Thoughts on charging children with child porn charges

[NJmaverick]

The latest trends are for teens to post need pictures or send nude pictures of themselves. Some prosecutors are charging the children that do this with sex crimes.

NJ girl, 14, arrested after posting nude pics

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090327/ap_on_re_us/teen_child_porn

What are your thoughts on the matter?

[BlooInBloo]

1. It's stupid. Teenagers are horny. That's what it means to be a teenager...

They're going to express it with the tools of the day. Nowadays, that means sexting, camera phones and webcams.

Like Atrios says:

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2009/03/sexting.html

[AlphaCentauri]

19. the voyeuristic society is indoctrinating teens to act like that

teens are just imitating what they see on TV and magazines, the glamor of begin and object not a human.

[Dogmudgeon]

2. The prosecutors are too career-minded

Exploiting teen sex scandals is the easiest way in the world for a prosecutor to make himself look tough. It's all CV juice.

--d!

[pipi_k]

3. I think it's just as stupid as when

little kids were being expelled from school in the aftermath of 9/11 for bringing fucking plastic knives to school in their lunch boxes.

Now they're gonna charge KIDS with child porn? Ahhhh...nothing like seeing things that don't exist.

There's a reason why kids...teenagers...can't legally be allowed to do certain things (at least not without parental permission anyway). It's because they're KIDS, and (in the words of Judge Judy) they're "not cooked yet". They're STUPID....and I don't say that in a mean way. They're just dumb and don't think of consequences.

What's going on...are prosecutors running out of real criminals to prosecute???

[Kansas Wyatt]

4. The laws they are using were designed for pedophiles harming children.

Anyone who does not display any judgment and/or discretion, should not be the prosecutor presenting the case or the judge hearing the charge. Sorry, but unless the prosecutor refuses to pursue the case or the judge refuses to allow it in his court, then they don't deserve to have their positions.

What's next? Locking up 4 & 5 year olds for showing each other their pee pee?

[-..__...]

5. It's a difficult call.

By every letter of the way the law banning possession and/or disseminating child pornography is written, the minors involved are guilty.

The problem arises because the law(s), has not kept pace with the technology involved (as if anyone could have foreseen or predicted kids "sexting" one another or posting the pics on their personal websites).

If that same girl had instead invited xxx number of boys out behind the barn for a little 'show and tell' (that's the way we did it when I was a kid :smoke:), there would have been no crime committed or outrage/concern.

I think it's out of line/going overboard prosecuting the offenders for doing so... especially when they face the possibility of being a registered sex offender for life.

It's perfectly fine for police to be investigating these incidents simply to verify that no adults or coercion are involved.

Once it has been determined that it's just sexual curiosity and kids being kids, it should be handed over to the parents (and school depending on the circumstances), to deal with.

[pnutbutr]

6. using the law for things it was never meant for

This trend of prosecuting kids and making them sex offenders is just stupid. The girl in this case was charged with possessing child pornography for having pictures of herself. This is in no way what the law was meant for and it needs to stop.

Kids are stupid and will do stupid things but don't need to be paying for it the rest of their lives. Being on the sex offender registry eliminates many possible futures for a child.

[NeedleCast]

7. Punishment Nation Demands Its Pound of Flesh

Sadly, a lot of these kids who are just doing the dumb (and natural) things teens do are going to wind up labeled as sex offenders and on a permanent list.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

17. These are the real perverts.

They can't get a hard on except by making somebody else's life miserable -- but it has to be the "weaker," the "inferior."

[ixion]

8. how many laws are we away from becoming a population of felons?

It's becoming increasingly difficult to be human in our inhumane society.

[midnight]

9. Don't think much of using the courts for children expressing

themselves.

[customerserviceguy]

21. Do you really believe

that a child taking a nude picture of themselves is exactly the same kind of self-expression that an adult taking such a picture is?

Is there a difference between the sexual expression of adults, and that of children, even if we may disagree on the age of the line where 'child' and 'adult' is?

[lumberjack_jeff]

10. The point of child porn laws is to prevent their exploitation by grownups.

absent that exploitation, I don't see how the law is applicable.

