Readers — Oh, the puns I will refrain from. (Though it’s…hard!) Suffice to say, there are many problems with America’s sex offender laws, but perhaps this case illustrates their absurdity best. As Robby Soave writes rhterhdsaa
at Reason:
The authorities in Prince William County, Virginia, are pursuing child pornography charges against a 17 year old who exchanged nude picture texts with his 15-year-old girlfriend. The police have even filed a warrant that would permit them to take the teen to the hospital, give him an erection-producing injection, and photograph his penis. Prosecutors want to compare this photograph to the one the teen sent to his girlfriend, establishing that they depict the same thing.
Some astute logicians might point out the irony of the police effectively creating child pornography in order to prosecute someone for creating child pornography.
And how about the other absurdity: prosecuting one of two teens (the guy) who felt like sending sexts to each other? Why is that a crime? And how is prosecuting two people in a consensual relationship saving children from abuse, which is ostensibly what the sex offender laws were created to do?
The cops ALREADY took pictures of this young man’s privates when they arrested him. But they want more. Good grief, guys: Why not just rent, “You’ve Got Male” and be done with it?
And by the way, if the fellow, who plead not guilty, IS convicted of manufacturing and possessing child porn, he can go to jail till he’s 21 and land on the Sex Offender Registry, possibly for life. I’m sure we’d all feel much safer with these penis-crazed cops and prosecutors this horny teenager locked up.
Walk out slowly with your hands up. Or, well, not actually your HANDS….
This is just more confirmation of my suspicion that a lot of the cops who go into prosecuting sex crimes (especially online ones and things like sexting) are pervs themselves.
Anonymous mom: That’s really not fair to the thousands of hardworking law enforcement agents who undertake the dangerous and emotionally draining work of investigating sex crimes.
@Powers, I’m not sure how draining spending your days surfing the web for teens sending nude pics to other teens (or pretending to be a horny teen trying to convince older guys to sleep with you) is.
I don’t doubt that police who investigate actual, contact sex crimes have a hard, draining job. But the ones investigating these “cyber” sex crimes? I think people go into it, many times, because they do kind of get off on it.
OK I have a 15 year old boy and this story is horrifying on a number of different levels. Won’t elaborate here….
Good for him for pleading not guilty. I consider that to be very brave. He was probably under a lot of pressure to take a plea deal, which would have certainly landed him on the sex offender registry. I wish him and his family luck. I hope the judge throws it out of court.
I admit I laughed at the caption on the picture. Touche, Lenore.
Powers – I’m with you on that one. There ARE bonafide sex offenders out there, and kudos to the law enforcement folks who have to deal with that horror every day.
Well, anonymous mom, I’m a phone sex operator. I don’t get off on it. No one I work with (and I do go to an actual office to do my job) gets off on it. We’re not pervs. We work very hard. We have extra training to deal with callers who talk about illegal activities with minors everyday so that we know when to alert a supervisor to any indication that a child is being abused. We are mandated by the contract we signed to report any suspicious behavior.
Our supervisory team talks regularly with cybercrime investigators so we’re current on how things are handled and what we should be paying attention to.
I am pretty sure what these cops are putting this boy through is considered sexual assault and if I were the parents, I would be suing the city and attempting to press charges through the FBI.
Very odd….who this protects, I don’t understand.
If it’s all consensual and the pictures are kept private between the two parties why should the authorities be involved at all? I understand parents disapproving etc., but don’t think this should constitute a law being broken.
I guess the kid is denying it’s his… “member” that showed up in pixels on the girl’s phone? Is that why they want to “prove” that it IS?
But several layers deeper, I think this idea that we can suppress consensual sexual activities among pubescent minors is a… phallacy.
Ahem.
It’s all about her mother.
I fully fall in the (little “c”) conservative range on sex before marriage, but I don’t feel it’s a criminal matter unless:
1. Either of the people involved distributes the videos and pictures made to 3rd parties
2. He continues after documented command to stop by either her, her parents or the legal process.
3. He coerced her into making the picture she made of herself.
It doesn’t sound like any of these conditions are even alleged.
But men are the devil, so there’s that. His aunt should press to have her charged, particularly as she was the first to send it, putting pressure on him to reciprocate, and if she’s not charged, and there’s no age limit in the statute, I’d hope there’s a civil rights case possible.
Wait a second…….this young man took a picture of his own private parts, and that’s a “crime,” but now the police want to take a picture of his private parts, and that’s okay?
Another thing — is it ethical for a medical professional to participate in giving a shot to this kid?
