Child porn in the age of teenage 'sexting' An international child pornography ring that traded more than 400,000 illegal images and videos - some depicting pre-pubescent children in sexual and sadistic acts - is the kind of heinous behavior that makes you glad there are strict laws against such things. Seven US men were convicted of the crime on Wednesday. Then there …
.... How would a school girl SMS a picture of herself to a teachers/member of staffs phone? They shouldn't be giving their phone number out to the students!
Simple....
Least the little buggers seem to have switched from Happy Slapping each other for the enjoyment of their peers... Not in my day etc etc...
Your various ACs have it right - the law has to apply to everyone; however HOW that law is applied is supposed to be via common sense. Its illegal to pee in public - but a drunk peeing in the high street on a saturday afternoon would surely get treated differently to a pregnant woman caught short on a country roadside .
Similarly the prosecutor should have had the wit to distinguish between sending your boyfriend saucy pictures and forcing children to perform sex acts. Had the girls been forcing the boys at gunpoint to perform fellatio on each other it'd be different. As it is, the prosecutor should face a civil suit for vexatious action and defamation.
So reading the comments it would appear most people think that it is fine for children to have photos of their naked "partners" as long as they are both under the age of consent? Or put another way; it is ok for a young girl or boy to send a photos of her/his self to another minor.
Do you also then condone the transfer of such image to another minor? If that is the case a whole new porn industry could be created - by the kids for the kids!
What happens if a vindictive minor pressures their friend to take the photo?
Maybe people should teach their children about the dangers around taking photos of themselves; you will never know where it'll end up!
Paris - because what did she do when she was 14?
>>Genarlow Wilson is black. Hardly surprising, is it, that the authorities in Georgia wanted to make an example of him? I expect they had the tree, the noose and the horse waiting...
You arse, Wilson broke the law then refused a plea bargain, yes his punishment was "cruel and unusual" which is why he served 1/5th of his sentence, if he admitted to the fact that what he did was wrong then Eddie Barker (prosecutor) was prepared to "set aside" the verdict, the good thing was that his stubboness got the law changed so that an under-age blowjob was a misdemeanor (12 months, no sex offender status) rather than a felony (10 years, and a sex offender), but his stubonness to accept anything was wrong with a 17 year old getting a blow job off a 15 year old and videotaping it means his slate remains dirty (fair? you decide)
As an additional note, he also had sex with a 17 year old girl (also videoed), the girl does not remember concenting and had symptoms of being drugged, she claimed that she was raped, if she was videoed saying "no" during the the sex then he would have been found guilty as a rapist (was she even capable of saying no? she looked drugged on the videotape), but as it couldn't be proved she said "no" he was aquitted (some would say this is a different miscarrage of justice, but the jury had to do as the law required).
So was it "because he's black"? almost certainly not, and this sort of "cry wolf" comment is wholy unconstructive, they followed the law, then when it was found to be disproportionate they changed the law, Wilson could have his slate wiped clean, but he won't admit what he did was wrong (note, if the correct law was in place he would still have got prison time, just a year less).
Paris: I think anyone with an internet connection knows why.
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The US is sliding backwards into 17th century conservatism...
I am glad that I do not, and will not ever have to live or visit there. Staying in the UK where people are at least somewhat more reasonable than those morons.
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Yeah, coz in the UK we're only backsliding towards late 1930's Germany which is, of course, so much better.
So great is the biological imperative to procreate and evolve our species that humans have developed a chemical mechanism which at the appropriate stage in the development cycle releases a flash flood of hormones into the body. Puberty is unleashed in all its uninhibited glory and kids, despite the best efforts of parents, lawyers and god-botherers, do silly uninhibited things.
In this particular case criminalising and stigmatising kids for doing what comes naturally is an act of child exploitation by ambitious political lawyers. Leave them kids alone, scumbags.
before all these stupid laws?
If I recall correctly, we weren't that fussed about kiddy-fiddlers hanging about by bus-stops. Our kids had a pretty robust introduction to the ways of the world, and could take care of themselves.
