r/auslaw • u/Key-Mix4151 • 5d ago
News Office of eSafety says it can't 'proactively prevent' Australians from seeing execution live stream
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-10-13/esafety-cant-block-us-execution-live-stream-in-australia/107258064"Digital Duty of Care" is a new one
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u/Objective_Unit_7345 5d ago
Digital safety and savviness has always first and foremost been education.
Can’t ban and administer/control our way out of every online problem.
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u/Gothiscandza 4d ago edited 4d ago
I feel like if we're apparently having to censor the actions being actively promoted and broadcast by the government of our ally because it breaks our own laws around explicit content, maybe that should be an indication to seriously reflect on our relationship with them.
That's not even to support the actual laws, but if you're the government actively supporting said laws, it probably bears some responsibility to consider how supportive of a relationship with governments broadcasting that kind of content.
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u/Butt_Lick4596 4d ago
One of my law textbooks, when discussing the US constitution, said that it was birthed through civil war as the people were wary of despotic governments and their infringement on their citizen’s human/civil rights. Their collective intention were to restrict any government from being able to impinge rights.
Yet reality appears to be that people there elected a despot, and a whole government that makes spectacle of arbitrary detention and now executions.
Funny how that goes.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 4d ago
The previous US public execution was over 200 years after US independence was declared and over a hundred years after the civil war. I think it is absurd to suggest that the US isn't living up to what its founders would have wanted by having a public execution and it's even more absurd to suggest that people that lived through a civil war that was waged to keep the country together would balk at public executions. These are people that literally went to war and killed hundreds of thousands of people to keep the country together. All of those deaths were in public.
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u/twinstudytwin 5d ago
Truly ghoulish. American right wingers are so...aggressively juvenile and fascist.
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u/Pleasant_Aspect3543 3d ago
Honestly, apart from Pete Hegseth I don't think anyone thinks it's a real great idea. He is one crazy dude.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 5d ago
What is fascist about public executions? Were all polities in the entire world fascist until about 1900?
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u/RobinVanPersi3 5d ago
Absurdly reductionist argument. You want the social setting to revert back to pre 1900? Ok go work in a factory for a pittance 70 hours a week and die at 32 from a disease, a horrible factory accident, war, or starvation. The fun part is you can at least pick that!
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 5d ago
I didn't say anything should revert to anything. I asked a simple question: if public executions are fascist, why does that not mean that everyone was fascist before 1900?
The answer is very simple: they're not fascist and this has nothing to do with fascism. That doesn't mean I agree with it.
For someone who is (or pretends to be) a lawyer you have very poor reading comprehension.
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u/SharkLordZ 4d ago
A lot of societies that used public executions could be argued to be authoritarian in some shape or form, but fascism is a political ideology, not a form of government. It specifically engages in nationalist myth making and the idea that the nation is currently in decline and needs to be 'reborn,' or made great again. It's known for normalising violence as a means of politically expressing that the movement (and when they get into power, the state) is legitimate, thriving and putting the country back on the right track.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 4d ago
This isn't the place to have a back and forth discussion of the definition of Fascism but what I will say is that Fascism refers to a particular 20th century ideology in Italy and has been extended by analogy to refer to a wider set of similar ideologies. But it has to have some limits.
Nearly all populist political ideologies have some element of nationalism to them, and the idea that society is in decline is equally visible in left-wing ideologies ("we're in late stage capitalism" etc). Also, authoritarianism isn't the same as fascism.
Public executions aren't really associated with fascism. For example, in Nazi Germany judicial executions were not done in public, while there were public hangings in the UK in the 1860s when it clearly wasn't fascist. It's just a very very weird term to use in this context.
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u/AccreditedAdrian Solicitor-General 4d ago
Sir, this is Reddit.
Anything we don't like can be aptly described as fascist.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 4d ago
Just came back to this comment again and it is honestly astonishing that you could respond to my question "what is fascist about public executions?" with the response "You want the social setting to revert back to pre 1900?" and then accuse me of being reductionist. What an absurd straw man.
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u/Key-Mix4151 5d ago
Who has the DoC in this instance, Secretary of War Hegseth?