That is not to say that it should be accepted.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

11. This was reported on last night's NY news. They interviewed a woman who works on protecting

children online from predators. She thinks this is ridiculous but said that the prosecutors didn't have a law that would cover this, so they went for child pornography.

Personally, I think this whole thing is idiotic.

[Lyric]

12. In this case, the letter of the law completely undermines the spirit of the law.

If a 15-year-old kid steals a beer from Mom and Dad's fridge and drinks it, should he be charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor? If two eleven-year-olds are playing "doctor" and the grownups catch them, should they each be charged with statutory rape, or child molestation?

Seriously--when the "spirit" of the law that was MEANT to protect children from adult predators is THIS easy to subvert, then the law is too broad and needs to be re-written.

[surrealAmerican]

13. They are being charged with the wrong crime.

The whole point of child pornography laws is to keep children from being exploited. You could perhaps charge a child who is "sexting" with indecent exposure, just like you would if they were doing the same thing "live", but that is not the same thing as pornography.

[customerserviceguy]

18. On the other hand

pre-teens have been playing "doctor" for generations, the only thing that's been lacking is a cell phone with picture-taking capability. However, there's no doubt that seven and eight year olds have access to such things, and other forms of easy to use digital photography. Once they stupidly post these pictures on the Internet, the perverts can get their jollies just hunting down the photos.

In the cases we've heard about, we might just have the wrong approach, but this practice needs to be discouraged somehow. The only alternative is to regard the nude or semi-nude pictures that children take of themselves and other children (with 'permission') as being the exact same thing that adult pictures are. I'm not able to concede that.

[WolverineDG]

14. Are we supposed to be shocked

that teen girls are taking bra & panty shots of themselves & sending them to teen boys who want to see pics of girls in their bras & panties?

However, if we lock up all the teens for kiddie porn, we won't have to yell at 'em to get off our lawns.

:eyes:

dg

[KittyWampus]

15. teens are still developing the part of the brain that thinks things through for consequences

So rather than charging them with a crime, counseling would seem to be in order.

Effective counseling. Not boring lectures from some authority figure the teen will deem clueless.

Also, teens are experiencing sexual drive. It'd be great to offer them outlets for that energy. Like investing in school sports, arts programs etc.

Kind of like drugs. It isn't "just say no". It's "say yes to more productive uses of your time".

[AlphaCentauri]

16. teens can't buy a beer but they can expose them selves nude on myspace?

there should be some way to stop this none sense, I'm glad the young girl got cough before a predator could get a hand on her.

Ban pornography and legalize prostitution.

[aikoaiko]

20. Something needs to be done to stop it.

It needs to stop to protect the minors from harming themselves once the images are distributed.

Yes, the spirit of the law envisioned adults exploited unwilling minors, but child pornography laws do not require the minor to be unwilling. If a 14 year old girl begged adult to take nude or explicit photos and the adult did so, it would still be child porn.

On the other hand, treating a child who takes pictures of him/herself and distributes them like a sex offender is ridiculous.


There probably needs to be a new law. I'm surprised there isn't something in juvenile code that deals with children engaging in risky/potentially self-injurious behavior.

[blogslut]

22. According to the article

The particular girl in question is being prosecuted under the auspices of Megan's law - totally not a law having to do with child porn or the distribution of it. Megan's law is an anti-predator/sex offender law.

The article later mentions:

In northeastern Pennsylvania, a prosecutor recently threatened to file child porn charges against three teenage girls who authorities say took racy cell-phone pictures that ended up on classmates' cell phones.

Note that that prosecutor threatened but has not charged the suspects with CP.

Is it right to charge an underage person with a sex offender crime for sending their own nude photo or a dirty text message? Is it right to charge them with the distribution of CP?

No on both counts.

Those laws are for adults that do harm to minors.

Frankly, this is a matter for Juvenile courts and Juvenile laws. They need to write laws that encompass this. While consensual exchange of personal smut between minors is probably more offensive to parents than it is to the children themselves, there will undoubtedly be instances where the exchange is not consensual and crosses into the territory of harassment.

[libodem]

23. God I hope they don't look down in the bath tub

and see their own child bodies. Nasty creatures.