• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

NetFamilyNews.org

Kid tech intel for everybody

Show Search
Hide Search
  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research
  • About NetFamilyNews.org
    • Supporters
    • Anne Collier’s Bio
    • Copyright
    • Privacy

Textbook case of what NOT to do in teen sexting cases

July 13, 2014 By Anne 1 Comment

The Washington Post has done some important reporting on a teen sexting case in Virginia, spotlighting what could (should) go down in history as a textbook example of how police can abuse rather than enforce child pornography law in the digital age. A 17-year-old boy “is facing felony counts of manufacturing and distributing child pornography,” the Post reported. I’ll let you read the Post coverage for details, but the short version is this:

Manassas City police car
Photo from Manassas City Police Dept.’s Facebook page

The boy’s 15-year-old girlfriend reportedly sent him sexting photos of herself. In response, he allegedly sent one or more sexting videos of himself. Perhaps justifiably, the girl’s mother filed a complaint against the boy, but – not as understandably – charges were brought against him only.

The case was dismissed last month on a technicality, but then prosecutors filed charges again and this time took nude photos of the boy against his will. His lawyer told the Post that the state’s attorney said that, if her client didn’t plead guilty, the police “would obtain another search warrant ‘for pictures of his erect penis,’ for comparison to the evidence from the teen’s cell phone.” The boy’s lawyer “asked how that would be accomplished and was reportedly told that ‘we just take him down to the hospital, give him a shot and then take the pictures that we need’.” As the Post reports, the charges against the boy “could lead not only to incarceration until he’s 21, but inclusion on the state sex offender data base for, possibly, the rest of his life.”

Prosecuting or committing child sex abuse?

How is such behavior on law enforcement’s part different from its charge against the boy of “manufacturing child pornography”? How is it also not a form of child sexual victimization?

The police released a statement defending their actions (the Post published it here), including these words: “It is not the policy of the Manassas City Police or the Commonwealth Attorney’s Office to authorize invasive search procedures of suspects in cases of this nature and no such procedures have been conducted in this case.” Which begs the question: How was their taking photos of a naked minor not “invasive”?

Backpedaling on the 2nd ‘photo session’

Shortly after the Post’s article was published last week, the Manassas police announced they would not serve that second search warrant involving the hospital trip.

Certainly more information about this case will emerge, but the only new information that could possibly justify sex offender status for and felony charges against a minor – but never justify, it seems to this non-lawyer, production of naked photos of a minor by police – is finding that there was criminal intent behind the boy’s actions. So far, however, there is no indication that there was anything going on but private, non-coercive sexting. If either the boy or the girl was actually making the photos or videos public, then “distribution” was involved, but law enforcement must look carefully at intent before putting a distribution charge on a teen. Can’t police and courts at least try to distinguish between criminal and adolescent intentions so that minors, at least, can be allowed second chances before charges are brought?

Important typology of teen sexting

It has been three years since the Crimes Against Children Research Center published a typology of youth sexting for schools and law enforcement, making a clear distinction between “experimental” and “aggravated” sexting.

The CCRC defines the aggravated kind as involving “criminal or abusive elements beyond the creation, sending or possession of youth‐produced sexual images” (emphasis mine). The additional elements, I wrote in 2011, include either adult involvement in the sexting or criminal or abusive behavior by the minors. The latter might include conditions in three categories: 1) sexual abuse, extortion, threats; 2) malicious conduct arising from interpersonal conflicts; or 3) creation or sending or showing of images without the knowledge or against the will of a minor who was pictured. If these conditions are not met in teen sexting cases after thoughtful investigation, how could charges be leveled against a teen?

Let’s hope that, because of this Virginia case, more and more courts and law enforcement people will find and use this typology to help them with their investigations, so that children aren’t unjustifiably victimized by law enforcement in the name of laws aimed at protecting minors from victimization.

I wrote a followup to this post after sentencing in this case for that, please click here.