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u/BotoxMoustache 5d ago
Let’s sue him.
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u/Key-Mix4151 5d ago
I'm imaging Tom Cruise in a navy uniform in HCA, demanding to know the truth.
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u/theforgottenluigi 5d ago
Wow - but let's enforce age restrictions on everything so we can easily map what our citizens are doing.
They don't even have to do a hard block, just get the ISP's to block it during the event - afterwards it is what it is.
They where able to get the Christchurch massacre stopped - but this - oh no... it's to hard
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u/britishguitar 5d ago
The point is that you can't press a "stop future execution live stream" button, you can only be reactive to content that exists (exactly what happened with Christchurch - it was originally shared, and then fairly quickly addressed).
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u/Odd-Temporary4363 5d ago
This will be a scheduled one. They can ask the media platforms to block it. It won’t be fully effective just like anything else.
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u/louisa1925 5d ago
Well, they couldn't stop that video of the Aussie lady getting her twat rubbed with a freshly caught ocean fish either. A video of the exectution will make it's rounds too. It's pretty much inevitable.
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u/mubd1234 5d ago
A DNS block on watchpeopledie.gov should do the trick
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 4d ago
The Australian government doesn't own or control the world's DNS servers.
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u/mubd1234 4d ago edited 4d ago
Perhaps that's why the Australian Government is saying it's too difficult to censor. They know that no reputable mainstream platforms will rebroadcast the footage.
And as for the DNS block, if it's hosted by some actual non-meme US Government domain, that'd open a whole new can of worms...
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u/ptolani 4d ago
I really don't understand the call to ban this. Yeah, it's pretty horrible that they're livestreaming it, and I wouldn't recommend people watch it, but attempting to block objectionable content is really not a good direction for our society.
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u/Falstaffe 3d ago
There's a public interest argument that watching it would traumatise people who may not understand beforehand how it will affect them
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u/Falstaffe 3d ago
The government has already blocked whole categories of foreign websites. For the government to throw up their hands is disingenuous.
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5d ago edited 5d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/auslaw-ModTeam 5d ago
You're in breach of our 'no dickheads' rule. If you continue to breach this rule, you will be banned.
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u/Amazing-Opinion40 Quack Lawyer 4d ago edited 4d ago
Why did a generation of terrorists dress up and parade their victims in orange jumpsuits before execution? They learned the to do so from US media reporting, images of unlawful enemy combatants and other detainees in orange jumpsuits being subjected to a variety of types of conduct in custody
Turning this into a public, global spectacle, risks the exact kind of dangerous effect that the dehumanising pictures of Abu Graihb had.
When Timothy McVeigh was ultimately executed for his atrocity committed in Oklahoma after waiving further appeals in mid 2001, many more victims and families thereof than the execution chamber’s viewing area would allow wanted - quite justifiably - to watch him die and literally see justice done with the sentence carried out.
CCTV access was set up. Families were able to sit in a room elsewhere and watch the event which was ultimately a bit of a non-event as it was a lethal injection in that instance, hearing him quote Invictus, saying “I’m the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul” before it was go time.
There was a lottery among victims families for who got to sit in the chamber and who had to watch the CCTV link. Now perhaps I know someone who was in the chamber, and perhaps I don’t - who knows.
Perhaps words to the effect of “you’re the master and captain of rotting in your own piss” - uncontrolled urination being something which happens when you receive lethal injection - were perhaps heard to be uttered in the chamber by a person who had lost a family member, sitting adjacent to someone who had been very seriously injured on the day of the bombing. It wasn’t like anybody was going to make a move to remove someone saying something like that.
That is a very personal set of circumstances. The intensity of the personal connection to my mind provides a level of justification for the nexus to the event if somebody really, really wants to watch such a thing.
The entire United States were not victims of this man. I don’t really see that the whole country and the whole world needs to watch even if they want to and can do so. There is absolutely nothing wrong with allowing appropriately close victims and family members thereof to watch the sentence be carried out, to my mind.
