'Hundreds' Of Teens Found Sexting At A Single School And Everyone Seems Unsure Of How To Proceed
from the how-about-'toss-it-back-to-the-parents-and-let-them-handle-it?' dept
A smallish town in Colorado is home to the teen sexting apocalypse. Something that first appeared to be limited to the football team now apparently involves almost half of Canon City High School's student body.
Superintendent of Canon City High School, George Welsh estimates that half the school is involved. That's about 500 students based on the initial stages of the investigation. Some eighth graders may also be involved.That estimate given by Welsh has since been revised down to "certainly over 100 different kids," which is still a rather large number of students to suspend and (possibly) bring criminal charges against. Yet that's what Welsh feels should happen.
Right now their punishments are undecided but Welsh said they will likely be suspended and face criminal charges. Because posting nude photos is a class three felony, the students involved could be placed on the sex offender registry.The Canon City Sex Offenders. Catchy, but also horrific and bound to be the least popular choice for new school mascot. Fortunately, the district attorney doesn't believe the path should lead through the local criminal court.
“Consenting adults can do this to their hearts’ content,” said Thom LeDoux, the district attorney, but “if the subject is under the age of 18, that’s a problem.”This is a far more rational response than we're used to, although LeDoux reserving the right to "use discretion" suggests at least a few of these hundreds of students may end up on the sex offender registry. Especially with this added remark.
He added that he was not interested in arresting hundreds of children and would “use discretion” if he decided to file charges.
Mr. LeDoux, the district attorney, said the investigation would look into whether any adults were involved, whether children were bullied into participating, and whether any illegal sexual contact occurred.As LeDoux pointed out, if everyone was over 18, all of this would be legal. But the ages of those involved invokes statutes ill-equipped to handle this sort of sexual activity by minors. Under Colorado law, any person under the age of 18 is considered a "child" for the sake of child pornography prosecutions. This means the only thing LeDoux has to do is find a few "adults" within the student body.
The general assembly hereby finds and declares: That the sexual exploitation of children constitutes a wrongful invasion of the child's right of privacy and results in social, developmental, and emotional injury to the child; that a child below the age of eighteen years is incapable of giving informed consent to the use of his or her body for a sexual purpose; and that to protect children from sexual exploitation it is necessary to prohibit the production of material which involves or is derived from such exploitation and to exclude all such material from the channels of trade and commerce.The relevant portions of the statute would treat sexting as the production and distribution of child pornograpy. If it will be used to charge teens with sexually exploiting themselves (because they cannot give informed consent, even when photographing themselves) remains to be seen. The law, like those in other states, offers no guidance on how to proceed if the creators and recipients of the images are under the age of 18. This is where the prosecutorial discretion comes into play. A few convenient 18-year-olds would make for useful scapegoats should the community unite behind the move to prosecute its way out of this "embarassment."
Court decisions clarifying Colorado's statutes add even more bad news.
Evidence that a person has knowingly received prohibited material in an e-mail could be accepted as proof that the person knowingly possessed the material, because a person who knowingly receives an e-mail is aware of the nature of its content and has immediate and knowing dominion or control over it. Fabiano v. Armstrong, 141 P.3d 907 (Colo. App. 2006).If read directly, this means students who received unsolicited photos from other students could be found guilty of possession. Even deleting the unwanted photos is of limited defensive use.
The presence of digital images in an internet cache can constitute evidence of a prior act of possession. There was enough evidence that the jury could infer that the defendant knowingly viewed the images in the internet cache. People v. Marsh, -- P.3d -- (Colo. App. 2011).If the DA decides some charges are warranted, these will be the laws used and they cannot be adapted to fit this situation without a significant amount of imagination and collateral damage.
For now, though, there's been far more restraint exercised than has been exhibited by others in the same situation. Unfortunately, I get the feeling this restraint is more prompted by the sheer scale of the situation, rather than a realization that child porn/sexual assault laws were never written to address this sort of thing. In cases where the sexting has only involved a handful of individuals, school administration and law enforcement have moved far more swiftly and reacted more harshly.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: canon city, colorado, high school, sexting, students
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Put Bars on the School
I really hope these prosecutors just nail them to the wall. Then, and MAYBE then... will all of these fucking "Adults" figure out that all the people they have been voting for are not their friends and do not give even a little shit about their kids or the future of the nation.
