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A Steel Valley School District teacher turned herself in Tuesday on allegations that she "sexted"students by exchanging sexual text messages and nude photos via cellphone. According to the criminal court docket, Jennifer Sowa Smith was arraigned at District Judge Thomas Torkowsky's office on several charges, including two felony counts each of unlawful contact with a minor and corruption of minors, another felony count of criminal use of a communication facility and a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of children. Bail was set at $25,000.

....."It is cheating in that it came from the same space inside him," said Kerry Cohen, an Oregon psychotherapist and author of "Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity." "It is a betrayal, absolutely." Like former President Bill Clinton, who officiated at Weiner's wedding, Weiner is a powerful public figure who got caught in a sex scandal. Their straying, Cohen added, "comes from the need to be seen and attended to" in ways politics can't. ..John Portmann, editor of the anthology "In Defense of Sin" said.... "I don't believe that Weiner cheated on his wife, not at all," said Portmann, an...

Jon Austin's wife, Amy, had a blunt assessment for her husband as the Minneapolis couple watched Rep. Anthony Weiner's stunning confessions on television this week. "You'd be dead," she told him. Regardless of his professional future, it's Weiner's predicament at home that seems to be launching countless discussions among couples like the Austins. And this time, it's not a question of actual physical cheating — a la Eliot Spitzer and his prostitution scandal — but the murkier backdrop of Internet relationships: sexting, tweeting lewd photos, emailing.

Wait until the wife reads this! Just when you didn't think it could get worse, new X-rated text messages were made public today where Rep. Anthony Weiner got down and dirty with one of the women he had befriended on Facebook -- even telling her that he was prepared to travel to Nevada to bed her. In a series of dirty chat messages dating back to Sept. 17, 2010, the kinky Weiner wrote to 40-year-old Lisa Weiss -- a Nevada blackjack dealer who went back and forth with Weiner on Facebook for more than a year -- that he was...

Ross police reported today that new victims have emerged in the case against Russell Freed, a Brentwood man accused in federal court of extorting teen girls to send him pornographic pictures of themselves via text messages and the Internet. Mr. Freed, a Turnpike Commission project engineer, is charged in a criminal complaint with extortion of visual depictions of minors engaged in sexual conduct. The charge reflects a national surge in cases of "sextortion," in which compromising electronic pictures are used to entrap minors into supplying more and more explicit images of themselves, and sometimes into meetings. A Federal Bureau of...

The former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been convicted of unlawful contact with a minor for exchanging explicit messages in an online chat room with someone he believed to be a 15-year-old girl. Ritter, 49, exchanged messages with a detective posing as an underage girl and masturbated, even after the undercover officer stressed during the chat that he was a minor, Pennsylvania prosecutors said. A jury found Ritter guilty of a total of six counts including indecent exposure and criminal attempt to corrupt a minor.

Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been found guilty of unlawful contact with minors and five lesser charges after a three-day trial in Monroe County Court on charges stemming from an online sex sting. Ritter, 49, of Delmar, N.Y., was found guilty of unlawful contact with a minor for masturbating on a Web camera and engaging in a sexually graphic online chat with an undercover Barrett Township police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl in 2009. The jury deliberated for more than six hours after the prosecution and defense both gave closing arguments in the morning. During the...

Luis Mijangos, who was living in Santa Ana, tricked about 230 people into downloading a virus that allowed him to take over their personal computers. Mijangos looked for sexually explicit photos of computer owners, then threatened to e-mail those files to victims’ mailing lists to coerce them into sending him more homemade digital pornography, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors said Mijangos accessed the computers through peer-to-peer networks by tricking victims into downloading malware that appeared to be popular songs. The malware allowed Mijangos to take control of the computers, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The 32-year-old Mexican national pleaded guilty...

A South Florida band teacher is in trouble with the law after he allegedly sent a 14-year-old student suggestive text messages and pictures of his "instrument." Dennis A. Mulder, teacher at Allapattah Flats K-8 school in Port St. Lucie, was arrested Wednesday on two felony counts of transmission of material harmful to minor by electronic equipment, according to tcpalm.com.

Revolutions are always unpredictable, depending on the way always unpredictable people adapt to them. That's true of high-tech revolutions as well as revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and a lot of other places. Humans are curious creatures. The revolution in communications, for example, for all of its benign access -- and success -- comes with social consequences that continue to surprise and occasionally alarm. Nothing seemed simpler for increasing opportunities for adults to stay in touch with their children's comings and goings than the cell phone. The cell phone that seems to grow out of the ears on every teenager's...