The much bigger risk is that they are creating something entirely more dangerous than one man at one attack.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 5d ago
Why would it be their job to prevent people from seeing this? Can adults not make up their minds on what they want to watch? I wouldn't watch this but it doesn't seem particularly different from depictions of executions in various documentaries, various ghoulish true crime podcasts that seem to take great pleasure in describing serial killers' methods in detail, and so on. Are we going to ban them next?
This is described as "harmful" content. What is actually harmful about it? Who is being harmed? Why is the risk of that alleged harm (only to people who choose to view it) outweighed by the risk associated with giving the government such powers of censorship?
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u/jackbro10 5d ago
You can't prevent anyone from seeing this, the idea of them "trying" is just performative imo. Everyone will see this event it's going to be all over social media feeds
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u/whoamiareyou 4d ago
You can't prevent anyone from seeing this, the idea of them "trying" is just performative imo
In a context in which our government has seen fit to attempt to ban all children from accessing all social media, and requires adults to hand over sensitive personal information to untrustworthy third-parties to watch porn, despite both blocks being provably extremely ineffective, the idea that they would not even try to block state-sponsored terrorist activities from being live-streamed into Australia is absurd.
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u/jackbro10 4d ago
State sponsored terrorist activities?
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u/whoamiareyou 3d ago
Yes, that would be the purpose behind televising a state-sponsored murder.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 3d ago
Capital punishment is lawful and therefore by definition not murder. Nor is it terrorism.
This overwrought nonsense is unbecoming.
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u/whoamiareyou 3d ago
Capital punishment is state-sponsored murder.
Live-streaming it as a proud show of how brutal you are is terrorism.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 3d ago
Murder is by definition unlawful. Capital punishment therefore cannot be murder by definition as it is lawful.
Are you a lawyer?
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u/jackbro10 3d ago
A mass murderer being executed after due process is a terrorist activity? got it
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u/whoamiareyou 3d ago
No, live streaming it to proudly show off to the entire world how brutal you are is terrorist activity.
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u/jackbro10 3d ago
There is no evidence that is the intent, the stated intent of the broadcast is deterrence and to show the consequences of mass murder. You can disagree with the broadcasting of the execution, but saying its terrorism and claiming they just want to show brutality is just an assumption without supporting evidence
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u/Worldly_Tomorrow_869 Real attorney? No, ChatGPT! 5d ago
Society has long since decided that we want to limit who has access to certain materials. Prior to the internet, when people had to go to a restricted premises to buy their hard core porn, under 18's were restricted from going into those premises.
I don't see this as very different. People will still have the choice to watch it, they just get on a US based VPN and have at it. It's a barrier to viewing the harmful content, as opposed to censorship which is what you are asserting.
I think there are also some treaty obligations involved here. I'm pretty certain that public executions are outlawed under the UN universal declaration of human rights, or a similar treaty to which we are signatories. Sure we are not conducting the execution, but there is an argument that if we allow it to be viewed in Australia, we are complicit in it's publication.
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u/EAmalric 5d ago
Live streaming an execution likely amounts to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" in contravention of the Convention Against Torture. But not blocking access to that live stream wouldn't amount to state responsibility for complicity in that (much higher standard required).
Otherwise we are signatory to prohibitions on the death penalty. I'm not sure that any treaty explicitly prohibits public executions but not executions otherwise.
As an aside, restricting/preventing access to undesirable media is perhaps the archetypical example of censorship. That's not to say that there can't be compelling reasons to do so, but that doesn't mean that it isn't censorship all the same.
I have to admit to preferring the old name of the Classification Enforcement Act in WA, that being the Censorship Act 1996. It's more honest.
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u/ChillyPhilly27 4d ago
Media and other uninvolved parties are routinely invited to witness executions. At what point does audience size start to become a human rights concern?
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u/EAmalric 4d ago
How long's a piece of string?
The audience size itself becomes a concern when it amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
If you take the position that a public execution is inherently degrading, then that's the line.
When does it becomes public? Probably when there are people who serve no function or have no connection present.
Certainly, the presence of independent witnesses able to report on what happens is important—see the recent botched execution of Christa Pike. But at the same time 20 journalists would be over the top.
