A district attorney ignored child porn laws and punished sexting children sensibly for gross misdemeanor of telephone harassment instead of following the law and seeking felony convictions for child porn with life long sex offender registration. It would be better if sexting laws were changed for good, as suggested by legal scholars.
LACEY, Wash. — One day last winter Margarite posed naked before her bathroom mirror, held up her cellphone and took a picture. Then she sent the full-length frontal photo to Isaiah, her new boyfriend.
A Girl’s Nude Photo, and Altered Lives | New York Times
She produced and distributed child pornography. This is what the law says.
They broke up soon after. A few weeks later, Isaiah forwarded the photo to another eighth-grade girl, once a friend of Margarite’s. Around 11 o’clock at night, that girl slapped a text message on it.
“Ho Alert!” she typed. “If you think this girl is a whore, then text this to all your friends.” Then she clicked open the long list of contacts on her phone and pressed “send.”
Rude, inconsiderate, bad character, worthy of punishment. But grounding a few days for rude and inconsiderate behavior. What is the punishment for adults for re-distributing nude photos without a model release? Not jailing a few years for distributing child pornography! But, remember, it’s the law!
In a world without child porn laws, by regular laws about adult photos, these guys should get a serious slap on the wrist, and Margarite should go unpunished. But, according to our laws, she is a felon. Compare: In the brave new world of ‘sexting,’ females are ‘victims’ of the very crime they commit
But when that sexually explicit image includes a participant — subject, photographer, distributor or recipient — who is under 18, child pornography laws may apply.
“I didn’t know it was against the law,” Isaiah said.
That is because culturally, such a fine distinction eludes most teenagers. Their world is steeped in highly sexualized messages. Extreme pornography is easily available on the Internet. Hit songs and music videos promote stripping and sexting. A Girl’s Nude Photo, and Altered Lives | New York Times
Human-Stupidity keeps pointing out: the consequences of such dumb laws are that we adults have the obligation to teach children the law.
After all, the poor children get punished for infractions they don’t even know about!? And they can not know, they are not normal natural infractions like lying, stealing, hurting people. That means that we have to tell 8 year olds that they go to jail or face other serious legal consequences if they do sexual touching when they are 10 or 12. And we need to explain exactly what type of photos are illegal. And we have to face the children’s questions: "why do I go to jail for photographing myself?" "Oh, I go to jail so I don’t abuse myself? I go to jail for my own protection?" Of course, it does not make sense. (Jailed for possession of video of himself masturbating when he was 12.)
Of course, this way we inoculate sexual thoughts into the 99% of the children who would never have thought any sexual thoughts.
Note that adult sexting is legal! Holding our children up to higher standards then ourselves. Ridiculous!
The most troubling behavior in this story is that by the non-parental authority figures. Charging 12- and 13-year-olds with dissemination of child pornography? Authorizing principals to search cellphones at will to root out sexts? Someone please explain to me how society was served and justice done by hauling at eighth grader to jail in this instance? What a great way to teach young people to become citizens – show them that the 4th Amendment doesn’t count if the Principal says so.reader’s comment
Very true. This happens all the time. Violating profound constitutional principles to prosecute alleged sex crimes. No due process in rape prosecutions, criminalizing thought crimes in child pornography prosecutions. Draconian punishment under the guise of protecting victims. In this case there was a real victim, but she was partially to blame for her innocent stupid trust.
Continue reading “Sexting children Margarite, Isaiah in Lacey, Washington avoid jail”