Should children who snap racy photos on their cellphones and send them out to their friends be punished as child-pornography distributors or sex offenders? No, a Florida Senate panel said Monday. At least, not the first time they get caught. For the second consecutive year, the state Legislature has taken on “sexting,” the practice of sending sexually explicit text messages, photos or videos, usually via cellphone. A bill that has cleared two committees in the Senate and one in the House of Representatives would decriminalize sexting as a first offense for children who are under age. A similar measure passed...

William Scott Ritter Jr., a former United Nations weapons inspector who gained renown for his criticism of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, contends his online sexual encounters with teenage girls were only fantasy. Nearly two years ago, Ritter, of Delmar, watched his computer screen reveal that an anonymous person who had been exchanging sexually charged messages with him for 80 minutes was not a 15-year-old girl. It was a cop from a small town in northeast Pennsylvania, alone in his station house and trolling the Internet for suspected child predators. Ryan Venneman, a detective for the Barrett Township...

A Pennsylvania teen who stored intimate photos of herself on her cell phone — but never e-mailed or shared them with anyone other than her longtime boyfriend — settled her federal privacy case against high school officials who had seized the phone without a warrant and turned it over to prosecutors. Still unsettled, however, is the question of how far educators can go when it comes to fulfilling their obligation to keep sexually explicit images, audio and text from reaching the eyes and ears of minors while on school grounds. "I hope this settlement will lead school officials in the...

CHILTON - Calumet County's top prosecutor calls it an embarassing "lapse of judgement." After an anonymous leak, sexual text messages sent by District Attorney Ken Kratz in October 2009 were exposed. He resigned as chairman from the Wisconsin Crime Victims' Rights Board, but has no intention of leaving his elected post.

The case began when a teacher confiscated the cell phone of a 17-year-old senior for a violation of the school's use policy. The principal "found" explicit photos, which he turned over to law enforcement. Wyoming County District Attorney, responded by targeting 13 girls and three boys with threats of felony charges if they did not agree to take a class on the dangers of sexting…

ROMEOVILLE -- When Bridget Polaski stored naked pictures of herself on her cell phone, she never dreamed they would fall in the hands of cops she fears will slap them all over the Internet. "I'm just really upset about my pictures being all over the Internet, if that's where they end up landing," Polaski, 45, said of the seven or so nude cell phone photos that are now in police custody. Bridget Polaski, of Romeoville, was brought in for questioning Aug. 26 as Romeoville police investigated car vandalism. Police kept her cell phone as part of the investigation, but Polaski...

Marcel Williams is plopped down on a couch in his family's duplex apartment. The stillness is unusual for the 14-year-old, who a few years ago roamed football fields as a star running back for the national champion Flagler Junior Pee Wee Bulldogs. Since then, Marcel said he had been earning A's and B's at Buddy Taylor Middle School, where he also expected to continue playing football this year. Instead, school just started and Marcel finds himself slouched on the couch, expelled from the classroom and the football field until next year because of something called "tea-bagging" -- a crude taunt...

For the second time in two weeks, a man is suspected of taking cell phone photographs under women's dresses at a Northwest Side Wal-Mart. Martin Matthew Hemby, 20, was released from Bexar County Jail around 6 p.m. Wednesday after posting $5,000 bail. He faces one charge of improper photography. This is the second time San Antonio police have arrested Hemby on suspicion of taking improper photographs at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the 1600 block of Vance Jackson Road — on July 23, Hemby was arrested, then released the next day after posting $10,000 bail. Hemby's most recent arrest is related...

The time has come for Melinda Dennehy to face the music. The ex-teacher from New Hampshire who we initially told you about back in March has pleaded guilty to e-mailing nude photos of herself to a 15-year-old male Londonderry High School student. Dennehy, 41, entered the plea on Monday to a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure. Police say that she sent 'four sexy shots of herself,' with her 'genitals exposed,' to a 15-year-old male student, along with a detailed explanation of the sexual acts that she wanted to perform on him. She also reportedly kissed the boy on two separate...

STANTON – A man who two teen girls said was trying to take cell phone pictures of them outside a library – just feet from a sheriff's substation – was found to have pornographic images of minors in his phone, authorities said. Alejandro Lorenzo Contreras, 24, was trying to talk to two underage girls outside of the Stanton Library on Tuesday afternoon, said Lt. Jim England of the Orange County Sheriff's Department.