Alternatively, you could take a maximalist position that the only witnesses should be those invited by the prisoner. The family of the victim have no right to watch an execution, much like they have no right to gawk at them in gaol.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 4d ago
I don't see how it is the role of the state to determine whether I have a good enough reason to see something. It's not on us to justify what we do to the state. It is up to the state to justify restrictions it wants to place on us. It has the burden, not me.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 4d ago
There is nothing in the text of the UDHR or the definitions of those words that makes public executions "cruel, inhuman or degrading". Those words were understood at the time the declaration was to refer to torture and things like castrating people as punishment for rape or putting people in stockades to have rotten food hurled at them. Ritual torture and humiliation for interrogation and punishment.
Executions are like anything else that is part of the public function of justice something that arguably should be done in public.
I have no doubt that some judge somewhere has decided to liberally interpret those words to include capital punishment, or bad prison conditions, or public execution. But that doesn't mean that that's what the UDHR says or what it means.
This is obvious when you look at the wording of your comment. It "likely" amounts to it? It either does or it doesn't. This is the wording you use when you're giving someone advice about uncertain legislation but the UDHR isn't legislation which anyone has to comply with. It isn't intended to have the precision and detail of legislation. It's a declaration of principles.
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u/EAmalric 4d ago edited 4d ago
I agree that public execution would not have been thought to be within the scope of the UDHR when it was adopted in 1948. However, International Human Rights Law does not constrain itself to originalist interpretations.
In any event the prohibition was more thoroughly codified in the Convention Against Torture of 1984.
Article 16 of which provides that:
Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article 1...
Article 1 torture is essentially the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering.
The argument is that public executions are inherently degrading and do not respect the dignity of the prisoner. I believe that this is the UN OHCHR's position.
Even if you do not agree with that proposition, I would think that the broadcasting of an execution is even more degrading as it turns a solemn proceeding and (as you put it) "a function of justice" into a media spectacle and public amusement.
Anyway, I used the word "likely" without putting that much thought into it. But I am happy to conclude that broadcasting an execution is ill-treatment prohibited by article 16 of the Convention Against Torture.
Also, yes, you're correct that the UDHR itself is non-binding as a declaration of the UN General Assembly. But much of it has attained the status of customary international law & is thus binding. Needless to add, the Convention Against Torture is binding as a treaty on States Parties, but its principles are likewise binding as custom. The prohibition on torture is universally recognised as a jus cogens peremptory norm. It very much has to be complied with (inasmuch as international law does).
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 4d ago edited 4d ago
I agree that public execution would not have been thought to be within the scope of the UDHR when it was adopted in 1948. However, International Human Rights Law does not constrain itself to originalist interpretations.
...which is why essentially nobody other than its practitioners cares about international human rights law. It isn't a real body of law, because what it deals with isn't really law. It's an entire body of "law" based on the interpretation of very vague provisions. It's like the worst of statutory interpretation, on steroids. Except it's even worse than that, because it doesn't have the feedback mechanism that real law has. There's no democratic basis to any of it.
For example, the right to "family life" has been taken to an absurd extreme in ECHR jurisprudence. That was never the intention of that "right" and it would never have been included in that instrument if it was known that it would be interpreted in that way. It has been interpreted in that way by Strasbourg courts. The extension has no democratic legitimacy. The result of that approach to interpretation is that many countries in Europe are now talking about leaving the ECHR. That would be a terrible shame, because properly and narrowly interpreted it is a very good baseline level of protection of basic human rights. But when it's broadened to the point of absurdity it loses all its moral force and democratic legitimacy and people would rather just toss the whole thing.
The prohibition on torture is universally recognised as a jus cogens peremptory norm. It very much has to be complied with (inasmuch as international law does).
...which is of course not very much.
But peremptory norms should be complied with. However, the moral force of the prohibition on torture will be irreparably weakened if 'torture' is extended to mean things that aren't actually torture. Also, the prohibition on torture is the prohibition of torture. It's the actual act of torture that is prohibited. It isn't the word torture that is prohibited. What I mean by this is that the prohibition only extends to acts that are universally recognised as wrong. You can't say "there's a norm that prohibits torture, and I think torture includes X, therefore the norm prohibits X." The fallacy there is that "there's a norm that prohibits torture" means "there is a norm that prohibits a particular class of act, and we refer to those acts as torture". The prohibition is on those acts. If you later say that the term "torture" has been extended to mean something more broad, that doesn't change what there is a prohibition on.
