Posted on 01/15/2009 9:26:59 PM PST by Steelfish
Sexting surprise: Teens face child porn charges
6 Pa. high school students busted after sharing nude photos via cell phones In an unusual legal case arising from the increasingly popular practice known as sexting, six Pennsylvania high school students are facing child pornography charges after three teenage girls allegedly took nude or semi-nude photos of themselves and shared them with male classmates via their cell phones.
The female students at Greensburg Salem High School in Greensburg, Pa., all 14- or 15-years-old, face charges of manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography while the boys, who are 16 and 17, face charges of possession, according to WPXI-TV in Pittsburgh, which published the story on its Web site on Tuesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
I guess I'm busted for not reading the article. Even registering for ten years would really hurt these kids. Sex offender registration is awful for those who have to do it. I'd rather go to prison for a few years then have to register. They're very limited on where they can live. People around them are going to know about it and think they are perverted predators. Cops will mess with them all the time. They'll have to tell the people at school, and at college if they can get into a college. They'll have to tell prospective employers. They won't be able to go into the military if that's what they want to do. If they fail to dot their eyes or cross their t’s on their complicated registration requirements they are likely to be picked up and sent to prison where they're likely to be raped. I hope these kids get their charges amended and don't have to register for something silly like this. We have too many people being forced to register over silly things, and usually they register for life. I don't think sex offender registration is a bad idea, but we've gone overboard with it. We should only be registering actual predators, rapists and creepy guys who molest little kids, the ones who are actually a threat. A lot of the folks we are forcing to register now are people in trouble for fairly minor offenses, things that in many cases wouldn't even be criminal acts a few decades or even a few years ago, things like a young guy having sex with his teenaged girlfriend not much younger than him. I represented a guy a while back on a failure to register charge who had been convicted for having sex with a girl a few years younger than him who he was actually married to at the time he was accused of failing to register several years later. They had a couple of young kids. He'd done just about everything he was supposed to do on his registration requirements but was a few days late reporting a job change or something like that and he was sent to prison over that. I couldn't believe it. I don't like sex offenders but that was just wrong.
Reasonable people differentiate between behavior that harms others, and self destructive behavior.
I was going to post a reply to you so I re-read your asinine post....it is so stupid that I can’t even think of an insult for you....pathetic
Can we register these girls as terminally stupid and slutty? I’d like to know what their parents are doing about this, since they know now? Why prosecute the boys when they girls sent the pics?
3niner, You are not reasonable.
You are incapable, by your own admission, of comprehending the damage allowing sexual pictures of children in any form does the the children involved, whether those children understand it at the time or not.
You might consider reading a textbook on Child Sexual Abuse Anna Salter has written several thorough ones), or visit the sections of websites like Pandora’s Aquarium that are open to the public
And no terycarl, no amount of ignorance and blather on your part constitutes stupidity on the part of people who were not fortunate enough to grow up with the naivety your sheltered upbringing has instilled in you.
It is absolutely ridiculous to charge teens with child pornography for taking pictures of their own bodies and sending them to a few friends their own age. It should be up to the parents, not the state, to handle such situations.
It does a disservice to all those precious souls that have been harmed by real child predators over the years to go nuts over this. It minimizes the evil that is actual child pornography.
I know of a story up in WA State, where a guy was taking a leak behind a bar. Yup, the cops arrested him for public exposure. Was forced to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. In that kind of situation, I believe a 75 dollar pee ticket should be issued. A sex offense? No way.
The judge can consider circumstance in Sentencing - period.
Your intent to create a loophole allowing the production and dissemination of child porn when produced by children - while an attractive workaround to NAMBLA and the Larry Flint crowd would have devastating consequences to millions of children who already have little chance of receiving justice through the legal system.
You have zero perception of the danger this poses in allowing a creative way for child pornographers to LEGALLY produce their sick wares.
“Your intent to create a loophole allowing the production and dissemination of child porn when produced by children - while an attractive workaround to NAMBLA and the Larry Flint crowd would have devastating consequences to millions of children who already have little chance of receiving justice through the legal system.
You have zero perception of the danger this poses in allowing a creative way for child pornographers to LEGALLY produce their sick wares.”
Now that is just BS.
The only ‘loophole’ is teens sending pics of themselves to other teens their own age. It’s absolutely silly to suggest that these teens are being victimized.
They’re not being coerced by adults to take these pictures. They’re taking them because they want to show off their bodies to their friends. Again, something for parents to deal with, not the state.
“Theyre taking them because they want to show off their bodies to their friends. Again, something for parents to deal with, not the state.”
And the legal mechanism in place to prevent this is...what exactly?
One of us is indeed BSing, but I am not the one.
The current system of prosecution for the crime - with a judge deciding what if anything of substance the penalty for this is - handles my concern. Simply making this legal allows a whole raft of unintended consequences.
Well they would be unintended if people;e like me weren’t pointing them out to people like you - who don’t give a cr@p and want to allow this with no check against the porn industry anyway.
Listen, I’m tired of your cheap accusations. No one who opposes you (at least on this site) has any desire to allow the porn industry to deal in child pornography. There are laws in place that require pornographers to verify that all participants are 18+. Allowing teens to explore their own sexuality with people their own age (again, no adults) does nothing to change what pornographers can and cannot do, nor does it have any effect on what an adult can do with a minor.
Not "produced by children"--produced by the "victims" without enticement or coercion.
“The judge can consider circumstance in Sentencing - period.”
Some crimes have a mandatory minimum sentencing. What is the mandatory minimum sentancing for child porn? Let’s say the mandatory minimum sentance is 10 years in jail. The judge has no way of overriding this (it’s mandatory). Do you still believe they should be charged and thus serve the mandatory minimum?
And to make it a crime for anyone to take a picture of themselves is frankly insane. People who use sex as an excuse to persecute the innocent are as bad as any other kind of sex predator. To make young people ashamed of their own bodies is evil, pure evil.
If registered as sex offenders, they will be unable to attend school. The school district will have to assign private tutors. They will be unable to attend college. Their names, addresses, and photographs will be placed on the Internet.
So if a teenage boy jerks off, will he be charged with child molestation?
The future USA: Everyone is a criminal.
While I’m not sure the legalities of this, I don’t believe you have to sell child porn for it to be illegal.
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