In People ex rel. Tanis v. Benedict (28 N.Y.S.2d 202 [Sup Ct, Monroe County 1941]), the court upheld a complaint in which the relator was alleged to have wilfully caused a child "to be placed in . . . a position where her morals were likely to be impaired by stationing himself" inside a car parked on a city street by a sidewalk where a passing 10-year-old girl could plainly see his "unconcealed and unnatural acts." The court specifically addressed the relator's argument that the alleged facts failed to establish that he had any "control" over the child such as to have "caused" her to see him, and rejected his argument as arising from a "strained" construction of the statute. The court thus held that given the public nature of the relator's conduct, a violation of the statute was adequately pleaded with facts from which it was reasonably inferred that the relator had placed the child in a position where she would likely observe his conduct, thus wilfully causing her harm. The court assessed the facial sufficiency of an information alleging remarkably similar facts. In that case, the defendant was masturbating in a parked car, where he was observed by a 10-year-old girl passing along the adjacent sidewalk. The information charged that "defendant did willfully cause a child 10 years of age to be placed in such a situation that her morals were likely to be impaired," in violation of a predecessor statute, Penal Law 483(2). The court rejected the defendant's argument that he could not fairly be charged with "causing" or "permitting" a child over whom he had no "control" to be placed in a situation likely to be injurious to her morals, noting that, since defendant had positioned himself in a public place where he was visible, "it would do violence both to the letter and spirit of this section of the Penal Law to hold that this defendant did not wilfully cause this child to be placed in such a position that her morals were likely to be impaired" (id. at 205). As for whether the conduct itself was of a nature likely to be injurious to a child, the court concluded that "the act in which the defendant was publicly engaged in was such as to shock and even demoralize any child of adolescent years" (id.).