If anyone kidnaped and raped anyone, there were laws against that. If the kidnapee or rapee (?) was a child, you can bet that every effort would be expended to catch them and throw the book at them. But minor sexual activity, particularly between children, and of a non-coercive kind, was seen as more of an indiscretion. And someone who liked hanging around the playing fields on the girls' sports day would gain a bad social reputation rather than a sex crimes register entry.
I wonder if we have gone backwards or forwards....?
As of now I have officially had it with the USA.
I could take the illegal wars... I am British - so talk about pot and kettle.
I could take the censorship because all i had to do was point americans in the direction of Michael Moore... assuming that they could do 0-4 syllables in less than an hour.
But this is ridiculous, stupid, mindless and everything else in the book. Its also dangerous given the police tendency to accidentally lose information or shoot someone who might have the gall to protest their innocence.
Tell you what america... why dont you all sod off and live in Afghanistan or Iran - you would get on like a house on fire with the religiously intolerant socially backward brown-necks out that way.
This should have been laughed out of court the minute the presiding idiot... did I say idiot.. I meant judge ... read the charge sheet. It shouldnt even have gotten THAT far.
And before all the torqueflite whine-boxes go into kickdown... It is ALL of America because if you hadnt voted idiots like this into positions of power... or had kicked them out when they showed a level of stupidity that just HAD to be genetic... I wouldnt need to be saying this now. There of course is an easier version... y'all must remember that quote from aliens.. you know the one I mean...!
If I was a parent of one of these kids I would be sueing everyone who stayed still long enough... and using the family 30-06 on everyone that didnt. This, if it is entered as a judgement will destroy lives for ever.
So what happens to the phone book if there are no landlines?
So what happens if their child is at the school (or a school) and has their parents number?
IF the teacher has given the schoolgirl the number, then there will be a decent trail to show that there is some premeditation on the behalf of the teacher.
Which is grooming.
Already illegal.
"but his stubonness to accept anything was wrong with a 17 year old getting a blow job off a 15 year old and videotaping it means his slate remains dirty (fair? you decide)"
Well what IS wrong with it?
I get blow jobs on the odd occasion and some of them have been from women more than 5 years my junior.
BOTH are (as far as the sex laws are concerned) minors. If he'd been 21, clearly wrong (because of the imbalance of maturity, NOT because it's a sick perversion). If he'd been 31, clearly wrong and more than a little disturbing.
But 17? He's no more a predator of adolescents than the girl was.
So what was wrong with the BJ?
The fact that it was a BJ probably.
And that's not what the laws were supposed to stop.
"Its illegal to pee in public - but a drunk peeing in the high street on a saturday afternoon would surely get treated differently to a pregnant woman caught short on a country roadside ."
What about a drunk taking a piss in the coutryside?
What about a pregnant mum taking a piss in the high street on a saturday afternoon?
If you're going to compare things, don't change too much. The above was nearly apples and cross-threaded-bolts comparison.
The problem is that anyone who *applies* proportion and, for example, throws out the case summarily, will be painted as a paedo or a paedo sympathiser by anyone who doesn't like them (because they want the job, don't like the ideas they say, whatever).
Especially bad for an AG or anyone else who has a political goal at some point in their life.
"This certainly would appear to be a complete waste of time and money for what should be simply a misjudgement on the girls part. Did Psycho Girl get prosecuted or any others that have previously sent their pics/video over the internets (thats the only one I can think of top of my head), smack them on the wrist and move on, nothing more should be needed, just the embarrasment should be enough of a lesson."
How true, what's worse is that, according to precedent set by this, technically everyone of the many thousands of people who've watched the 'psycho girl' video is a paedophile. Clearly a ridiculous and illogical assumption.
Ever since the widespread avalibitly of digital cameras and camera phones vids and pics like this have been all over the net. Heck isn't half of 4chan home made naughty pics? How many web users may well be breaking the law and not even be aware of it. A Hell of allot is my guess.
>Well what IS wrong with it?
A 15 year old girl giving a 17 year old boy a blowjob is defacto wrong, both under the old laws of Georgia and the new laws of Georgia, the prosecutor wanted him to admit that that, then the prosecutor was prepared to "set aside" the verdict, Georgia is where the offense was committed, he was found guilty under the laws of the land which he broke.
