Teens have been charged with child porn, sent to jail and even forced to register as sex offenders for “sexting.” But now some Vermont lawmakers want to pass a bill that would give kids legal cover if they send X-rated photos and videos to each other.
Supporters are quick to say that they don’t condone sexting — they just don’t want the teens to be put in the same category as your run-of-the-mill child molester. “There’s no public interest in labeling them as sex offenders for engaging in a perverted, albeit new, form of courtship,” T.J. Donovan, a county prosecutor, told the Burlington Free Press.
The proposed law would make it legal for explicit photos to be consensually exchanged between those ages 13 to 18.
In Ohio, lawmakers also are considering legal protections for sexting teens. The bill proposes that incidents be charged as a misdemeanor so that teens are not labeled as felons and sex offenders. For adults, though, transmitting nude photos of minors would still be a felony.
Dena Christofferson sure had a lot to say. In one month, the 13-year-old Cheyenne, Colo., girl sent 10,000 text messages and received about the same number. Her family’s phone plan didn’t include texting so Verizon charged them for every “LOL,” “cul8r” and other messages. The damage: $4,756.25.
Gregg Christofferson wanted to make sure it wouldn’t happen again, so he smashed Dena’s phone with a hammer. Naturally, she was also grounded for the rest of the school year.
Dena sent most of the messages during school, and her grades reflect that – she went from A’s and B’s to F’s, her parents told KUSA TV News. Mom and dad also are asking officials at Johnson Junior High to crack down on other kids. Maybe they’ll have to go back to passing notes.
A Pennsylvania prosecutor had threatened to file child porn charges against three teens featured in explicit photos. But U.S. District Judge James Munley decided to temporarily block the charges after a lawsuit was filed contending that the photos were not pornographic and the teens never consented to having their pictures distributed.
One photo is of a teen girl who has just gotten out of the shower and is topless. The other picture shows two girls in their bras. The images were widely distributed among students at Tunkhannock Area High School in northeastern Pennsylavnia in October, where boys were trading racy photos of teen girls. Sexting has become a phenomenon among teens, and many have been arrested on child porn charges and even jailed.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit saying charging the Pennsylvania teens was too heavy-handed. “This country needs to have a discussion about whether prosecuting minors as child pornographers for merely being impulsive and naive is the appropriate way to address the serious consequences” of sexting, Witold Walczack, the state ACLU legal director told the Associated Press.
County prosecutor George Skumanick Jr. said he may appeal the judge’s decision. Previously, he had offered to not file charges if the girls participated in an after-school program about sexual harassment, sexual violence and gender roles. Seventeen other students at the school have accepted a similar offer.
An Indiana teen secretly videotaped two other teens having sex and then sent the footage to other kids. Police began investigating after the embarassed girl in the video contacted authorities. The kid who made the video could face criminal charges, such as possession of child porn, WISH TV News reported.
The taping of the 15-year-old girl and 14-year-old boy having consensual sex occurred at a party on Saturday, according to a police report obtained by the Johnson County Daily Journal. By Monday, students at Indian Creek High School were viewing the video on their cell phones.
Other teen sexting incidents have been investigated by police nationwide, but nearly all have simply involved nude photos, not sex acts.
Jessie Logan ended the relationship with her boyfriend, but the X-rated photo that she sent him in happier times couldn’t be stopped. After their break-up, the naughty picture of the Cincinnati teen went viral, passed to hundreds of other students. Harassment soon followed.
“They’d call her slut, whore, a skank,” said Lauren Taylor, one of Jessie’s friends, in an interview with WLWT TV News. “They’d say that she was just trying to be a porn star.”
In July, Jessie hanged herself in her bedroom. Her mother is now going public with Jessie’s suicide in an attempt to warn other teens about the dangers of sexting – and bullying. “She was being attacked and tortured,” Cynthia Logan said on NBC’s Today Show.