From the WAPO article
“The male teen was served with petitions from juvenile court in early February, and not arrested, but when the case went to trial in juvenile court in June, Foster said prosecutors forgot to certify that the teen was a juvenile. The case was dismissed, but police immediately obtained new charges and also a search warrant for his home. Police also arrested the teen and took him to juvenile jail, where Foster said they took photos of the teen’s genitals against his will.”
against his will? a kid??? they are really going after him. CHARGES WERE DISMISSED.
this is sick! here is the article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2014/07/09/in-sexting-case-manassas-city-police-want-to-photograph-teen-in-sexually-explicit-manner-lawyers-say/
If you read the WAPO article you will see that there are still some normal and sane people involved in law enforcment in Manassas County, VA.
another quote
“Carlos Flores Laboy, appointed the teen’s guardian ad litem in the case, said he thought it was just as illegal for the Manassas City police to create their own child pornography as to investigate the teen for it. ”
Now I’m really done posting for the day. Again.
If they’re charging him with taking photos of his own underage dick and sending it to his girlfriend why aren’t they charging the girlfriend with taking pictures of her underage body and sending them to him (which she did, allegedly, and allegedly before he did).
Did I miss a step? Did the guy send her naked pics somewhere else, or something?
Anonymous mom, perhaps you need to have a conversation with one of those “pervs” who get to spend every day of their lives watching film of adults sexually, and often violently, abusing babies, toddlers and children.
Contrary to your suspicions, they do not spend their time surfing the web for “teens sending nude pics to other teens”. Even had they, they’d not have found this boy’s photo since it was texted to his girlfriend.
More likely than not, the parents of the young girl in question here reported the penii pics.
Everyone defending the cops:
What kind of human volunteers to watch child porn all day?
So consensually sharing pictures is a crime, but the cops taking pictures to which this young man certainly didn’t consent to, isn’t. And, oh yeah, they forcibly drugged him, too.
How ironic that the old slang term for police detectives was “dicks”.(*)
(*) After the comic strip character Dick Tracy, I think.
unless and until the girl in this case is also charged, there is no way you will get me to believe that this is not just another case of all men are eveil and must be “neutered
” or perhaps neutrilized might be a better word. in theory in this country men and women have equal rights and responsibilities, not one is a victim all the time and one is the criminal. after all she sent the pictures first[ i am in no way saying that either one was right to do so by the way]
Henry Bowman, maybe people interested in stopping child porn from being created? Just a thought.
I hate to contradict most all those who have posted, but this case would be acceptable to all of you if he were older! Yet according to society and by law, 18 is A LEGAL ADULT! He IS no better, whether in a consensual relationship or not, is still against the law! Yes the girl should be looked into as well for distributing herself to an ADULT, and yes for crimes like this there is no statute of limitations, she should also go through some sort of counseling!
Things like this are why Middle School students are having kids (and YES in my school district I work for there was a 7th grader that was pregnant) and parents are NOT keeping a better eye on their kids! This issue would have NEVER happened if the parents knew what she was doing with this ADULT!
I’m sorry to say, but all of you have sidestepped the issue of him being an adult! Yes the cops went a bit far, but have been known to do so with OLDER adults as well! Just because THOSE didn’t make headlines doesn’t mean it isn’t done for others! If more parents could keep their kids from spreading their legs before the realize what could fully happen, which ALL doctors agree that they don’t have a fully developed brain till 25 years old, maybe shit like this would stop! Then the only ones under this suspicion would be the ones that had been sexually abused.
If you go back to the actual original news story you will find out that
A) no one has actually seen this supposed warrant–all this information has come from one source a defense lawyer and an aunt and
B) that police have informed the prosecutors that the allegations “lack credibility.”
Teens are indeed getting arrested for sexting these days (not a good idea to do that then) but this case is going nowhere. Go ahead and follow it…
Hi Shannon,
Yeah to answer your question if you actually read the original blog entry on the Washington Post blog page you find out that the entire situation occurred because the parents of the 15 year old minor found the pics and called the cops and filed a complaint.
anonymous mom – I do sort of agree with you. Certainly not all, but the vast majority of men who like to prosecute sex crimes are, while not pervs, definitely on the sleazy side of normal in my experience.
On a semi-related note. We have such a gender bias in our view of sex. I got dragged into a case yesterday where 15 (girl) and 12 (boy) year old siblings admit to regularly having sex with each other. And the only concern for anyone is the fact that siblings are having sex (agree that that is a HUGE concern). It has just been accepted by CPS and the Court that it was completely consensual. I don’t know that it was not consensual, but I am just amazed that people I know very well and that I know would be incensed and bringing in the police if the genders had been reversed are completely blowing this case off as consensual incest.