I am beginning to think that the only adults in society are made of legend now.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Put Bars on the School
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Put Bars on the School
And for the record I think this entire problem is bullshit. Kids are kids, they are going to be doing stupid shit... it's just what they do.
However, it seems that it takes a lot of terrible things to happen to get people to realize just how fucked up things are getting with their own government. So the best thing is for government to slip up, so that the people will come down extra hard to prevent this bullshit from happening again.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Put Bars on the School
this is sad.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Put Bars on the School
humans have been considered adults above the ages between 12 to 14 years,
after WWII our imported nazis and similar minded "experts" from the rest of the world decided to:
-perpetuate childhood
-implement lifelong learning (so that you do not have to wait generations to change society)
this is basic history.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Put Bars on the School
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Put Bars on the School
Kids were shiting in the class trashcans.
The 'reason' was that a 'gun' may have been 'seen' by someone.
(My wife and i found a black nylon 'Tactical' back-up holster lying on the yellow line on Normandie Ave. while this unfolded. I tacked it on the church bulletin board for months, but it was never claimed)
Those kids who gave their parents phone number were picked up eventually by a 'parent' who could 'prove' custody, many late into the early morning since many parents hold multiple jobs and are 'illegals'.
This warranted a single paragraph in the Los Angeles Times that week.
A California child is State owned UNLESS he/she has been awarded to someone by a Superior Court judge. This was told to us by the County Sheriff when i was on the Acton Town Council, and is why California educates ALL it's children.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Dumbest Law award
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Dumbest Law award
Other than that, just what is the criminal act here, unless you requested the email somehow.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Dumbest Law award
If the appeals courts had any humanity at all, they'd change that and require proof of intent for any felony conviction. (And put some teeth in the 8th Amendment, so prosecutors couldn't just force you to confess by threatening you with life-without-parole if you go to trial.) But so far, the Supreme Court continues to have a majority of monsters on it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Dumbest Law award
No. That's just not true. You made that up. Federal law in 18 USC Section 2252 says "knowingly possesses, or knowingly accesses with intent to view". And if you're going to claim that a state law says otherwise, I'm going to have to ask you for a citation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Dumbest Law award
Of course, that doesn't prevent people being charged and convicted for possession of images that, strictly speaking, shouldn't be considered in violation.
It all comes down to intent -- and all-too-often, the supposed intender's word carries the least weight. (In the relatively few cases that actually make it to trial, that is; when faced with [and regularly reminded of] the fed's phenomenally high conviction rate and shown the sentencing guidelines for a category 33 federal offense, many folks end up taking a plea, no matter how strong or weak the prosecution's case may be.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Dumbest Law award
What other proof do you need as to how they are going to proceed?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Dumbest Law award
you do not mind publishing your email here, do you?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Dumbest Law award
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
On a more serious note, part of me is glad these kind of things are happening. It's the ridiculous scale that could challenge conventional thinking to bring things to a more sane level.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sad to say, but the only REAL way to deal with this is...
The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.
Abraham Lincoln
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Sad to say, but the only REAL way to deal with this is...
That's about 500 students based on the initial stages of the investigation.
So how many total students will this come to?
As much as it would hurt all the students, I sort-of wish the DA would simply say "Sorry, that's the law and I have to enforce it". Then maybe we'll see some outrage as that town (and school) get the reputation as home to over 500 sex offenders.
How does it work when you have to tell your neighbors that your son or daughter is now a sex offender when their sons and daughters are also sex offenders?
And how does getting a job work out when every single one of these kids are now on the sex offender registry and companies aren't allowed to hire them?
"Sorry, that's the law and it has to be enforced."
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Sad to say, but the only REAL way to deal with this is...