Jessie’s mom and friends say that she changed from a vivacious, fun teenager into a depressed introvert who skipped school. No matter what she did, it seemed as if technology would not let her escape embarassment. “When she would leave school, she would get on her MySpace or her Facebook, and then kids would be messaging her on that or texting her phone, people she didn’t even know,” Lauren said. Jessie’s cell phone was found not too far from her body, on the bedroom floor.
Photo from NBC Today Show Web site
Sixteen-year-old Tyrell Littlebird was so engrossed in his cell phone that he drove into an oncoming lane of traffic, barely missed swiping a car and then plowed onto a sidewalk in Billings, Mont., authorities said.
Breanne Ledbetter was pushing her 16-month-old son in a stroller when Tyrell’s car slammed into them. The little boy had to wear a body cast for six weeks, KULR TV News reported. The mother, 29, suffered a broken hand and a concussion. Tyrell, however, wasn’t finished. He hit two fences, got out of his damaged car and tried to flee.
On Wednesday, Tyrell pleaded guilty to felony criminal endangerment charges for the November rampage. He’ll be sentenced in March, but since he was charged in youth court, the maximum sentence would be for him to be held until he’s 21.
It wasn’t reported who Tyrell was texting or the contents of the message.
A Wisconsin teenager willingly sent a nude photo of herself to her boyfriend when they were still gooey eyed for each other. But after the romance died, the cad promptly forwarded it to other kids.
This week, police asked parents to check their teen’s cell phones for the illicit photo of the 14-year-old girl, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported. Cops are going all out on this investigation — teens’ computers have been seized to see whether the photo was sent over the Internet, and there’s talk of booking the kids on felony possession of child porn.
“We know it’s a hard stance, but how else do we deal with this?” Waukesha police Capt. Mark Stigler told the newspaper.
This isn’t the first sexting scandal at Waukesha West High School. One couple exchanged nude photos to each other last week, police said. They were slapped with disorderly conduct citations, but didn’t face more serious charges because nobody else had the pics.
Read previous Minor Troubles coverage of sexting here.
A 14-year-old Wisconsin girl who refused to stop texting during class was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, according to the Smoking Gun. The Wauwatosa East High School student’s math teacher told her to stop texting, but she refused.
When confronted by a school security officer, the girl, whose name is being withheld because she is a juvenile, initially denied that she had a phone. But a female cop frisked the texter and found the offending piece of technology in “the buttocks area.”
Barred from school property for a week, the texting teen was charged with disorderly conduct, a criminal citation, and paid a bail of $298. As for her phone, it’s been confiscated.
And you thought your teen has a bad texting habit.
In a new twist on the teen sexting trend, Curtis Pickard, 17, a student at Greenbrier High School in Georgia allegedly took “upskirt” photos of his teacher with his cell phone.
On Monday, Curtis secretly snapped photos of the legs and underwear of teacher Ellen Hotchkiss, 33, according to the Smoking Gun. After Curtis showed the photos to other students, some of them reported the images to a school safety officer who seized the phone. Hotchkiss “identified her legs and underwear from the previous day,” according to a sheriff’s report.
Curtis, who was released from jail after posting a $2,600 bond, has been charged with unlawful eavesdropping or surveillance, which is a felony.
Photo by Meryl CA
Drivers yakking on cellphones are a big safety problem for themselves, other vehicles and pedestrians, so much so that states have outlawed communication that isn’t “hands-free.” Now a new cellphone peril is presenting itself: oblivious kids who cross the road while chatting or texting.
The potential for harm may seem obvious, but doctoral student Despina Stavrinos has helpfully confirmed it in a study published in the journal Pediatrics. Her team at the University of Alabama studied the reactions of 77 children ages 10 and 11 while crossing a simulated road six times without a phone and six times while talking on the phone with a research assistant.
The result: the chatting kids took about 20 percent longer to begin crossing the street, and forgot to look both ways 20 percent of the time, making them 43 percent more likely to be hit by a vehicle or have a close call.
Our guess: if the kids are “sexting” while walking, there’s an even higher level of danger.