If a police officer ever took pictures of my minor child’s genitals I’d go get the best lawyer money could buy and sue the law enforcement agency. I am not one that believes in litigation every time something goes wrong, but this feels very, very wrong. That boy sent private texts to one person and now his privacy has been completely violated. Since when is nudity between two young people in private illegal? It has been going on forever, now we just have the pictures to prove it.
Ok, I just remembered it says 17, but I still believe that the parents need to keep an eye on their kids! But its also not to say if he was close to his 18th birthday, which even if he was a day away from it would have just saved his butt.
And the other issue that is failed to mention is WHO turned it in. It could have been she and/or he showed the pictures in and around school. If that is the case, especially the school case, we have all been told to tell the proper authorities in the matter. For School, he would have been turned into the police liaison, sent to the counselor, and possible explosion. Not to mention it is also not stated on how many other girls he could have/has sent it to.
The worst thing about articles, the information given isn’t always the whole truth. Not to mention it is altered to get these types of responses instead of looking into the absolute truth. But it still should be the parents that need to know what their child is doing. I had a student on my bus that his mother knows ALL the people on his Facebook page and will NOT allow any adult on his page that isn’t approved by her! I wish more parents would be like that. Then we might have a lower rate of teen pregnancy!
denise..how about if the girl was 17[almost 18] and the boy 15, everything else the same. would you still be calling for his blood? or would it beher blood? or would it be alright since she would be older? remember, she sent the pictures first. where were her parents?i’m not saying either one doing this is alright but there is at most 3 years between them, he misses the definition of pedophile. early last century they woulf already be married and him working. as for childrens brains not maturing until 25, reference scientific american[about 4-5 years ago] about this being an urban legend.
Denise, following the links it was the mother of the girl that filed the complaint. Not the school.
It’s also a fallacy in consensual cases to view an age limit as magical. An age deviation is better, but still not perfect.
I believe very firmly we’re too casual socially. At the same time, we’re to strict and irrational criminally.
By the way….their charge is dependent on him being a minor. If he’s virtually an adult, how can he be charged with creating minor porn?
Denise, let’s say the kid was 18 when he got caught. He would be charged with receiving and/or possession of child porn for receiving the text from his girlfriend. That is a felony that could land him in prison. You are okay with that?
He could also be charged with production of CP if he took pictures of himself before he turned 18. That’s another felony. All of this would land him on the sex offender registry for decades (in some states for LIFE)…and you would be okay with that?
Depending on the registry laws in his state, the registry could forever say that he had pictures of “child pornography” without specifying that it was a consensual exchange of photos–so the older he gets, the sleazier his crime seems even if this were the one and only time he ever committed this crime. And you’re okay with all of that?
People are not saying that it’s peachy for kids to exchange naked photos of themselves; we are saying that the punishment for this particular crime is far too harsh.
As for the law enforcement officers who spend all day looking at child porn, I don’t know that they do that. With the right software, cops can examine logs from websites and see what links you click, which images you opened, which ones you downloaded. All of that without actually looking at the images themselves. FAR more convictions come from those investigations than from investigations where the abuser is identified and caught. The idea that there are thousands of cops who pore over photos all day, working to identify the bad guys abusing infants and small children? A myth. There are some, and they do have a painful job to do.
What happens to someone who looks at child porn all day? The answer probably varies from person to person, but there are many cases of sex crime investigators getting caught for CP possession.
So if they are allowed to give him a medically induced erection, then does that open the door for other things. Getting a defendant high on speed so they can show what he looks like high. Or drunk to show what they were like in the car.
This also screams of a police force and DA’s office jumping on the bandwagon to prove how awesome they are.
marie – All images have to be looked at prior to charging someone with looking at child porn. Yes, there is software that enables you to identify potential child porn images without having to look at every picture on the internet, but someone has to view the actual images before warrants are brought. Then the DA has to view the images before indicting. Then the defense attorney has to view the images before resolving the case. People who handle these types of cases spend a lot of time looking at child porn.
I expect the cops that investigate are like most people. Some good and noble, most just looking to make a living, and a few scumbags.
In this case though, it would not surprise me if some neutral/good got turned pervs through chronic exposure. In which case they’re both victim and perp.
I’ve been through this, Donna, so I know you are right. in the comments, Powers said, “…the thousands of hardworking law enforcement agents who undertake the dangerous and emotionally draining work of investigating sex crimes.” There is an idea that noble cops spend their days examining child porn images to identify the adults in the images. Some do but not the thousands people like to imagine. I was saying that there are more convictions that result from the “clean” investigations that don’t require all-day-every-day exposure to CP than convictions that come from looking at child porn to see whodunnit.