-maybe,
local employers will have to ignore the "child porn" FLAG on every job applicant
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Sad to say, but the only REAL way to deal with this is...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just another example of how laws "to protect the children" rarely do.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I disagree. We have to define the legal line between child and adult somewhere. We, as a society, have chosen 18 for that line (for most things). At 18 you can vote, own property, marry, make your own medical choices, serve in the military, etc. Why would you not also be responsible for your own actions at 18 too? Whether you have graduated high school or not is irrelevant here.
If you are going to argue that 18 is too young to be held responsible for ones' own actions, fine, but you must also argue that it's too young for ALL of the other responsibilities and consequences that come with legally becoming an adult.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
Well, actually, no, we don't. As a society we've just chosen to do so for the last several decades (at least).
There are lots of ways the system could be modified to make more sense. But they're not going to happen any time soon.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
No, societies have been defining the Age of Majority for quite awhile now. It was part of English common law and our current laws are based upon that. For most countries it is 18.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_majority
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Probably because people are stupid (and we didn't have the internet)
Except we already don't.
We can often drive as early as Fourteen. In California, the license is provisional (meaning you can only drive at day, and lose the privilege with very few infractions). The age varies from state to state.
In the United States, one is eligible for military service and to vote at Eighteen, but sexual consent can be as young as sixteen (I think -- New Mexico used to be the youngest at Thirteen years).
(And that's normal consenting intercourse with an opposite-sex partner. Many states have differing ages for same-sex partners. There are, obviously different ages for other acts, such as using video. Obviously our amateur porn and sexting laws need some serious adjustment.)
You can't drink, smoke or gamble until you're 21. In some places they have 1% beer that you can drink at 18. (Classical Root Beer or Sarsaparilla was 2%)
And then there are many offices you cannot hold until you are 25 or 35 respectively.
So yeah, once upon a time it made sense that after you came of a certain age or went through a specific ritual that you became an adult, but we already don't have that anymore.
So to properly embrace a variegated majority system we'd only need a means (or many) by which a person can be informed of their rights and responsibilities as they cross them, such as a schedule that can be dropped into their eCalendar of choice.
That's feasible at this point.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
In my area 16 year olds can marry with parental consent. I've heard of other areas allowing 14 yo this, again with parental consent. And in other countries - not the US - topless & nude modeling is allowed for as young as 14, in some cases requiring parental consent.
On the other hand: why is the legal age for buying, possessing, and consuming any alcoholic beverage in the US 21? And rumor has it there's a movement to do the same for tobacco.
So Gwiz' concept is a valid one: at what point (and age) do we consider a person to be an adult - with the responsibilities thereof?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Younger than 18-year-old models.
In the UK you can have photos taken at 16 which you can then consent to publish at 18. So occasionally they had sweet sixteens (or seventeens) in Mayfair.
Then around the nineties, someone in the US took notice and demanded they put an end to that nonsense.
The initial workaround was not to indicate the ages of those who were too young. Later they just stopped publishing models under eighteen.
And now a 17.9-year-old modeling nude is child porn in the US.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
But like I said, this is harder, so it'll never happen. The "justice" system just wants quick and easy prosecutions, not actual justice.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
I'm not sure that is plausible or even possible. What I am talking about is the Age of Majority or the point where a child legally becomes an adult. Would you require a physiological evaluation for every 18 year old who wants to vote in the next election or purchase a car or get married?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
We do when we want to. For example, "declaring" children to be an adults so that we can then punish them as adults. When it suits our purposes, it's no problem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
O.M.G. half of the USA will never be mentally mature, by scientific design...
where the frack do you have any tests to check the mental maturity???
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
That's because at the exact moment someone turns 18 *magic* happens. An instant before that they are a minor and wholly incapable of consenting. An instant afterwards and they are magically transformed into fully consenting adults. It's amazing, really, but true! A lot of people don't know or understand this, but luckily or legislators and courts do!
Remember, it's MAGIC!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re:
No, not magic. The legal line needs to be drawn *somewhere*. We have chosen 18.
Other societies have set the age of majority at different ages.