Now, if you're asking my personal opinion if a 15 year old girl giving a 17 year old boy a blowjob and videoing it is OK or not (regardless the laws of the land), how would I know? she insists that she wasn't coerced, taken at face value, I don't see it as a big deal, if I was Wilson then I guess I'd be making a right/wrong value judgement and (assuming I was aware of the law) balancing the risks, I doubt I'd do it, with hindsight I guess he wouldn't do it either.
Now, don't forget, the law has changed in Georgia, the same circumstances would not result in being defined as a sex offender anymore, it's just sex between minors, a misdemeanor.
If we disregard the laws of the land, I think there is still something wrong about a group of pre consensual kids getting drunk and having/videoing multiple partner sex in a hotel room (I won't speculate who bought the booze or booked the room and got the camera) if you don't draw the line somewhere, where does it end? if 15 is OK, what about nearly 15? 14? 13? 12? the UK draws a line at 16 and has a reasonable flexibility written into the law between 14 and 16, Georgia doesn't.
The sex crime laws were not framed to deal with teenage indiscretion. These laws were never intended to be used in this way and the law makers that framed them never intended for them to be used in this manner.
When adults do horrible things to children, these laws are the right solution, arrest the creeps, try them with a jury, throw them in jail and tattoo a label of 'sex offender' to their life from that point forwards.That's the point of going after the predators who hurt kids in ways that will never leave them as long as they live.
On the other hand, kids do stupid things. So, why the hell are these fools in the prosecution service in Penn treating the KIDS themselves as if they were adults? Good grief. Now, if the girls pictures were being taken by the boys and the boys were sending those images out to others, then I could see that there's a crime going on and perhaps the laws could be applied, although perhaps in a more more lenient manner. After all, what point is there in damaging kids in a way that will never leave them as long as they live (branding someone as a sex offender is a life sentence in most western nations, it's certainly a curse that cannot be lifted). Oh, wait that sounds as though the act of prosecuting kids doing dumb things could cause harm just as lasting as what the sick ba$stard$ who really abuse kids cause. Hmmmm....who'd have thunk it?
One thing about this Pennsylvanian case that might make things far, far more difficult is that the boys are 16 and 17 and the girls are 14 and 15. You have to remember that the definition for statutory rape (a sex crime) is all about the age of one or other of the participants. If both are minors then it's just kids messing around - naughty things, ground them for a month and make them go to church! But, if only one of the partners is a minor, then it automatically become statutory rape. For example if a high school couple are having sex and the boy happens to be a couple of months older than the girl. When he hit's his 16th birthday and she's still 15, for all of two months, if they have sex during that time, he could quite easily be tried as an adult charged with statutory rape, and it wouldn't matter how consensual it was. When found guilty he'd be branded as a sex offender simply because he was having sex with his high school sweet heart. When two people are adults (as defined by law) it doesn't matter if there is a 50 year age gap or a 1 day age gap, there is no issue. Sadly the law can be equally black and white when one of the partners is under age, even when the gap is as short as a day.
Why do I mention this? The boys were all 16 and older and the girls were all under 16 which means that under the law the girls were most certainly minors and the boys were no longer considered minors, despite not yet being considered adults either. But I think we all know that this situation is not one that should result in a prosecution under the sex crime laws intended for adults preying on children. At worst this is a case of indecent exposure. It's the electronic equivalent of streaking. Would anyone consider that a streaker should be labeled as a sex offender?
But, because the boys are 16+ and the girls are all under 16 a crime has been committed and someone has to pay! Or at least that is the attitude of prosecutors. I can only hope that the judge who gets this case has or has had teenage kids who did dumb things. Allowing the judge to have the common sense to ignore the prosecution and handle the entire matter for what it is, stupid teenagers trying to behave like adults and doing naughty things. "Slap on the wrists all round and no cellphone access (by court order) until you're all 18. Now get out of my court before I ground you all for 6 months. Heaven help you when your parents are through with you!"
