Colo. students in sexting scandal could face felony charges
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
(26,001 posts)Surely, they'll be likelier to listen to and believe adult words about compassion, and good boundaries, after that!
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)Put the kids in prison where they can be looked after.
villager
(26,001 posts)jtuck004
(15,882 posts)olegramps
(8,200 posts)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
(631 posts)As the one guy said, this is probably going on everywhere. Concern would be with either coercion or kiddie-porn.
Crunchy Frog
(26,645 posts)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
(631 posts)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
(11,489 posts)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
(2,003 posts)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
(8,175 posts)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
(8,401 posts). . . 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
(2,003 posts)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
(1,884 posts)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
(10,056 posts)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
(14,177 posts)Or don't children have a right to privacy and/or not having their nude pictures looked at by adults?
EL34x4
(2,003 posts)if there are nude photos of minors on electronic devices in your home.
Kalidurga
(14,177 posts)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
(13,452 posts)Procuring personal promotions.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Festivito
(13,452 posts)Provoking power-poor passionately pissed people perusing politics possible panic.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)tabasco
(22,974 posts)YEEEHAAH!!
snort
(2,334 posts)That'll teach them who's got the morals.
By the way, notice how great Bing is for porn?
wordpix
(18,652 posts)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
(22,651 posts)Our laws make 'criminals' of children.