For example, in the Jewish religion you become a man at 13 (age 12 for women). In the eyes of the Jewish religion, you are considered a man (or woman) at that point and no longer a child.
The Roman Empire handled it a bit differently, you became of age when your father or tutors judged you "ready to wear a man's garb and start trimming your mustache".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Which would be better than the arbitrary age line and then arbitrarily saying some below that age line still qualify as being past that line so we can put them in prison longer.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Carnegie? Rockefeller?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Typical black or white thinking.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Typical black or white thinking.
Well that, and anyone who tries to do so will be smeared as protecting child molesters and other such bullshit.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Child molesters and pedophiles need protecting.
(This isn't all of them, obviously. But we tend to treat them all like John Wayne Gacy.)
In the 90s and aughts, it was a witch-hunt, and it still pretty much is, since we have more data but it's unpopular to actually look at it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Child molesters and pedophiles need protecting.
Think of any child abuse scandal there has been; indidents repeated for years and years until they were caught. Sorry, Uriel, I'm not buying it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Child molesters and pedophiles need protecting.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Child Sexual Abuse: A giant can of rant.
Unfortunately numbers for how often long-term child sexual abuse occurs in the population are not being easily found for me, so I'd have to research more than I'm willing to do at the moment. I doubt it's epidemic.
Obviously long term abuse is a problem when it happens, though I'm pretty sure that the solution is not to treat every CSA perpetrator as the wicked stepfather who victimized all his step-daughters one by one. Or, for that matter, as someone like Jimmy Saville
In the case of Jimmy Saville, or, for that matter the Roman Catholic Church, or Woody Allen, or Jerry Sandusky, or whoever... these are people with resources and reputation who were active during an era in which the testimonies of children (or of adult child-victims) was often not believed when weighed against the words of the famous person they were accusing. And these famous people typically also had fortune enough to launch a legal counterattack. Bill Cosby's transgressions (as a non-child-abuse example) were able to remain suppressed for a good part of a century, and they're still not entirely believed.
Note the pedo-witch-hunts were sparked off by the whole McMartin preschool affair in 1983 and 1984 which depended on testimonies from children that were conducted by folks who didn't realize children that young are highly suggestible, which is why their testimonies featured underground tunnels, Satanic Ritual Abuse, flying witches on broomsticks, hot-air balloon rides and Chuck Norris as one of the abusers. It resulted in acquittal. There may have been abuse, but whatever there was, it was obfuscated by the general desire for the allegations to be valid. One of the kids made a statement in 2005 denying any incidents of abuse. This also was pretty much the first time the public ever considered that diddling children might not actually be good for them. It was a rough start all around.
Famous people are pretty rare, let alone famous people who victimize children. So looking at the scandals of famous people is not a very good source from which to derive statistics for the general population.
Also, part of the problem is how child sexual abuse is defined, which is often for the convenience of the one talking about it, and whether you want to put someone away, or exonerate them.
Romeo and Juliet laws have been established nation wide in order to rule-out specific scenarios from being regarded as statutory rape (which is often a subcategory of CSA). It's indicative that teens being prosecuted for sexting themselves maybe should not be regarded as CSA or the production / distribution of child-porn. That we've seen other manipulations of the law, for instance giving the same person child status for sake of determining that their photos are child-porn, then adult status for sake of eligibility to be tried, indicates that use of CSA is often in bad faith, just to ruin lives.
In the meantime, throughout the twentieth century, it was perfectly legal to marry a nine-year-old girl in many states with parental consent (which they often gave, if the groom was an upstanding figure in the local religious community), after which the child would be expected to engage in marital duties at nine. Only in the nineties have all fifty of state laws regarding early-age marriages have been adjusted at least to requiring the assessment of a family judge in the interests of all parties (including the child bride). But still, having sex with a child is not considered CSA if she's married to you. (We also can't say that child marriages have ceased, since we have counties in which other extralegal marriages occur, such as polygyny.).
Then there's the case of Representative Mark Foley who was accused by his colleagues of child sexual abuse in 2006 for propositioning sixteen-year-old (male) pages. Inappropriate, yes, but not CSA. It was plenty enough to turn into a scandal. Maybe if he tried to coerce them, but I don't believe he did.
