere. We don't find it cute. You don't get to speak for us anymore.
I'm sorry, man, but good god, GET THE FUCK over it.
Hey, I'm just a guy expressing his opinions on the internet like everyone else. I've never claimed to speak for everyone, but apparently you think you do.
But you don't.
Sorry to hear you can't deal with opposing viewpoints without flying into a histrionic all-caps rage. Best of luck with that anger management, pal.
Hahhahahaha
You're hilarious, dog :D
You think I'm angry :D :D :D
Seriously? Like you have that effect on me? Hell, truth is, I'm somewhat between amused that you still think you have that power, sad that you're that deluded, and curious if you get some satisfaction by being critical of something (but not really critical enough to DO anything other than bitch.)
You're not that important, has-been. You don't even RATE. I'm just having fun here :D
Mitch getting arrested makes anything the Tuscon Mob does a hollow victory at best.
Probably makes you feel big to flex your internet muscles but give credit where credit is due. The police stopped Mitch more than anything the Tuscon Mob did.
Looking at all the people here defending a child molester.
Well, I'll be...
Always the 'usual suspects' too.
Good riddance to Bei Robbish.
Yeah, except that nobody suspected that Mitch Beiro was a 'usual suspect' until he was arrested; and until the results of his trial were announced just now, it was still not clear whether Beiro had done anything more than uploading pictures of kiddy porn onto his computer, which may be disgusting but did not make him a public menace. NOW we know that he deserves his sentence; before that, all that the fandom could do was speculate and gossip.
Fred Patten
By "usual suspects" I meant the people *defending* Beiro. It looks like someone on Lulz.net had the exact same thought as well:
http://lulz.net/furi/res/2509984.html#2510035
Isn't it depressing when some folks' behaviour becomes so predictable that even the swamp dregs of Lulz.net can anticipate it?
It's depressing when people give the swamp dregs of Lulz.net credibility.
If you bothered to read my posts you'd see I didn't defend him at all. In fact none of my posts were even about him. One was on the criminal justice system, one was on positive and negative stories on furs and the other was about correct terminology.
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind."
~John Stuart Mill~
Calling out Flayrah's ongoing fascination with putting the worst of the fandom in the spotlight is not "defending" Mitch's actions.
One thing that makes me a bit concerned for the fandom is how often these things seem to pop up. Is it that we're such a close-knit community that these things are more noticed, or do we have an above normal occurrence of child abusers then other subcultures/ fandoms?
As others have mentioned, it only seems like we have an above normal occurrence because Flayrah reports on it more than normal.
GreenReaper will be quick to point out this is because Flayrah's readership wants "hard news", but GreenReaper will also be quick to point out his job is to document these sort of things, not to "make the fandom look good." GreenReaper's previously said the media will find out about these things eventually anyway, so they may as well help them by letting them find out via Flayrah and WikiFur.
What GreenReaper won't mention is that he's very buddy-buddy with groups who love nothing more to make it look like the fandom is full of people like this, and that they support Flayrah because it's the only site that gives them an audience.
The media is going to report on it one way or another. It has, and didn't mention the fandom because it apparently wasn't relevant to the crime. The bottom line is that Mitch Beiro was arrested. Good.
So what's the problem?
The problem is whether people are okay with a headline that says "Tucson Man Arrested For Child Porn", or whether they think it's okay to throw the entire fandom under the bus for the sake of getting more attention and web traffic.
"The problem is whether people are okay with a headline that says "Tucson Man Arrested For Child Porn", or whether they think it's okay to throw the entire fandom under the bus for the sake of getting more attention and web traffic."
Fact: Stories about good furries actually draw more traffic to this website than these. Look at the number at the bottom of your screen... now look at the number at the bottom of the story covering the death of the EMT furry who died
Note that one is not only larger, but 10x so, it's probably not the one you seem to think it is.
I think you misappropriate the what the readership is interested in, they're not just here for stories that make the fandom look bad.
Why does this throw the entire fandom under the bus? Are you saying Mitch is the entire fandom? If you believe that I'm sorry for your loss.
If I had a website whose goal was to make the entire furry fandom look bad, I would loath Flayrah's existance. Because if you come to Flayrah, you may see an event that might make "the fandom" look bad, but you'll see it surrounded by reviews of good works, and stories of those who are good. It'll drive traffic away because, as I already proved, people in general don't want a site that's mostly negative unless they're mostly negative themselves (which is a loud minority as it always has been).
Which brings me to the next point. Why is it you only choose to comment on the negative stuff? You seem to have nothing of kindness to say. Even on articles where good furries are killed you seem to be pretty silent, but see fit to come here to point out every time one of these articles come up.
