On January 29, 2009 in the San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate I wrote Kids Charged for Child Porn (Violet Blue: When Teens Make Their Own Porn, Who’s Being Exploited?). It focused on three girls from Pennsylvania who had just been charged with manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography — for taking nudie self-portraits and texting them to male classmates. As I mentioned in my article, this has been happening all over the country; essentially criminalizing teen sexuality and (in my opinion) outright abuse of child porn laws. Well, it looks like the ACLU feels the same way — finally, someone’s being rational about this and taking action — and they’re taking up the case, as seen in ACLU Sues Prosecutor Over ‘Sexting’ Child Porn Charges:
The American Civil Liberties Union is helping three teenage girls fight back against a Pennsylvania prosecutor who has threatened to charge the girls with felony child porn violations over digital photos they took of themselves.
In a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in Pennsylvania, ACLU lawyers accuse District Attorney George P. Skumanick, Jr. (.pdf) of violating the civil rights of the girls. The lawsuit says the threat to prosecute the minors “is unprecedented and stands anti-child-pornography laws on their head.”
The lawsuit comes in the wake of a string of cases around the country in which teens have been arrested on child porn charges for making and distributing nude and semi-nude photos of themselves. (…read more, blog.wired.com, thanks Praemedia!)
Update 03.27.09: More arrests of kids, this time in New Jersey. WTF, world? More “Sexting” Nonsense:
A 14-year-old New Jersey girl has been arrested on child pornography charges for posting nude photos of herslef to MySpace, bringing us once again into the bizarre realm where not only is it possibly to criminally exploit oneself, but where police and prosecutors valiantly protect children from making bad decisions by arresting them and threatening them with sex offender status.
And here’s a case in Pennsylvania where the girls weren’t even actually nude (…read more, reason.com)
> This is NOT debatable. Every single intelligent and rational human being
> on the planet already knows how ignorant the action is.
I think it very debatable.
I don’t see how flogging parents will help unless they like that sort of thing.
Kids will do this sort of thing, it is natural to explore these kinds of thing at their age, and now they all have cameras that send pictures – hey guess what they use. The world has changed, people better get use to it, and change the laws to reflect that.
> The true debate here is how society handles or punishes a child
> who has engaged in such rank stupidity.
One doesn’t punish a child for this sort of thing. That will really give them hang-ups.
You do the same sort of thing you do when you discover them masturbating, reading Porn (which is usually the same time), or starting to date seriously. Parents sit down with them, and ensure their kids are equipped with the knowledge to look after themselves, whilst the parents simultaneously learn to accept their kids are growing up.
Agile Cyborg,
In all fairness to the parents, they’re trying to protect their kids by suing the DA. They can’t even see the pictures to decide how to punish their kids because the DA won’t show them (it’d be distributing child porn). The parents are trying to keep their kids out of harms way.
Eric
I cannot grasp the constant and perfunctory qualification thrown behind practically every post on this subject anywhere online that states how wrong it is for a kid to post nude self-portraits.
This is NOT debatable. Every single intelligent and rational human being on the planet already knows how ignorant the action is.
The true debate here is how society handles or punishes a child who has engaged in such rank stupidity.
In true fashion the same society that clings to nebulous deities and archaic moral structures will blatantly refuse to employ common sense and objectivity toward stupid children who rub the righteous wrongly.
Fact is, these kids should have never made national or even local news. The parents of all children involved who’ve allowed these kids to have their lives drug through the mud should be taken out back and flogged.
And after the parents- flog the fucking cops and this screwball DA.
Yes, I am merely indignant. I cannot believe this is happening to children of a free society.
Ground the damn kids involved and take their fucking cell phones away. DON’T ruin their fucking LIVES!!
I won’t pretend to know the law inside out but it seems like the law was written without someone thinking that one day kids will be taking their own pictures and sending them over the internet. The law definitely needs to be changed. When was the law originally drafted?
Seeing how much publicity the girls have received, I think they have received enough of a “punishment”. There should probably be something tailored specifically to minors.
Good luck to them. It will be an uphill battle but hopefully they can overcome this and help change the law along the way.
Seriously. There are good reasons for teens to think twice, or more, about whether sending that naked pic is really a good idea… but dropping the weight of the law on them is not a good way to encourage that kind of thought, even if it were a sane application of the law in question which this clearly is not.
I completely agree… That’s the most ridiculous abuse of police power – punishing teens for having sex. It’s one thing to have a law to prevent adults of taking advantage of people who are not as experienced or more suggestible… It’s quite another to have a “blocked” view of sexuality and to act like it doesn’t happen.
Teens have sex with each other. They fool around, and do everything that adults do… punishing it is ridiculous, I’m glad the ACLU is taking this one on.
Yeah, not that sending your teenage pals nekkidpix of yourself isn’t a bit ug, but wtf is going on. Does ANYONE think this is what the people drafting the CP laws had in mind?