A 17 year old "child" boy consensually exchanged intimate photos with his 15 year old girl friend. To bolster their case, the prosecution requested and obtained the right to photograph the boys genitalia in erect state, and to forcibly use medical means to obtain the erection.
Of course only the young man is prosecuted, even though the girl equally engaged in production, possession, and distribution of child pornography.
Teen sexting prosecution prompts outrage | BBC
On Wednesday the Washington Post reported on the case of a 17-year-old from Manassas, Virginia, who is facing felony charges for manufacturing and possessing child pornography after he allegedly texted nude images of himself to his 15-year-old girlfriend.
According to the boy’s defence attorney, Jessica Harbeson Foster, prosecutors in the Washington-area Prince William County want to bolster their case by taking photos of the suspect’s aroused penis and comparing it to the texted image using "special software".
She says the prosecutors have plans if the teen does not willingly comply.
"We just take him down to the hospital, give him a shot and then take the pictures that we need," Ms Foster says she was told.
She added that the police had already taken a photo of her client’s flaccid penis, obtained despite his objections.
So the prosecution already produced child pornography, forced a child to pose for indecent photos (Copine scale level 4: deliberately posed, not erotic)
Child porn laws purport to protect the child, even when 17 years old, from the repeated trauma of having his or her photo viewed (Voodoo theory).
- "Ugh, you fucking pervert. Sending pictures of your privates to a 15 year old innocent girl, you make me fucking sick. Now, I’m gonna pull down your pants by force, stick a needle in your dick, take a bunch of pictures of it, and then spend hours comparing them to the other pictures of teenage boy dicks I have." 7/09/14 11:36am | View all 451 replies
- The insanity of our child porn witch hunt pretends to forcibly conduct a boy to a hospital, restrain him, inject medicine to erect his penis, and take a photograph in order to prove that that photos found were of the boy’s engorged penis.
- The state will produce child porn of the highest copine scale levels 8 (assault) to 10 (sadistic)
- We wonder if collaboration in such child abuse is compatible with the medical Hippocratic oath
- traumatizing the 17 year old child
- to further traumatize the child with a potential 4 year prison sentence
- to protect him from the trauma (??) of his own child porn which he took willingly, was not traumatized, and was viewed by the girl, willingly, without traumatizing anyone.
- Anyone who looks at the photo will see child porn and thus incur mandatory prison sentences. I wonder if the lawyer of the persecuted boy can inspect the photos.
- We wonder if the boy had proper sex law education.
- According to Virginia’s age of consent laws [2] the boy can have sex with the girl with impunity.
- We wonder if he planned and timed sex properly, according to the laws
- We hope he is aware he must not cross state lines with his girl friend. It is a federal felony to cross state lines with the intent to have sex with a minor.
- Furthermore he may be a felon for having sex in adjacent states:
Teenage sexuality: The immense complexity of local laws, state lines and international travel - The boy also has to be careful after his 18th birthday. In many states, including Virginia, a man may become a felon, if, after his 18th birthday, he continues his relationship with the minor, that hitherto was legal Consult a lawyer before playing doctor. Perverse sex laws traumatize children.
- The boy he failed to understand the serious implications of taking photos.
- Human-Stupidity proposes that children must have mandatory sex law education to be aware of the insane counter-intuitive sex laws, made by crazy adults.
- Court rules that 32-year-old man’s sex with 17-year-old was legal… but pictures of it cost him 8 years in prison
- Mandatory 15 years jail for photos of legal girl friend: You Can Have Sex With Them; Just Don’t Photograph Them
- Child porn laws victimize children and adults.
- Of course, all these insane sex laws concocted by feminists and religious zealots do nothing but harm. As Professor Milton Diamond Diamond found: Accessible porn reduces rape and prostitution
"The prosecutor’s job is to seek justice," the attorney told the Post. "What is just about this? How does this advance the interest of the Commonwealth?"
It didn’t take long for the Post story to go viral.
The case raises a number of challenging questions. Why was the girl, who allegedly started the string of explicit texted images, not also charged with child pornography? Should child pornography laws be applicable in cases of teenage sexting? Is it appropriate that, if convicted, the teen will have to register as a sex offender for life?
Court mandated medically forced erection of a minor.
The forced-erection angle generated the most media outrage, however. Could a prosecutor really demand such an intrusive search? And could a judge really go along with it?
"Law enforcement officials in Prince William County, Va. have come up with a truly creative way to combat the dissemination of child pornography: create more child pornography for comparison!" writes Salon’s Jenny Kutner.
Mediaite’s Tina Nguyen says the story sounds like a bad television comedy sketch. "Yes," she writes, "this is real life."
On Wednesday night, the police issued a written response to the media firestorm. Although the department declined to comment on the details of the case, it stated:
It is not the policy of the Manassas City Police or the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office to authorise invasive search procedures of suspects in cases of this nature and no such procedures have been conducted in this case.