But we have strong instincts to protect our urchins, especially from the kind of monsters that we think Bruce Willis should shoots in the face at the end of a movie. If an author puts an infant in Godzilla's path, the whole universe will warp to assure that he doesn't step on li'l miss pink-toes. But all that goes out the window when the children are the uncounted faceless that got lost on Alderaan. So really it sucks to be a kid in the US. We have ridiculous numbers homeless and starving. Most children only see their parent(s) exhausted after a full day's work. Our schools have become militarized zero-tolerance penitentiaries. Foster care is a poorly-regulated nightmare. The bar for satisfactory childcare in the home has dropped to the ground, since the only alternative is to rehome kids to foster care or juvie. Child beauty pageants are still a thing. We still portray our children as sexual objects in our mainstream media. Our education system still doesn't include consent or limits and boundaries, even though both of these concepts are useful not just in sexual negotiation, but day-to-day interaction, and would probably vastly reduce the rape problem. And then child rape victims are still regarded as used goods after the fact.
This list goes on and on, and this is just America (on the global scale, the human trafficking trade makes our local CSA issues look like a hoodlum stealing apples from the local produce. When your parents threatened to sell you to the gypsies, it was into this market. A white virginal American girl is particularly coveted and can fetch $25k). In the meantime, yeah, in this incident above, we'll just convict the ones we can try as adults for distributing child porn and tag them like all other CSA perps as a sex offender. Do you think they deserve it? Do you think their scarlet letters will help them rehabilitate? And in the meantime, there are so many other ways in which we could be trying to make life better for kids, but aren't.
Attacking pedophiles is easy so we do it a lot without a wit of interest in actual child-welfare issues. Making the United States a not-terrible place to be when you're a kid involves actually dealing with children. And who wants to do that?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Child Sexual Abuse: A giant can of rant.
Or my friend's ex-husband who did it to his own daughters. :-( Cannot even comprehend.
In the meantime, throughout the twentieth century, it was perfectly legal to marry a nine-year-old girl in many states with parental consent
Do you have any reference for that? Can't find anything on WP.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
It's precisely BECAUSE they remember what they were like as teens that they can't bear the thought of their kids getting up to the same things. Simple jealousy in many cases - unable to bear the idea of being 'old' and of no longer being the 'cool kids'.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
That's destruction of evidence and you just bought yourself up to 10 years in prison, even if you were innocent of the underlying crime.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
More Accurate Headline
Now what do they do?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: More Accurate Headline
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: More Accurate Headline
FLIP THE FUCK OUT...
that is what they are planning to do!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: More Accurate Headline
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Astounding Hypocrisy from School Officials
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This is the only sensible part of the whole situation. I guess it depends on how you define 'illegal': 'unwanted' vs 'you're under 18 so everything'
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
This seems like an amazingly good use of resources. o_O
Perhaps some grownups can stop thinking of this as some sort of evil porn trading conspiracy and arrange for some assemblies. Explain how badly this can go, that before you send a picture like that to anyone understand they might show it to others.
Rather than scare them with the full weight of the law, perhaps treating them like kids who didn't know any better would be a better play. If you don't explain it to them, you can't expect them to know any better. We no longer dare teach sex education and a majority of 'net teaching is about not telling the stranger you are home alone and unlocking the door for them.
I do think it would be appropriate to make sure no one was forced to join in, but to remember there is a difference between peer pressure and actual threats/abuse.
This case should make an impression, that the law isn't keeping up with reality. Pretending that your kid would NEVER do something like this no longer works. The law should protect kids but at the same time treat kids experimenting like kids experimenting, not as sexual deviants preying on others.
Or should the state just start using all of the extra income to build little one room prison schools to keep all of these new sex offender registry recipients away from each other?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Which is why the registry is likely to grow more useless as these events happen. When you lump in naive children with real sex offenders just because you can't use common sense, the registry becomes less and less relevant.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I smell BS
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Haven't you heard of prosecutory discretion?
