6 Pa. high school students busted after sharing nude photos via cell phones

[SlowToady]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28679588/

Thank you Nanny-State!

[stomachmonkey]

OK, that's BS.

Purely consensual on the part of the self portraits and unsolicited on the part of the recipients.

To apply child porn charges is utter BS.

You will f' up the next 10 years of these kids lives.

Sounds like they were partaking in 21st century cyber truth or dare.

Call me old school but when I was 14 gettin my hands on real ta-tas was way better than a pic.

Pics are what Penthouse was for.

[onewhippedpuppy]

That's BS. Might as well charge them for looking in the mirror after a shower too.

My sister-in-law's boss's son (follow that one) got in trouble for the same thing. The high school confiscated his Blackberry and found a nude picture of his 16 year old girlfriend.

[Jeff Higgins]

Wow. Talk about blowing things way, way out of proportion. This would have been something best left to the kids and their parents. Why on earth would the police feel the need to get involved in a case where kids are so obviously doing this willingly, among friends? Granted, they are exercising bad judgement. But to potentially saddle them with "sexual predator" status for the next decade?

The police and D.A. are ruining these kids' futures. How is this going to look on a college application, where it asks if you have ever been convicted of a serious crime? Pure grandstanding on the part of these ass holes. They are serving themselves, not the public at large when they decide to pursue cases like this.

Hopefully cooler heads prevail. Hopefully this gets tossed before it even goes to trial. I suspect there may be a problem with the school perusing the contents of the kid's phone, with it being his private property and all. Sure, they can take it away, but that does not give them the right to start looking through it to see what kind of private information it may contain. The case should get thrown out on that alone.

[Drdogface]

This thread is worthless without pics....

[trekkor]

People post pictures from their cell phones on the internet all the time.

Probably not a good idea to send pictures to anyone, unless you don't mind seeing them on the web.


KT

[legion]

Even if this case gets tossed, there will be another one somewhere else that does not.

This whole "registered sex offender" thing is increasingly being applied to more and more questionable cases and pretty much immediately ruins the person's life. It is the new "scarlet letter".

[legion]

I can't help but wonder if this isn't a case of weak-spined administrators just trying to pass the buck so they didn't have to deal with the situation.

Ironically, if these same students had been caught having sex in the school, I don't think they could be forced to register as sex offenders nor would the police be able to have any say on the situation.

[stomachmonkey]

Think there was a post here on PPOT a couple of years back.

Posters neighbor was a registered offender.

Poster asked him one day what was up with that.

Guy responded that he was 18-19? and his girlfriend at the time, (now his wife?) was 17.

Parents had him hauled off for statutory rape and now he was stuck with a sex offender label.

Common sense is non existent.

[masraum]

I can't really be sure that it was porn unless I can see and judge for myself.

Obviously, this is a law that's needed, but that needs to be better thought out and worded differently.

[jorian]

I know I feel safer....

[Eric 951]

The DA is an idiot.--John peck He has been in office for 13 years--the townspeople are pretty much outraged over this, and I have a feeling he is going to lose his re-election bid come march.

Can't the school supt. be charged with child porn--he/she obviously looked at the pic?

[Dueller]

With regard to statutory rape laws, there are a few "tiers" built into the law; i.e., Age of consent may be 16 but if a child under 16 has sex with someone within 2, 3 (e.g. Miss) or 4 (e.g. Pa) years of their age, it is not stat rape. Then many states have laws that make having sex with someone under a certain age (12 or 13 in most jurisdictions) it is illegal regardless of the partner's age.

Child porn laws are ambiguous or silent regarding age difference of recipients.

The linked article confirms something I have observed in my limited dealings with the issue in my own practice: More often than not teen girls are the ones initiating the nude pics as opposed to the boys. And while boys may be horn dogs, teen girls are really getting more sexually agressive often being the ones initiating sex.

[NICKG]

Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy

That's BS. Might as well charge them for looking in the mirror after a shower too.

My sister-in-law's boss's son (follow that one) got in trouble for the same thing. The high school confiscated his Blackberry and found a nude picture of his 16 year old girlfriend.

would they need something like a warrant to look in the phone? seems they violated his privacy

[svandamme]

Somebody should sue the DA for being a hypocritical douchebag...
I'm sure he looked at titties wherever he found titties to look at , when he was 15.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by svandamme

Somebody should sue the DA for being a hypocritical douchebag...
I'm sure he looked at titties wherever he found titties to look at , when he was 15.

I'm sure he had to "review" all of the photos linked to this case as well. As did every cop on the investigation.

I wonder how the girls' parents must feel. Oh hell, I'm pretty sure I know how they feel. It would be bad enough to discover your daughter was sending these pics to her male friends; it would be far worse to know that every hound dog in the precinct and in the D.A.'s office has probably seen them as well. It was their "duty", after all...

My wife served an interesting stint on jury duty about a decade ago. Local cops had busted strippers in an on-going sting operation; busted them for violating a new law dictating how far they had to stay back from customers when dancing. That, and there were some solicitations made...

Anyway, the young ladies were all run through trial together under the same charges. They had a great defense lawyer. He pointed out that police records indicated an average of something like 100 hours of surveilance per arrest. Overtime, the whole deal. The judge wound up dismissing all charges and chewing out the cops for their brazen waste of taxpayer money. He even lamented that he was powerless to see to it they all lost their jobs, and everyone else involved in this little "sting" as well.

Maybe these families will get lucky and something similar will happen here. There was simply no good reason to ever even begin to pursue this case.

[Porsche-poor]

Maybe its just me but what gave the school the rite to go through the kids phone in the first place. Granted he was not to be using it on school grounds but with todays phones all sorts of personal information can be stored on them.

[gprsh924]

Originally Posted by Porsche-poor

Maybe its just me but what gave the school the rite to go through the kids phone in the first place. Granted he was not to be using it on school grounds but with todays phones all sorts of personal information can be stored on them.

This is my biggest problem with this story. Fine, he broke the rule for using his cell phone and class and it was taken away for the day. Why the hell was the teacher looking through the content of the phone after it was taken away? That's not right. The teacher should have simply taken the phone and tossed it in the desk.

[Joeaksa]

I have several photos from ladies on my BB showing their tities... better get them moved to the computer or password that puppy and fast.

This is just too forking PC to be believed. Someone needs to chill this group of jerks down and fast. They had no right to look through the phone.

Joe A

[porsche4life]

Honestly I see why the authorities would get involved in a VIOLENT crime such as rape or sexual battery but... Porn on phones and underage sex is honestly none of their dam business. If my phone got confiscated(my fault). No biggie I'm and idiot. Now if said teacher looked through the phone there would be lawyers involved and a teacher looking for a job.