After the initial shock headlines involving shots and photographs, some writers took a look at the bigger picture.
"This is the tale of a police force and prosecutors who allegedly want to do the unspeakable in order to fight what some might describe as, well, teens being teens," writes CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk.
He says that criminalizing sexting is the wrong way to address what should be considered a lapse of judgment on the part of youth.
Human-Stupidity considers child porn witch hunt laws a lapse of judgment on the part of adult law society and law makers. Adults take nude selfies, that is not a crime. Occasional internet-wide dissemination of such photos, by accident or revenge, is unfortunate, but not comparable to 8 year of regular rape in prison for a victimless crime.
"It’s not as if technology has suddenly caused teenagers to behave in questionable ways," he writes. "The only difference is that now it can be much more widely disseminated.
"It’s true that once something is digitally transmitted, it will likely live forever, at least in some dark virtual corner," he continues. "Education is, perhaps, the best way to warn teens of the dangers."
Slate’s Emily Bazelon says that consent is the key issue here. Were both the boy and the girl willing participants in the text exchange? State legislatures, which have widely divergent ways of addressing teen sexting, need to come up with clearer laws.
"What they should do is distinguish between consensual sexting, and (especially) sending out an image of someone who would not want that picture or video to circulate, or to someone who does not wish to receive it."
Those with good memories may recall that Manassas was also the home of Lorena Bobbitt, who made international headlines in 1993 when she was charged with cutting off her husband’s penis while he slept.
The case created a media circus and was the butt of late-night jokes for years afterward.
The next scheduled court date in the sexting case is set for July 15. It looks like the circus is coming back to town.
UPDATE (14:43 EDT): On Thursday afternoon the Associated Press reported that the Manassas City Police will no longer proceed with plans to take new photographs of the teen "and will let a search warrant authorising the photos expire".
OK. So they police actually obtained the search warrant to forcible erect the child’s penis. Due to world wide shock they wisely will let it lapse.
The young boy still will get his life ruined. We are glad to know that the girls will only have her boy friend imprisoned and yanked away from her, she will not her life ruined
Virginia police have obtained a search warrant to photograph the erect penis of a 17-year-old facing felony child-pornography charges for sexting an explicit video to his 15-year-old girlfriend, the boy’s lawyer says.
If he doesn’t cooperate, the Manassas City Police Department has threatened to take him to a hospital and medically induce an erection with an injection, attorney Jessica Harbeson Foster told The Washington Post.
Police already photographed the teen’s genitals against his will when he was arrested in late January, she said.
Lawyer: Va. cops want to photograph teen’s erect penis
Police request photos of teen boy’s erect penis in Virginia sexting case
The Washington Post reports authorities and Prince William County prosecutors want a picture of a 17-year-old’s erection to compare with evidence from his iPhone. The male, identified by NBC as Trey Simms, allegedly sent a sexually explicit video to his 15-year-old girlfriend after she shared nude photos of herself. […]
Several publications across the country appear to have agreed with Foster’s perspective. New York Magazine called the case "shameful," Gawker called it "insane," and Mediaite compared the whole story to a "bad SNL sketch."
- Yes means No! Forcibly raping a 17 year old is the same rape as consensual love making
- More on Cuccinelli’s Defense of Virginia’s Anti-Sodomy Law
- Note that most underage sex is harmless, see the child sex trauma myth and Rind Study:
- Tea Abuse: How a traumatic event impacts children depends on how the adults cope with it. (MRA Angry Harry)
The only sane solution is to promptly nuke the region so that any residual child porn that has not yet been transmitted is destroyed.
I can’t decide which is better; that police/prosecutors thought this was a good idea or that a judge actually signed a warrant to create child porn.
Either way I’m glad the warrant will expire.
Next up is asking why the girl is not being charged with the same offenses. According to my understanding she sent a sensual or sexual text/image first and her boyfriend replied in a similar way.
Finally I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if law enforcement wanted to make the girl aroused and orgasm to prove it was her vulva and vagina in an image. People would have freaked out faster than they did and social media plus the regular media would be in a frenzy.
This shows that the United States has sunk to the social equivalent of the 14th Century. The 5th Amendment to the US Constitution expressly forbids compulsion of an accused to testify against himself; and of course prohibits torture too—but the Constitution is ignored by these new inquisitors.
@Eric, thanks for pointing out this additional issue.
This is why in Brazil people have the constitutional right to refuse blood alcohol testing after causing a serious accident. In California, for example, they use trickery: the condition to get a drivers license is that you waive your right to refuse a blood alcohol test.
Now if this were a real, serious, violent, forcible rape, inspection of the alleged rapist’s penis would look sensible to me, to enlighten a real heinous non-consensual crime.