That way, if he doesn't like you, he can nail you for everything including starting the Chicago Fire and then plea-bargain down to five years.
If he likes you, eh...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Lack of basic comprehension about messaging
Nearly everyone on the Internet receives email every day that they not only don't knowingly possess, but that they don't even want to possess. It's called "spam".
In addition, a sizable number of those people receive phishes that are designed and crafted so that people will choose to possess them (and respond to them). This may well be an instance of "knowingly possessing" but that's only because the recipients are incapable of detecting sufficiently well-engineered forgeries. (Or in many cases, incapable of detecting horribly-engineered forgeries.)
Beyond that, anybody who receives high volumes of e-mail traffic is unlikely to read all of it. Some of it will be filed and filtered. Some of it will be discarded. Some of it will be saved. Some of it might receive eyeball attention but that doesn't necessarily extend to attachments: a quick scan of the textual message body may well result in a decision to defer a full reading until later.
And so on. My point is that the quoted statement is completely disconnected from how email systems work and how people interact with them. It presumes that it's possible to read someone's intent by examining their inbox(es), and that's flat-out wrong.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Lack of basic comprehension about messaging
Plus how can one be "aware of the nature of its contents"? That's like getting an unknown box in the mail with your name on it and knowing whats inside.
Regardless, "sexting" is "sex texting", not email. Two different types of messages and delivery systems. You also cannot BLOCK incoming calls and messages on cell phones, carriers do not let you.
Hopefully this will allow some sort of acceptance on this as long as both parties are willing, participating, and within a certain acceptable age of each other (3yrs max).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
If the D.A. isn't prosecuting minors for masturbation and calling it self-sexual assault, then consensually taking a picture of yourself naked while under 18 can't be considered child pornography.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Response to: Anonymous Coward on Nov 9th, 2015 @ 11:39am
So the kids could legally be having sex, but taking a picture is a felony.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The prosecutor sounds a bit more reasonable. What we are finding is that public servants are using less and less "discretionary power" because they don't want to take any responsibility that may jeopardize their job/position. That's why almost in every single case they just went ahead with prosecution without using their head first.
I am afraid to say that the prosecutor may only be using discretion only because of the number of students involved. The idiom "Too big to fail" seems appropriate here.
Be a lesson to you kids, if you want to do this, grab another 99 friends with you so the justice system won't just sweep you under the rag without thinking.
If that sounds idiotic, it is, and that's what this broken and fearful American society has grow into with their tough on crime and fear-monger law making.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And if a 15 or 16 year old can be "tried as an adult" for murder, then why not for these (minors-only) crimes as well ... which would mean that no crime even occurred.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just leave things alone
This crap makes me mad. Last month I read about a 17yr old getting tried as a adult for child pornography because he was sexting his 17yr old girlfriend. WTF. If both parties are of similar age (1-3yrs) then leave it alone.
This blurred line of underage but tried as an adult is crap. I have always been older than my girlfriends. When I was 18, I was dating a 15yr old. When I was 20 my girlfriend was 17 (almost 18). We have been together for 12 years and have children together. I am 32 and she just turned 30 (about 2.5yrs apart).
Funny thing is about the guy above that was found guilty of child pornography... what about his 17yr old gf who had nude pics of him. Oh yea she gets a pass because shes a girl.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Just leave things alone
You're forgetting: the de-facto "On The Internet/Made use of technology" modifier takes the behavior out of the realm of adolescence and pushes it straight into the "Unambiguously Evil" section of law.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
How can we prosecute the DA if he fails in his duty to prosecute these children?
Abraham Lincoln
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
How can we prosecute the DA if he fails in his duty to prosecute these children?