Face it Xxydexx, your behaviors show you thrive on this stuff at least as much as the ones who you ire. Seek psychiatric help, lest you loathe yourself.
If you have to ask that question, you clearly haven't been paying attention.
Because Xydexx is a victim.
Irony- an individual who admits they don't spend much time in "here" acting like they're an expert on "here" and then claims a person who's "here" quite a bit isn't paying attention.
Irony: An individual who used to support Flayrah but became disenchanted with the trend toward sensationalism and netkookery, being criticized by someone who is oblivious to it.
But since you asked: Given the problems inherent in Flayrah's so-called management (i.e., giving an audience to kooks in the interest of "public interest" or "equal time" or even "it-doesn't-have-anything-to-do-with-Furry-but-it's-controversial-so-wheeeeeeee") and Flayrah's readership (who loves to obsessively downvote anyone who calls said so-called management into question) it really isn't worth any substantial investment of my time to comment on a lot of articles. I'm flattered you want to hear more from me, but there's better things I could be doing with my time.
Also:
Heh. Right back atcha. It's always ironic when people crazier than I am offer an armchair diagnosis.
That would hurt, if it wasn't for the fact that the bipolar was suspected misdiagnoses. AKA a professional armchair diagnosis done by a doctor who spoke with me for five minutes to get me out of the mental clinic so I wouldn't be forced to stay there after my mental break.
It turns out the manic episode could have been caused by insomnia and/or symptoms brought on by medication I was put on after having my wisdom teeth removed (note confusion and abnormal behavior), it took me a month to remember that series of events because you know after getting the crap beat out of you by police officers and tased you tend to have other things on your mind.
I've been off my bipolar medications for 2 weeks and have had no re-occuring symptoms as of yet. However the odds are this theory which I thought of and ran past a nurse and my psychiatrist (not the same person who diagnosed, never saw them again after the initial diagnosis) I have confidence are high.
AKA: I was in sound mind and body when I wrote that; I don't update my LJ as much as I used to. I was just giving a reason for that odd entries and conversations I was having with my friends during the week the symptoms were messing with my head to give some kind of explanation. The re-evaluation I didn't see as prudent to discuss as people weren't worrying about me.
Stay classy though.
Yet.
Indeed which is why I have to go to a theorist and Psychiatrist every month for the next year. If I do indeed have bipolar I can at least rest assured that the $600 in co-pays from such a thing won't have been a waste. If it isn't, then I'm having a feeling the visits are going to get boring after the first few months.
That's super. Lemme know when you come up with a valid rebuttal to the problems with Flayrah's so-called management and readership.
If someone who picked on a person who they believed at time had a legitimate medical condition is the one making the critiques about proper management, I don't think a response would be necessary. Kind of speaks for itself.
It says something like: "Flayrah's management isn't perfect, but we could clearly do worse."
Mitch Beiro gets fucked (metaphorically and quite possibly literally); child-porn advocates get to look even more egregious than usual; the so-called 'furry community' gets dragged, kicking and screaming, one more millimeter into realising that the maxim 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law' is not and cannot ever be the basis for any kind of community.
What's not to like?
Anyone who thinks do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law is what the furry community is about has never read the code of conduct at a furry con.
My Wiccan friend says you left out the important first part: And it harm none...
At least we are not haunted by the spectre of someone like Ed Kramer.
http://www.atlantamagazine.com/features/2012/09/01/dragoncon-ed-kramer-child-mol...
Looks like a nice piece of work -- and note, no shortage of white-knighters and enablers either!
That's OK, we have plenty of horrible people who are still running furry conventions. This fandom has been disregarding bad behavior from the "superstars" who run cons (like the con chair of MFM and his history of domestic violence) or produce art that furries like to beat off to for decades.
The fact you seem to be considering those two things morally equivalent is rather sad.
Re read the comment because you clearly failed to understand it. Nowhere did I say that child porn and domestic violence are morally equivalent.
Committing either one makes a person a vile waste of flesh but obviously abusing children is a far worse crime. And both people are exactly that: criminals who should have to serve jail time for their behavior. Not people who should be white knighted by sycophants.
I said this community allows some ridiculously bad people to run things, and furries are more interested in cheap travel, and porn to masturbate to then they are in taking out the trash.
After re-parsing the sentence I did indeed read it incorrectly:
I read it as: This fandom has been disregarding bad behavior from the "superstars" who run cons (like the con chair of MFM and his history of domestic violence or produce art that furries like to beat off to for decades).
I read the sentence and ignored the parenthesis's intent to isolate the domestic from drawing porn. I originally read it you had a problem with con-chairs that produced porn art on the same level as those that committed domestic. Instead you were saying con-chairs and popular porn artists get away with a little more than they probably should, which sounds a bit more sane :).
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