Personally I think that the parents and kids involved should get together and realize that kids do dumb things (as the parents no doubt did in their own teenage days). Then they should go find a really good lawyer and sue the living crap out of the prosecutor for the abuse and victimization of the kids in this case. The consequences of guilty verdicts would cause damage to their future lives as lasting as anything an abuser could do. No the damage isn't the same, but the effects last just as long.
Law makers need to go back to their sex crime laws and add some amendments to cope with the behavior of foolish teenagers as well as the impact of devices such as cellphones with video and still image capabilities. Until they do, over zealous prosecutors will indulge in this kind of wasteful non-sense.
There is no discretion in the case of who the law applies to and who it doesn't. If the law wasn't meant to criminalise curious children photographing themselves and then deleting it after then the law should say that. It doesn't. The law of America states that children who photograph themselves nude face a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Don't like it? Change the law.
Allowing prosecutors the choice whether to prosecute or not leads to prosecutors' mates getting off on felony charges.
Surely the oddest thing about these laws is that there is a magical date when you're found to be mature. Assume 16 for this (.co.uk) country. Day of my 16th birday, I sleep with my g/f who turns 16 the following day - sex with a minor. Wait a day and all is ok.
Judge each case on its merits (y'know, how it normally works)
Oh ok, so it's not a good idea to discourage teens from taking naked pictures of themselves and transferring those images to web enabled devices, because after all, no one (including those pedophiles you mentioned that WERE breaking the law) would find those pictures later on. Ok. Sorry, misunderstood. By all means, all 10 million teens with cellphones should be free to take all the naked pics they want and upload them. We can deal with the issues it would create later on, like in 5 years or something... Oh and one question, if they just stand there, legs closed, naked, and take a picture, is that okay? As opposed to spread legs with say, a toy inserted? Because you know, then they would have to get all picky and tell them which way they CAN take the picture, as in, give exact specifics of how it is acceptable for a teen to take a photo of their naked body, maybe they could ask a pedophile for ideas of what should be allowed (least interest to a pedophile) and what should not be allowed (greatest interest for a pedophile). GREAT IDEA.
Idiot.
Hey! I know! Instead of charging them with a crime, we could make a law that says it's illegal, but the only punishment would be a slap on the hand and no text messaging for 24 hours! That would work! I just know it!
"Imagine if mine was the coat with nude photos of your underage daughter. Flawed? I think not."
Well Simon, that depends on how you got 'em. If someone took advantage of her to make them and you paid the creep, I'd be furious. If she gave them to you herself, I wouldn't have much right to complain; though it would raise other concerns for her safety. If you just found them on the street, or on the internet, I wouldn't be happy; but you wouldn't deserve jail time in my opinion.
This isn't new people. There are already many on those lists of predators in your communities that did similar sorts of things. For example I know one guy who's a registered sex offender for the crime of playing "if you show me yours, I'll show you mine" at the age of 10.
Nothing great about that, I would knock some sense into any of my own kids that did it, but that's the punishment these kids should be getting. Not facing imprisonment and the rest of their lives on a sex offenders registry. For those that think these things go away when they reach 18, no they don't. This is for keeps.
What I want to know is why no one has stood up to these prosecutors yet in the US. No one appears to be saying that taking away their cell phones is a more reasonable punishment that the insanity that's progressing. I don't even understand why these people still have jobs, including anyone at the school that reported them to the authorities without making sure their parents couldn't deal with it themselves. We don't need people like this "serving" our communities. Because they aren't protecting anyone from anything, they aren't representing the wishes of the people that elected their political bosses, well not most of them.
Except for a few religious extremists, no one wants to see these kids punished in this way, and there should be consequences for government employees that abuse their positions like these guys are doing. I'm a government employee, my duty is to work for the people of my state, not to work against them. Fire the lot of these fuckers and stick them on trial for abusing public money.
In reply to P. Lee, up in post #8
(--an aside: could you Regster people put big fat numbers next to comments so that we can easily find who people are responding to? It's super annoying to not have reference numbers. thanks--):
Let's go back 10,000 years, to the beginning of agriculture--- when people lived until about age 40, and "children" of 13 were having sex and having babies in prodigious numbers so that the culture could continue.