Abraham Lincoln
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Law is The Law
I bet they didn't have permission to copy those images either, so we can add copyright violations in as well.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: The Law is The Law
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Send the DA nudes
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Send the DA nudes
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Send the DA nudes
Laws of this type are usually written to exempt the police, prosecutors, judges and legislators themselves.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Another facet of the problem
The law is fucking stupid.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Extended infantilization
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Extended infantilization
I believe that Judaism considers males to be adults at age 13. Females in Judaism are apparently slower to develop mentally are not considered to be adults until age 21.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Extended infantilization
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Extended infantilization
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Yes unless they had cash to buy the car (in fact in many US States doesn't someone have to be 21 to enter into a contract, such as car loan, another piece of nuttery), anybody who wants to do the other two things at 18 is automatically suspect. Would you require one for everyone aged 17 yrs and 364 days?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
It's age 18 in most states. That is why I included it as part of my examples.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Someday we're going to realize we can't just igore when our teens get sexually curious.
Maybe we should stop that, and, you know, COMPLETELY RETHINK how we regard our adolescent kids...and how we regard other people's kids (e.g. maybe not as vermin larvae?)
Right now, it seems that bunches of old people are freaking out about kids being sexually demonstrative, and turning to the old saw that if we just beat the tar out of them they'll grow up right.
Because that worked before.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Someday we're going to realize we can't just igore when our teens get sexually curious.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So if anybody who isn't working for the government looked at those pics
So apparently if you want free child porn, work for Uncle Sam.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
US screwed up attitude towards sexuality and in particular childhood sexuality.
Truth be told the headline would more accurately read:
'Hundreds' Of Teens Found Sexting At EVERY School.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Hundreds of teens sexting at every school.
Maybe that's the problem. Maybe the scale of this incident is big enough to be embarrassing, but not big enough to indicate that the problem is bigger than the administrators.
Maybe we need thousands of kids across many schools (and districts) before they'll decide maybe little boys and little girls just like each other and want to express it. It's safer than Romeo and Juliette sex, after all.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Cañon City
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ca%C3%B1on_City,_Colorado
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WITH KIDDIE PORN who looked into this
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
it seems that some of these people, The administrator, possibly the DA in question, have also the same level of decision making capabilities.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I expect it's about adult panic.
And so scapegoating a few 18.2-year-olds to appease the freaking out parents may be regarded as the easiest option with the least amount of school liability.
So it's a cover-your-ass solution rather than one that recognizes some real truths about human development.
The United States is seriously hung up about sex, and we're in a strong conservative swing, which is why kids (particularly girls) are often lectured about how despicable they are if they ever use their genitals once (or get them non-consensually used for them). Because that works about as well as just say no.
Yes. They're teaching in public schools that one rape and you're expended and valueless.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Stop confiscating cell phones to support your sick and demented perversions.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgkZGiCe4bI
Video description:
School gives student detention for hugging a friend.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Show the pictures...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Show the pictures...
__________
* For the last nine weeks, in solitary 23.5 hours a day, thanks to the SFPD's somewhat belated, undeniably overheated press release about her arrest.
** I've known her for 14 years -- and the first indication I ever had of her alleged interest in such things was when I stepped from my office into my bedroom to see who could possibly be knocking on the front door at 6:45 in the morning, and found myself staring down the barrel of an FBI Glock.***
*** I'm a little biased, I suppose, since the feds walked off with my primary work PC and about 3 Tbytes of storage -- including all my backups , natch -- which I have yet to have returned. (For months, I had no idea exactly what they had taken, as they left no inventory. Turns out this was due to a carbon-paper failure, as the recording agent had insertd the carbon upside down, so the list they left amidst all the carnage didn't include anything of mine seized.) The feds claim there was offending material on my PC -- but they can't tell me what, exactly. Other than the possibility I had a copy of "Smart Alec" in a collection of stags and smokers I occasionally used as a VJ, I have no idea what that might be.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You know the old saying about bad laws
Sadly it may be the that the best solution long term is to try to enforce the stupid-ass law en mass. When the first clearly-wrong prosecution didn't cause them to get the hint that may be the only thing to beat their brains out with a cluebat.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
For now, though, there's been far more restraint exercised than has been exhibited by others in the same situation.