The only child pornography involved in this situation is occurring from the police and prosecutor…they are child pornographers from coercing this young man into exposing himself for the initial photos they took. Moving beyond that to force the young man to gain an erection for their “personal” use & pleasure is beyond insane, and clearly sexual and child abuse. None of this has any relevance to keeping people safe, and it cannot possibly construed as an attempt at justice.
If this were my son, I cannot imagine what I would do to those perverts abusing him in the way the police and prosecutor are doing.
I just came to your website to ask if you’d seen this one yet! This poor boy. SHAME on the girl’s mother and the perverted judge & cops! Cops like these give good cops a bad name.
marie – I have no idea what you mean by “clean” investigations.
hmmm I don’t know. This comes across as they had to sexually assault another under 18 year old in order to prove he sexually assaulted an under 18 year old. So……does that make any sense?
OMG this just made me think of “Porkys”! Remember that movie? Haha my free range parents let me watch that movie at like age 10. The edited for tv version.
Anyway they had a penis identification scene of the high school boy in that movie too. But the woman asking for that just gets laughed at by everyone. Oh times have changed.
“I hate to contradict most all those who have posted, but this case would be acceptable to all of you if he were older! ”
uh, no. He replied to similar stuff sent to him by the girl, she initiated the exchange.
Whatever he’s done, I hold her responsible for the entire exchange.
If he’d sent those messages without being enticed to do so, it’d be different. But I’d still think it gross to have him forcibly subjected to what the police has and wants to subject him to for nothing more than their own perverse pleasures.
My mom was on a grand jury and she had to look at child porn. They said the jurors HAD to look at it and then decide whether to indict or not. It was not legal or valid if they did not look at it. I assure you, she got no pleasure from having to look at it.
I don’t think teenagers taking pics of themselves or their boyfriends or girlfriends should count as child porn. That is their own bodies. They should have a right to their own bodies. Now if they post that picture online then maybe that is a crime, but just taking it and sending it to their boyfriend is hardly a crime to me. It hurts no one. Teenagers are going to be horny and do stuff like this. That will never change.
The girl’s mother was dumb as hell and reminds me of a friend I had in high school’s mother. She snooped after her daughter and would find out stuff she would then get mad about. Then she would try to blame everything on everyone else instead of on her daughter who was just to blame as anyone else.
How this should have been handled was the mother confiscates the phone for two weeks as punishment and has a good talk to her daughter about not taking dirty pictures and sexting. Then contact the boys parents and tell them to have the same talk with their son. And maybe go put your daughter on some birth control pills and make sure they have condoms.
That is the realistic and sane way to handle this.
Really…if you need an injection to get a male teen to have an erection there is probably something else wrong with that teen.
@MichaelF — great contribution
I’m so confused at this whole event and it just makes me sad.
I guess the age difference doesn’t come into play? They weren’t that different in age and both in HS (which seems like a reasonable age difference for involved teens).
I do know that neighbor kid was arrested and charged with a felony offense because he and a girl got caught in a school stairwell while she was giving him a BJ. She was a young freshman (13 I think) and that made the biggest difference but he wasn’t even a senior so he had to be 17 at the most. I’m all for getting them both in trouble for doing something so stupid at school and I’m sure if I were the girl’s parents I would have been heartbroken and disappointed and shocked..but felony?
FWIW, apparently after the Post article, the police issued a statement indicating there was more to the story. It also claims the girl had asked the kid NOT to send her anything more and he continued.
Not sure any of that justifies what they are trying to do with the accused but here it is:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2014/07/09/manassas-city-police-release-statement-on-teen-sexting-case/
Be prepared for more and more cases of stuff like this. with the vast red shirting going on you are going to have 14 year olds in school with kids 18, 19, 20 and it is just going to get worse. It has always been natural for a Senior to sometimes mess around with a freshman. Happened all the time at our school. But now that is going to be a felony offense.
@E
“It also claims the girl had asked the kid NOT to send her anything more and he continued.”
I don’t suppose they’d bring criminal charges against porn spammers (or any spammers) who continue to spam if I politely ask them not to. Or is that OK if it comes from strangers?
Let’s just cut to the chase and lock up all men (except for those who are cops, prosecutors, and judges) and put them in a giant man jail somewhere. Then we’ll all be safe.
What a travesty. It would be funny if it wasn’t destroying so many lives.
How did we get to this point, and why is it allowed to continue?
I don’t suppose they’d bring criminal charges against porn spammers (or any spammers) who continue to spam if I politely ask them not to. Or is that OK if it comes from strangers?