But anyway, as you refer to, torture is the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering. Nobody seriously would contend that public execution is torture, even if their position is that it is degrading punishment. That doesn't make it torture. As you refer to, that prohibition is clearly meant to be wider than just torture (which doesn't mean it necessarily covers public execution, obviously.)
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u/EAmalric 4d ago
Alas, that's international (human rights) law for you. At least Europe and the Americas have courts as that feedback mechanism, rather than the useless complaint mechanisms that otherwise exist.
The ECHR is quite expansive and operationalised, especially article 8. My understanding however is that a lot of the migration/deportation/asylum cases on art 8 "family/private life" grounds that get media/political attention are domestic decisions (ie not actually by the European Court of Human Rights) and are largely misreported.
I remember a furore over a case in the UK that was reported as a criminal man not able to be deported because his son "doesn't like foreign chicken nuggets". Turns out the child, who's a citizen, had profound & complex needs, including food sensitivities. The tribunal expressly found that the chicken nuggets issue alone was nowhere near the level of harshness required to prevent deporting him.
I believe that the man won in the end due to his son's art 8 rights. Essentially that the citizen child's needs could only be met in the UK & with his father. But that didn't stop the media reporting it as if it was all about chicken nuggets.
So, yes, there is a real political backlash to the ECHR. But to what extent is that actually over the Convention and the Court itself versus populist anti-immigration political rhetoric?
But that doesn't take away from your point that laws and rights only have force if they have moral and democratic legitimacy.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 4d ago
The courts should interpret and apply the law, including by filling the gaps in existing law. To the extent Parliament passes bad vague laws that are little more than statements of principle I accept that the courts have to take on a bigger role in filling those gaps. But I think legislating by declaring broad principles is bad lawmaking.
Saying most of the cases are domestic is like saying the HCA doesn't have much of a role because most decisions are made at a much lower level. It ignores that the Strasbourg court sets precedents that the domestic courts follow in Europe (largely).
The chicken nugget issue is as simple as it sounds: a man that should have been deported was not because Art 8 was interpreted far beyond its original meaning to mean that it would be a violation of someone's rights because their family would be separated. Tough luck. That's not how it was meant and not how the law should work. The responsibility lies with the father if his son is inconvenienced by the father being deported. The son can go too, or stay behind and be looked after by someone else and in the worst case by the state.
We don't say it's a violation of a child's rights to deprive them of their parent when the parent is sent to prison. But we're meant to believe it is a human rights issue when exactly the same effect arises through deportation. I just do not think there is any basis for that in law or common sense.
Of course this gets simplified in the tabloid media but it is important not to think that a story being simplified for mass consumption means that the underlying story isn't legitimate.
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u/EAmalric 4d ago
The prohibition on torture proper is certainly a peremptory norm. It is questionable whether it extends to other ill-treatment, given how restrictive authorities are when labelling something jus cogens. Although I believe that the torture and ill-treatment of POWs specifically (as defined by the Geneva Conventions) is jus cogens.
To give you the full convention definition of torture:
For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
I think that is agreeable as a classical definition: severe pain or suffering intentionally inflicted by an official for purposes of: information or confession/punishment/intimidation or coercion/discrimination.
Regardless of whether the prohibition on ill-treatment is jus cogens, it remains binding. Jus cogens would only be relevant if there were a treaty authorising ill-treatment, as if it were peremptory, such treaty would be void.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 5d ago
It is censorship. Bypassing it doesn't make it not censorship. You could get underground copies of the Gulag Archipelago but that doesnt mean it wasnt censored.
People claimed that pornography and LGBT literature were harmful and needed to be banned.
There is nothing in the UDHR about public executions or capital punishment. It would have been absurd in 1945 to suggest it was a violation of someone's human rights to execute him, publicly or not.