Obviously. You'd need to be whatever-levels of dumb to put over 100 kids in jail. This sort of thing was needed to put that dilemma into the hands of both society and the authorities: do we go ahead and incarcerate hundreds (if not thousands) of children and young adults or do we finally sit down and admit this is incredibly common and we need to address it in a sane way?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And I perfectly agree. Put all 100 kids behind bars... In fact do it all over the country! :D :D :D
Maybe the parents will be outraged enough at that point to force "the powers that be" to make appropriate changes to the laws.
It seems that lately only tragedies of magnitude seem to move the masses enough to care.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Just take the phones
If you are not willing, and hopefully he isn't, to charge horny teens for being who they are, then just take the "tools of crime" or whatever away and have the school bar those kids from having phones again.
What else is there to do? Expel 1/3 of the student body?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Just take the phones
A school doesn't have the authority to do that. Neither does a DA.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
National Dick Pic Day
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Care vs coddling
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
if a "child" sends a naked photo to all the employees of the school (teachers and admin staff),
then they must be all jailed and fired for possession of child porn in their emails,
RIGHT???
that is a lot of power for a child to have.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
and the fall on consumption (due to the end of war)
"we" have implemented after WWII the follwing:
-extended childhood + forced schooling
-consumerism
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
sexting
I would love to be a fly on the wall when some little 14 or 15 year old girl tries to explain to her parents why there's dozens of photos of her boobs and crotch all over school. I would also like to hear some 17 or 18 year old HS guy try and explain what he is doing with and trading nude pics of a 12 year old middle school child. Stupidity always has a price and these students were shit stupid.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: sexting
Because teens are known for their good judgment and maturity?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Maybe try thinking it through?
We're removing critical thinking from high-school curricula because our administrators and officials are afraid of children that might be able to think for themselves, and you expect them to know better? They're exactly the idiots we ordered from the catalog.
Incidentally stupid, lazy and crazy are our primary lame justifications for fuck those guys.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sexting
The eight year old girl that lives next door told me to never put anything on the internet or let someone put anything on their digital device that you don't want everyone to see because everyone will eventually see it. Pretty perspicacious for a eight year old but I think most kids know that. All but the foolish ones at Canon apparently. Actually I suspect many did know how wrong, foolish and dangerous what they were doing was but just went along with peer pressure and what they thought others wanted. Too bad they couldn't think for themselves, then they wouldn't be in this mess.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Sexting
The parts of the brain in charge of things like self-control don't fully mature until some time in the 20s.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Says you. To a 17 year old, that's only a five year difference, and the only thing we tell them regarding sex is just say no, without acknowledging at all that it's the primary drive that's kept our species alive for the last one hundred thousand years.
If they were in a hunter-gatherer society, a 12-year-old fooling around with a 18-year-old would be well within the realm of normal.
It's your society that has sexual hang-ups. It's your society that has no empathy for teens. It's even your society that has pushed to keep kids ignorant.
Japan's society also wants to keep sex restricted by license controlled by elder authorities, and they're going through a massive depopulation, where men are just disinterested in bothering with the responsibility shit because it's overwhelming, so they jack off every night to idealized anime girls.
If that's the society you want, keep blaming the kids.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Pedos
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Pedos
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Pedos
Probably, if they were fishing for a house to raid. I'd really rather they take an interest in the work, because the reality of what is what is far more complex than Burn the heretic. Kill the mutant. Purge the unclean.
Shocked and terrified administrators are a common thing because most grade schools are large enough that not a day goes by with kids having intercourse in the bathroom. And yet all the way through high-school we treat our kids like their sudden interest in sex is their problem that they should just ignore. And then we wonder why teenage pregnancy skyrockets in regions that allow only abstinence only education.
Kids are going to fool around. Your kids. Unless you choose to not have them, or unless you choose to beat them hard enough to keep them in the hospital (which is considered child abuse). We can either keep doing what we're doing and stay shocked (shocked!) that sexual activity is going on among our adolescents
Or we can reform society so that it accommodates and guides what is biologically normal behavior (and has been for hundreds of thousands of years) so that our kids transform into functional socially well-adjusted adults.
Regarding that, I'm desperate for the police or the department of justice or some judges to take an interest in my work.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Crap. Posting before coffee.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]