Related links

  • “Sexting: A Typology,” by Janis Wolak and David Finkelhor at the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Research Center
  • “Teen Sexting Is Not a Felony,” by Stephen Balkam at the Family Online Safety Institute in the Huffington Post. Obviously I agree, but saying that “what these two teens did was foolish, stupid and simply wrong” is – in this digital age, based on this LaTrobe University research – almost like saying teens having sex is foolish, stupid and simply wrong. What seems to be happening is that, for a significant proportion of the population in many countries, digital media are increasingly part of this aspect of human life too.
  • A 3-part series based on research in Australia: “‘Noodz,’ ‘selfies,’ ‘sexts,’ etc.”: Part 1 on the motivation spectrum; Part 2 on the need for better youth education; and Part 3 on bias in the news coverage
  • On the latest sexting research from Drexel University in the US and MediaSmarts.ca in Canada
  • About an insightful 2012 sexting study out of Massachusetts
Share Button

Filed Under: at-risk teens, childrens rights, Law & Policy, Risk & Safety, sexting, sexual exploitation, Social Media, teens, Youth Tagged With: CCRC, child pornography, Crimes Against Children Research Center, David Finkelhor, Janis Wolak, Manassas, sexting, sexting typology, Stephen Balkam

Reader Interactions

Trackbacks

  1. Textbook case of what NOT to do in teen sexting cases says:
    July 14, 2014 at 8:34 am

    […] MORE  >>> […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

NFN in your in-box:

Anne Collier


Bio and my...
2016 TEDx Talk on
the heart of digital citizenship

Subscribe to my
RSS feed
Follow me on Twitter or even better:
NEW: Follow me on MASTODON!
Friend me on Facebook
See me on YouTube

IMPORTANT RESOURCES

Our (DIGITAL) PARENTING BASICS: Safety + Social
NAMLE, the National Association for Media Literacy Education
CASEL.org & the 5 core social-emotional competencies of SEL
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Innovative Public Health Research
Childnet International
Committee for Children
Congressional Internet Caucus Academy
ConnectSafely.org
Control Shift: a pivotal book for Internet safety
Crimes Against Children Research Center
Crisis Textline
Cyber Civil Rights Initiative's Revenge Porn Crisis Line
Cyberwise.org
danah boyd's blog and book about networked youth
Disconnected, Carrie James's book on digital ethics
FOSI.org's Good Digital Parenting
The research of Global Kids Online
The Good Project at Harvard's School of Education
If you watch nothing else: "Parenting in a Digital Age" TED Talk by Prof. Sonia Livingstone
The International Bullying Prevention Association
Let Grow Foundation
Making Caring Common
Raising Digital Natives, author Devorah Heitner's site
Renee Hobbs at the Media Education Lab
MediaSmarts.ca
The New Media Literacies
Report of the Aspen Task Force on Learning & the Internet and our guide to Creating Trusted Learning Environments
The Ruler Approach to social-emotional learning (Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence)
Sources of Strength
"Young & Online: Perspectives on life in a digital age" from young people in 26 countries (via UNICEF)
"Youth Safety on a Living Internet": 2010 report of the Online Safety & Technology Working Group (and my post about it)

Categories

Recent Posts

  • Why I struggle mightily with the new Utah law
  • A solution for ‘awful but lawful’
  • New global service for getting nudes off the Internet
  • Then there’s the flip side of ChatGPT
  • For SID 2023: What youth want ‘online safety’ to teach
  • ChatGPT for media literacy training
  • Future safety: Content moderators and digital grassroots justice
  • Mental health 2023, Part 1: Youth on algorithms

Footer

Welcome to NetFamilyNews!

Founded as a nonprofit public service in 1999, NetFamilyNews quickly became the “community newspaper” of a vital interest community of subscribers in more than 50 countries. Site and newsletter became a blog in the early 2000s. Nowadays, you can subscribe in the box to the right to receive articles in your in-box as they're posted – or look for tweets, posts on our Facebook page, and key commentaries from Anne on her page at Medium.com. She welcomes your comments, follows and shares!

Categories

  • Home
  • Youth
  • Parenting
  • Literacy
  • Safety
  • Policy
  • Research

ABOUT

  • About NFN
  • Supporters
  • Anne Collier’s Bio
  • Copyright
  • Privacy

Search

Subscribe



THANKS TO NETFAMILYNEWS.ORG's SUPPORTER HOMESCHOOL CURRICULUM.
Copyright © 2023 ANNE COLLIER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.