The idea that Australia is "complicit" in the publication of something by not censoring it is the most ridiculous and Orwellian abuse of language I've ever heard.
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u/WilRic 4d ago
This is the answer to your question:
Vision of an execution being live streamed here would be deeply distressing to many Australians
We live in a world where "distress" is now considered "harm." Despite fear mongering to the contrary, the overwhelming number of people will not experience real psychological consequences from seeing things like this.
Watching an execution is not harmful. It might even change your views on the reasonableness of capital punishment.
Even if it's distressing, it's worthwhile remembering that distress isn't something to be avoided at all costs. Good can come from it.
The really good thing about these performative non-issues is that - you know - people can just not watch it. The countervailing argument is that there is always a risk of distress (not harm) because it might be accessed inadvertently.
Who cares? I'm sick of living in a world where we are so focused on ensuring that people don't ever get upset by things. It's stupid to think that we are all so fragile that watching or hearing awful things will harm us.
Can you imagine what people in the distant past would think about how precious we've become?
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u/Worldly_Tomorrow_869 Real attorney? No, ChatGPT! 4d ago
Watching an execution is not harmful.
Watching people die is not harmful? Well it's a take, but it is an ignorant one. Have you ever seen the mess a 5.56 makes of a human being? It isn't like the movies, it is a severe physical trauma.
It's stupid to think that we are all so fragile that watching or hearing awful things will harm us.
So the entire field of psychology is wrong? We don't have cops and soldiers necking themselves because of the awful things they see and hear? I feel angry at the level of ignorance in this post.
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u/WilRic 4d ago
I'm sorry you got angry. My comments are not borne out of ignorance. I'm assuming you've witnessed something like that. I've seen multiple people die, and while not in those exact circumstances, in some pretty gruesome ways.
There is a huge cleft between being a cop or a soldier and watching someone die on a screen. If people do see what it's actually like they might actually moderate stupid opinions on the need for capital punishment. Of course that doesn't mean I'm encouraging the ghoulishness of broadcasting it.
The "entire field of psychology" doesn't mandate that we try to implement prior restraint with this stuff.
I'm saying that this constant effort censor horrible things on the internet is overreaction. If some teenager sees the equivalent of a snuff film they are not going to suffer irreparable psychological "harm." It is simply enough to tell people not to watch it because it's barbaric.
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u/thunderbirdsRgo1965 4d ago
If some teenager sees the equivalent of a snuff film they are not going to suffer irreparable psychological "harm."
Where the hell did you pull that load of BS from? And why did you put the word harm in quotation marks?
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 4d ago
Because it isn't actual harm. There's a reason we don't allow generally allow tort claims for mental injury by secondary victims, for example. Seeing something distressing on a screen is, at law, not actionable.
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u/nzconstructionlawyer 4d ago
Watching someone die is not harmful and even if it were, it is not the state's job to prevent people from making choices that might harm themselves.
and yes the entire field of psychology is wrong. It is all essentially based on the idea that all human variance is a disorder of some kind.
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5d ago
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u/thunderbirdsRgo1965 5d ago
You'll watch an execution just to make a point? Be honest, you were going to watch it anyway.
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/thunderbirdsRgo1965 5d ago
cope
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5d ago edited 4d ago
[deleted]
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u/thunderbirdsRgo1965 5d ago
TIL that not watching an execution = govt bootlicker.
Enjoy the show sicko.
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u/SharkLordZ 4d ago
Forcing yourself to watch a snuff film to own the elites? Because the e safety commish said that the department's power has checks and balances and won't be censoring the content?
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u/TerribleFellowReally 5d ago
It might be a hard argument to sustain in these times, but I think there is something to be said about witnessing something like this being spiritually corrosive, and something to condemn.
This passage from Victor Hanson’s Letter #11 From Saudi Arabia springs to mind for me when it comes to stuff like this:
"You don't want to see one," an older friend of mine named Fred told me a short time later.
"Why not?"
"Believe me, you're going to see enough ugly stuff by the time you're my age without having to carry around the memory of a beheading the rest of your life," Fred said. "You think it won't bother you, but it's a hard thing to see. Harder to forget. Wish I never went."