PITTSBURGH, PA - The FBI raided the home of a controversial erotic stories website owner on Friday, apparently on charges of obscenity. The website, red-rose-stories.com, posted a notice on its home page announcing the raid and warning customers that the FBI now has access to all past customer information.
“I am sorry to inform all interested parties that Red Rose Stories is a DEAD site,” read a statement posted on the website by operator Rosie. “The FBI has suceeded [sic] in closing me down. I am being charged with 'OBSCENITIES' and face charges for having posted such stories. Our stories are NOT protected speech. Please, please, be careful out there.”
The stories in question, according to the website’s announcements, include no images or videos, but describe acts of bestiality, urination, scat, BDSM, slavery, threesomes, orgies and sex with children.
According to Rosie’s post, the FBI entered her home while she was away and seized several items before leaving.
“The men in black (FBI) took ALL of my computer equipment, and many of my diskettes, and have access to ALL my files and site information,” Rosie warned on her site. “They came when I was NOT home and siezed [sic] my belongings, I had no choice, and no recourse.”
Rosie’s attorney Larry Walters, of Weston, Garrou, DeWitt and Walters, said that the FBI will have a difficult case if the raid was merely over the content of text stories.
"We're still investigating the issues associated with the raid, but at this point it does not appear that any basis exists to justify obscenity charges premised on the written stories and audio files that were the subject of the search warrant,” Walters told YNOT. “While obscenity laws are broad enough to potentially cover the written word, a conviction based solely on text, or even audio, would be an extreme uphill battle for the government in the current culture. We are hopeful that once the matter is reviewed at the next level, no further action will be taken in regards to the stories at issue."
The Red Rose raid has already set off a firestorm of opinions on adult webmaster chat boards, with some people expressing dismay that stories could fall under obscenity laws, while others stated support for the FBI in its targeting of such materials.
“Publishing pedo fantasy stories about 6 month old babies getting finger fucked is OBSCENE, is over the line, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” posted one user on GFY.com, although YNOT has not yet been able to verify the exact nature of the targeted stories. “I have no sympathy for this site. It should not be protected as free spreech [sic]. The entire premise is to cater to the fantasies of pedos at the most debased and perverted levels imaginable. When you are writing sexually perverse stories describing pornographic acts on infants, toddlers, and children you are generating the same effeect [sic] as if you were publishing pictures of such.”
Another poster disagreed that stories can be equated to actual pictures of children being abused.
“I do not care what a story is about,” the poster wrote. “It could be as sick, perverted, evil, and downright dispicable [sic] to satan himself and it should never be considered illegal. It is a fucking story.”
The case is still under investigation, and it is unclear whether charges other than obscenity will be leveled against the site operator.
