🚀 go-pugleaf

chooses instead to request approval
* from his subjects for each and every exhibition and publication
* of each and every image --- an exemplary scrupulousness.
* 
* Then, in 1990, alerted to the "questionable" content of some of his
* images by a local processing lab, the FBI arrested Joe Semien, Sturge's
* assistant, invaded the photographer's San Francisco studio without a
* warrant, and seized all his prints, negatives, records, and equipment;
* thereafter, without arresting Sturges, or even charging him with
* anything, they refused to return his property and did everything
* possible to destroy him personally and professionally by branding
* him a child pornographer

On September 15, 1991, The New York Times  reported that the Feds took the
case to a grand jury after 17 months, and they immediately threw it out.

And that "this was unusual because only the prosecution's evidence is
presented to a grand jury and they generally return indictments at
the Government's request".

Excerpt from 'TO: A Journal of Poetry, Prose + the Visual Arts', Summer 1992:

* Jock Sturges:
* 
* It took another month to get the U.S. Attorney to admit they had
* finished the investigation and that the case was closed.
* 
* Before they were through they had interviewed forty-four families in
* France to whom they lied outrageously.
* 
* It seems the Feds were unable to get the French interested because
* the French Police thought the photographs were just lovely. So the
* Fren