Colo. students in sexting scandal could face felony charges

[sarisataka]

Source: CBS

Colorado parents are outraged and concerned as school district officials reveal new details on the "large scale" sexting scandal at Canon City High School.

The school district says the scandal involves an equal number of boys and girls -- including some who are only in eighth grade - who could face felony charges. This is forcing parents and administrators to re-evaluate how they monitor teen activity in a high-tech world, reports CBS News correspondent Carter Evans.

At an emergency meeting Thursday night, concerned parents learned that possibly hundreds of students at Canon City High may have been collecting and trading nude pictures of themselves and friends on their cell phones, like trading baseball cards.

"It was flooring to find so many and there are more we don't know about," said Principal Brett Meuli.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/canon-city-high-school-sexting-scandal-students-could-face-felony-charges/

[villager]

1. So let's show much we care by charging them all with Felonies!

Surely, they'll be likelier to listen to and believe adult words about compassion, and good boundaries, after that!

[jtuck004]

3. Damn right. They might have seen nipples, and everyone knows those are a gateway drug to heroin.

Put the kids in prison where they can be looked after.

[villager]

6. That'll teach 'em to make bad decisions! We'll keep modeling worse ones!

[jtuck004]

7. Teach the children. n/t

[olegramps]

22. These are kids for god's sake. Some of these so-called officials are ridiculous.

They could find themselves being charged with a felony and made to register as sex predators for the rest of the lives. Kids make immature decisions, but it takes a so-called adult to choose to make absolutely horrendous mean spirited decisions. We have allowed some administrators to go from the ridiculous to absolute asinine such as expelling a six year old for kissing a classmate.

[NonMetro]

2. Probably Tip Of The Iceberg

As the one guy said, this is probably going on everywhere. Concern would be with either coercion or kiddie-porn.

[Crunchy Frog]

13. Problem is the law doesn't make a distinction

Between kids taking pictures of themselves and adults engaging in kiddie porn. These kids will now be registered sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

[NonMetro]

14. New technologies, new problems, few answers

The sex offender registries are worrisome. They were created for really bad people, rapists, child pornographers, etc., but now they're snaring some who really shouldn't be on it. There has to be some common sense applied to these laws.

[denverbill]

4. This is not why child porn laws exist. This is ridiculous, and not an isolated event.

Child porn laws were intended to prosecute adults who preyed on young children, not teenagers being teenagers. If there was a 25 year old adult paying them money to do this and distributing the pictures online, THAT'S child pornography.

You can't commit a crime against yourself. While this will obviously be very embarrassing and possibly damaging to the kids involved, that alone should be their punishment.

[EL34x4]

12. What if the kids themselves put the pictures on-line

And then much older adults find them and circulate them within the pedo community?

Teens who think only their friends look at their social media pages are naive. I'm sure there's plenty of creepy old men who spend a great deal of time mining social media accounts for "sexy" photos of underage kids.

[passiveporcupine]

16. So the kids should be punished for what some adult does?

No, I think we need to rethink how we view the human nude body and sexuality, especially pertaining to youth, who are just learning about sex and nudity in society, and maybe don't feel it's as taboo as most of us adults do.

[markpkessinger]

19. The article says nothing about posting pics to social media pages . . .

. . . and in any case, most social media sites explicitly forbid such photos to be posted, and will take them down quickly if they are. The article is talking about sexting: you know, like texting. It's person-to-person, cell phone to cell phone. It's not like just anybody can mine cell phones for pics (well, except for the NSA), so the notion that this poses some great risk of a kid exposing himself/herself to a pedophile is greatly exaggerated.

As long as there are adolescents with more hormones raging at any given time than they know what to do with, they are going to find ways to explore their sexuality with other adolescents, And parents will never be entirely comfortable thinking about that fact. Criminalizing a perfectly natural stage of human development is ludicrous.

[EL34x4]

20. Plenty of social media sites allow nude images.

Twitter, for example. I also believe it is naive to think these images will only remain on smart phones.

While I don't agree that these kids should have the full force of the law brought down upon them, my post above was only to highlight other, unforeseen consequences with teens producing and trading digital images of other nude teens.

What we are dealing with is a situation where the law can't keep up with rapid technological advances. The practice is nothing new though. I recall a photography class I took in high school back in the mid 80s. Students were allowed to use the darkroom after class. What kind of photos do you think kids developed when they had the privacy of the darkroom to themselves, free from adult supervision? If you answered "naked pics" you are correct. Of course, they weren't widely disseminated. Paper was expensive and kids were a little more discrete.

[-none]

5. If we had a healthier view of our own sexuality, this would not be a problem.

One - it would be less likely to happen in the first place.
And two - if and when it did occur, we would know how to handle it much better than we do.
A felony charge for the teens because the adults in the room can't handle the raging hormones of our teenagers? Get real.
It is a symptom caused by our warp views of sex and our sexuality, that this country has.

[blackspade]

8. Felony charges? Bullshit!

They are just kids for fuck sake.
Typical authoritarian overreach.
Perhaps this should be an educational moment?

But no, only PUNISHMENT will satisfy the 'holier than thou' among us.

I'm sure they will be along shortly....

[Kalidurga]

9. It seems to me that this isn't something anyone in law enforcement should have been looking at.

Or don't children have a right to privacy and/or not having their nude pictures looked at by adults?

[EL34x4]

10. If you are a parent, you have an interest in knowing

if there are nude photos of minors on electronic devices in your home.

[840high]

11. I do.

[Kalidurga]

15. yes but this shouldn't be a law enforcement issue

perhaps family court or some other non criminal investigative branch of the government. Social workers maybe should handle this. If its kids showing kids nude selfies then that is just the electronic version of playing doctor. Unless they can show someone over 18 was orchestrating this it's not a criminal matter. LEOs looking at this stuff seems to me a violation of the kids privacy unless it's shown that a crime was committed.

[Festivito]

17. Possibly pedophilic prosecutors perusing prurient pics pinky-point pubescent prosecutions.

Procuring personal promotions.

[Scuba]

18. Perfect!!

[Festivito]

21. Plus prosecutors' personal prosecution prevented - powerfully prohibited - purposefully pooh-poohed.

Provoking power-poor passionately pissed people perusing politics possible panic.

[Scuba]

23. Perhaps potentially provacative. Partly.

[tabasco]

24. Throw 'em in jail! It's the American way.

YEEEHAAH!!

[snort]

25. Yes, throw them all in prison.

That'll teach them who's got the morals.




By the way, notice how great Bing is for porn?

[wordpix]

26. "mere possession of these materials does constitute an ongoing crime"

If teens are sexting each other, it's hardly criminal but it's just stupid. Teach them that creepy sex predators can see the pix, too---that ought to chill the teens.

[Sunlei]

27. with our 'laws'-all it takes is one parent to see the text-pic & call the police OR the school

Our laws make 'criminals' of children.