Posted on 05/24/2017 1:06:36 PM PDT by Forgotten Amendments
It took school and police officials just a few minutes to extinguish 16-year-old Corey Walgren's promising future. All they did was utter two words: child pornography.
Corey, a junior at Naperville North High School in Naperville, Illinois, was a perfectly normal, social, good-looking 16-year-old. He was an honor roll student with dreams of attending a Big Ten college. He had typical interests for a teenager boy: hockey, fishing, and, yes, girls.
Corey committed suicide in January, just hours after a school resource officer confronted him about an alleged illegal item on his cell phone—a recording of Corey having sex with a female classmate. The girl had informed a dean at the school that she believed Corey had played the recording for his friends (it's not clear whether he did), which prompted the authorities to summon Corey to the principal's office. They called his mother and told both of them that Corey was being investigated for possession of child pornography.
Corey left the meeting, headed to a nearby parking garage, and jumped.
That's all according to a heartbreaking story in The Chicago Tribune, which obtained police records of the case and spoke with Corey's parents about his death.
"I think they wanted to scare him straight," Corey's mother, Maureen Walgren, told the Tribune. "Instead, they scared him to death."
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
“Technically he can’t consent either.”
Apparently, he did consent to sharing the video.
From there, he got himself into in trouble.
“Why don’t we just work with what is in the article? If additional information comes out in the future then opinions can be adjusted then.”
There is more to the story.
The dead kid had some problems.
The live girl should have gone straight to the police.
The school should have called the police right away and not tried to handle it as a school matter.
That’s all true. The girl has some problems too.
Personally I think that laws that make pornographers out of minors participating in consensual sex are wrong. The kids are wrong to do that stuff but it shouldn’t be on that level of criminality under the law.
Everyone is responsible for their actions but minors are called minors under the law for a reason. They don’t reason like adults. Most can’t reason like adults. With the exception of some heinous crimes the law shouldn’t treat them like adults.
You’re asking an awful lot of that poster.
“While at the same time - they did indeed ignore the responsibility of the individual. “
And no one seems to be concerned her about how the girl felt or what damage was done to her.
Was it really consensual? How consensual can a sixteen year old be?
And what did it do to her to have it shared with his friends, if he did indeed share it?
What is she going through? Should she have thrown herself off of a building instead?
No one in the article seems to care, and few commenters here seem to care either.
What if it were your daughter - seduced, or drunk, or drugged, or possibly raped - and then filmed and passed around like so much crap? Would you be feeling all the feels for this young man then?
I have sons and daughters. I feel for both young people. But to act like what he did was no big thing is wrong.
And I imagine her agony just increased a thousand fold.
“It is apparent that Corey committed a Felony.”
Do we see, anywhere, what the age of the girl is? I assumed sixteen but now I can’t see why. . . does this story change if she is fourteen? 12?
Video of under age kids engage in sexual activity is not child porn? Wow, there are probably a lot of people who wish you were on their jury.
“Since the girl was in on it too are they going to charge her with a felony have her register as a sex offender for life? They might as well ruin two lives.”
I don’t think she videotaped it or shared it. So I don’t see where the pornography was on her part.
“Care to explain how she isn’t just as culpable in making the video as the boy was?”
She didn’t do the videotaping? She wasn’t aware she was being taped?
“The crime is to be in possession of the tape, not to be an unable to consent participant.”
Was she in possession of the tape?
“There is no exception for taking pictures of oneself.1”
Children in child porn videos are not take the pictures themselves. They are being filmed.
In this case from what little we know it appears the girl did not do the videotaping, did not know she was being videotaped, did not possess the videotape, and did not distribute the videotape.
If it were your daughter you might be just a little bit perturbed.
If she knowingly participated in making the video she doesn’t have to actually hold the camera to be guilty of producing the video. If she didn’t know a video was being made then she’s not guilty of producing child porn.
Either way it’s a supposition lacking any mention of those facts in the article.
The boy was also a minor so that has to apply to him too.
If it were your daughter you might be just a little bit perturbed.
If the boy were my son I would be a bit perturbed too.
Like you I am going on the facts supplied. Based on those there seems to be no assertion she was in on it.
If the facts change, my opinion will change with them.
“f the boy were my son I would be a bit perturbed too. ‘
As would I. I started out saying and continue to say I am very sorry for this boy’s death. When we try to impress on a young person the seriousness of something they did, they sometimes freak out. The alternative of acting like it was no big thing is not a good alternative, either.
There is a middle ground and sometimes we miss it. What he did was very, very wrong and needed to be dealt with severely. Not with a death penalty, whether self-imposed or otherwise.
I'm not doing that nor do I see any other posts here that I can reasonably read that into.
The assertion seems to me to be that she claimed it was being passed around to other boys. This is extremely humiliating and degrading. If indeed he is guilty of this, that was a terrible thing to do.
Were he innocent would he have pitched himself off a roof? Maybe. My instinct, even as a teen, would be to fight horrible charges like that were I innocent.
In any event like any adult he should have had a lawyer/advocate present. If we are going to “treat him like an adult” it should go all the way.
That's a given. I don't see any posts on this thread that argue with that premise.
In any event like any adult he should have had a lawyer/advocate present.
And a parent. A point I've agreed to since my first post.
If we are going to “treat him like an adult” it should go all the way.
Actually minors are to be afforded increased protections under the law.
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