Let's skip up to Shakespeare's time, the late 1500s, when still "children" of 13 and 14 were having sex and having babies so that the culture could continue. To the point where unmarried 15 year old girls were at risk of becoming unmarriable "old maids".
Now zip forward to 2008 where suddenly (in evolutionary terms) "children" of 13, 14, 15, 16, and even 17 are now not expected to have sex, or even be sexually aware, for fear of prosecution.
Pedophilia, as the author of the article rightly asserts, is a monstrous crime. Heinous in numerable ways. But experimention with sexuality AS a legally-defined "CHILD" of 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 has an incredible evolutionary inertia that is not going to disappear merely because a bunch of Methuselah-aged societal elders write a law about it.
As a contemporary society we have to punish the bastards who conspire to take advantage of youth. But when youth are freely engaging in sexual play with each other, (ie. no coercion -- shouldn't that be the principle demarcator of crime anyway? ), where is the injury? There is none, and no crime should be prosecuted (save for prosecutors victimizing young girls and boys with this new scarlet letter, as previously pointed out).
Initiation of action is another key factor here. Mere possession of an image of a nude youth should not be enough--- this is in regards to a malicious youth sending a photo to a hated teacher in the example above. The teacher initiated no action, ergo no culpability. The pedo group initiated the procurement of coerced images, culpable. Youths flirting with each other via 'sexting' and cam-phone quick snaps: culpability in terms of action, but youth-to-youth sexual expression? No crime in my mind.
Why, I recall as a youth, as a 14 year old boy, engaging in mutually desired kissing, fondling, and yes, even oral sex (both ways!) with a girl of similar age. There is no crime there. In fact thank the Lord that youth can still experiment with sex, because how else will they become delightful lovers and partners in the future if they have no experiences while young?
harrumph. "prosecutors" indeed!
"A 15 year old girl giving a 17 year old boy a blowjob is defacto wrong, both under the old laws of Georgia and the new laws of Georgia,"
But it was changed to a misdemeanor and then put back to crime because of, not the sex with a 15yo by a 17yo but because of the BJ.
Hell your PRESIDENT didn't think it sex. Neither did the people accusing and investigating allegations of sexual relations with a woman.
If THEY don't think it's sex, why is it wrong?
It's wrong because the religious don't want sex to be enjoyable and DEFINITELY don't want sex where it's safe from having an accidental child.
Religion.
A key point that's easily overlooked in all the arguments about rights and wrongs is that prosecutors get paid, promoted, and launched on political careers based on the number of successful cases they prosecute. Or, in more concrete terms, the number of people whom they send to prison and whose lives they ruin.
The question of whether something is right or wrong, just or unjust, simply doesn't enter into it. The only question is "Can I get a conviction here, using the existing set of laws and precedents, and before a given judge and jury?" And all too often the answer is yes. Especially thanks to the charming American custom of plea bargaining, in which the prosecutor tells the accused "Plead guilty to the 'specimen' charges I propose, or we'll send you to prison for 300,000 years". The accused duly pleads guilty, and goes to prison for 17 years.
... Policeman patrolling a lover's lane notices one of the cars has the interior light on. He goes over, notices a male in the driver's seat concentrating on a video game, and a female in the back seat leafing through a copy of some gossip magazine. Puzzled, he knocks on the drivers window, which the male winds down.
"Excuse me, sir*, can you tell me what's happening here?".
"Yes officer, we're just whiling away the time."
"Oh, right. How old are you, sir?"
"18, officer"
"And how old are you, madam?"
"15, officer".
"When will you be 16?"
"Oh (glances at watch), in about 20 minutes ..."
*I heard this joke a long time ago - I am very aware that the chances of being called "sir" by the current Robocop wannabes is highly unlikely, as is the chance of the teenagers calling the policeman "officer".
But seriously, now for a little game. Under current laws (in whichever country you are in), which of them would be prosecuted, for what, and what penalty would they get?
Strangely enough I have some experience of something similar to those kids.
My daughter was on holiday with her school a while back (I believe she was 9 at the time). Her friend left her phone in the room they were staying in and 2 other friends decided to take photos of themselves naked with the phone. My daughter was considered to be involved because she was in the main room while the 2 girls were taking photos in the bathroom. The school believed the photos were actually of my daughter and so we were called in when the photos were found on the phone by her friend's mother.
We were actually asked if we wanted whoever took the photos to be prosecuted for sex offenses if it turned out the photo was of my daughter. My wife's attitude was throw the book at them.
Fortunately for the 2 girls involved common sense prevailed and I persuaded my wife that ultimately no one had been hurt (apart from a great deal of embarressment on my daughter's friend's part) and there was no point in totally ruining someone's future for a stupid and thoughtless childhood prank. The seriousness of what they had done was made very clear to all involved and that was the end of it.
Lucky for them this is the UK and not the US.
Simon was responding to my "gonna get flamed" post near the top wherein I argue that neither should be illegal. My point was that both of these cases are logical results of the laws that criminalize the images themselves rather than the act of child abuse. It's "mission creep", if you will.
In an effort to stamp out child abuse, we outlawed child porn too. But it's a little hard to stomach putting someone away for the purely pragmatic purpose of drying up a market, so we "decided" that having child porn itself must be unforgivable abomination. So now it's treated as such, even when it happens far removed from any sort of child abuse.
And now in the US it's illegal to "advertise" that you have child porn even if you don't. This was strictly intended as a convenience for prosecutors, but if that law gets used regularly I imagine it won't be long before people say that it really is a horrible act because umm... "it normalizes these obscene perversions", yeah that's the ticket.
Presumably we can expect to see a teenage girl arrested for hinting in jest that she has naughty pictures of herself sometime in the next ten years or so.
We want to make sure that computers are not hacked. One way to work towards this is to ensure that no one possesses hacking tools - except for licensed people who can be trusted with them. So if a large corporation needs to use hacking tools to test the security of its computers, they just get one of their employees licensed and bonded as a computersmith. And they might have to abide by certain rules, such as when they take the hacking tools out of the locked computer vault, two people have to be there, so that the hacking tools can't be copied for illegitimate use, because no one is ever alone with them.
Morphine (the active ingredient in heroin and opium) has legitimate medical use. And guns are certainly legitimately useful for self-defense against criminals who have somehow managed to get their hands on guns - in general, weapons are tools for making other people mind, but which can be misused to bully other people.
Please.... won't everyone think of the children......
on-no, oh dear me no. Now, that's gone wrong too. Please don't think of the children - EVER - and definitely not of pictures of half dressed teenagers. Oh dear me no...... Braincell overload... Imploding...
Hey, isn't everyone involved in the case participating in the distribution and viewing of this smut(!?). Isn't the evidence a crime in itself. Discussing the case here is probably borderline in some jurisdictions (like Evolution).
There was a case in the UK, just this month of 3 men in the early 20's and 30's, who were members of an adult dating site. The 3 men were sent sexually explicit messages from a female, on the site, to which they responded with equally explicit messages. They also visited the girls profile where she claimed to be 18 and where she had topless photographs of herself posted on it. The next thing the men knew, they were arrested, charged and convicted of having sexual contact with a child, as it turns out the girl was only 15, and what happened to the girl who took the topless photographs? Nothing!
The laws across the world are screwed up with regards to this sort of thing. Most of them were past in haste, as the media whipped the public up into a moral panic, and governments were forced to act. It's high time that governments looked at these laws with a clear head, and pass laws which not only protect children from sexual predators, and adults from "entrapment" (for want of a better word), but which does not criminalise children from engaging in behaviour which is normal. By that i mean, teenagers talk about sex with their friends. There is a universe of difference between the kind of sexual predators described in the story, and a 13 year old girl sending a photograph of her new boobs to her best friend.
if say we used a more common sense idea of whats going on here (i.e. teens will be teens, and we don't seem to prosecute people for under 16 shagging if they were both under 16), is there a cut off point?
say I am 17 with a 17 yr old g/f. we exchange nudie pics. if i keep that pic for a number of years, at what point does it become illegal to own it or does it stay outside the law because it was made when we were both 17? 25? 30? 50? 80?
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