When the feds do the spamming, it’s always “okay.”
Donna, perhaps my distinction was made clumsily. I make a distinction between investigations that are done mainly through software tracking and examination of web logs (“clean” work) and those investigations that need to look at the images (exhausting work that must leave the investigator feeling slimed) to identify who is creating the images.
I’m sorry if this offends anyone.But even before I read the story, I thought “This is either in Florida, or Virginia.
I think we can all feel relief that police are fighting the scourge of child pornography by…making child pornography.
Oh, goodness. Subject matter (and flame wars!) aside, this is a pretty funny post, Lenore. Love your sense of humor.
This kind of thing pisses me off to no end! “We’ve gotta protect the kids! We’ve gotta protect the kids”!!!! Yes, and lose all common sense in the process!! Look, if a 58-year-old man like me has nude photos of 15-year-old girls or boys on his cell phone, go ahead and handcuff me and take me to prison. In fact, I’ll extend my arms out for the handcuffs! But what is it going to gain by ruining the life of a 17-year-old kid just because he took nude pics of his 15-year-old girlfriend who was a mere 2 years younger than he?
OK, sexting is bad and sexting is not cool. We’ve got that. But discipline this kid accordingly and let him get on with his life. Putting him on a lifetime sex offender registry as well as humiliating him in the process, is NOT letting him get on with his life and it’s not disciplining him accordingly!
@Henry Bowman
Quote: “Everyone defending the cops:
What kind of human volunteers to watch child porn all day?”
Well Henry, I guess the same type of humans who perform autopsies all day. Not a nice thing to do and quite a repulsive thing to do BUT it’s actually a noble job that needs to be done in order to nab perpetrators and prevent the same unpleasant deaths from occurring in the future.
“how is prosecuting two people in a consensual relationship…”
Sooo…a 17-year-old sending pornography to a 15-year-old qualifies as a “consensual” relationship, according to the “anarchist kids” — I mean “free range kids” philosophy? Lenore, you and anarcho-libertarian Reason.com are the perfect match, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. But I wonder how many of the gun-toting anarchists here and at Reason would be so complacent if their 15-year-old daughters were at the receiving end of of a horny boy’s penis pics? I’m thinking zero, if they’re honest. Not that libertarians have ever been accused of being honest.
This sounds like a good case of needing to protect kids FROM cops. Where are CPS when they could actually do some good??!
And no, I wouldn’t be up in arms if he was over 18. It’s a PICTURE, it can’t do anything by itself. She owns a delete key, and for that matter can probably block his texts if she wants. I’d guess “I asked him to stop” was what she told her mother, so SHE wouldn’t get in trouble.
This country is being influenced by morons, run by morons, and followed by morons. The US is actively creating morons. Must be an experiment. Perhaps the “zombie apocalypse” is really upon us. The rest of us are no longer safe!
“I make a distinction between investigations that are done mainly through software tracking and examination of web logs (“clean†work) and those investigations that need to look at the images (exhausting work that must leave the investigator feeling slimed) to identify who is creating the images.”
Again, every investigation into child porn requires a human being to look at the images. These investigators are still spending large parts of their day looking at child porn. So, I guess I don’t see a distinction between someone looking at the images to certify “yes this person has child porn” and looking at the images to try to identify the creator.
“Sooo…a 17-year-old sending pornography to a 15-year-old qualifies as a “consensual†relationship”
No, but a boyfriend/girlfriend combo sending naked pictures to each other definitely qualifies as a consensual relationship. And that is what this was.
“But I wonder how many of the gun-toting anarchists here and at Reason would be so complacent if their 15-year-old daughters were at the receiving end of of a horny boy’s penis pics?”
I am not a gun-toting anarchist in the least, but I will answer. I would not be happy if my 15-year-old was receiving penis pictures from her boyfriend. I would definitely not be happy if she was SENDING naked pictures to this same boyfriend, as was the case here. But all of this is a PARENTING issue and not a matter for the police.
My guess is that the girl did ask him to stop after her mother found the pictures and told her to tell him to stop but that she truly had no interest in him stopping. She started the exchange, not him, so unless they broke up, I see no reason that she would suddenly become a prude about naked pictures.
It’s playing doctor in the digital age. Yes there is a whole lot of stuff wrong with it and i would certainly have a good talk about it with any kid of mine because pictures have a way with catching up with you. But this is certainly not a criminal case and it shows that not all problems can be solved by cops and the legal system. Its crazy that a 15 year old girl isnt heard in all this.
If two children are looking at each other naked, it’s not child pornography.
It becomes child pornography when adults are sharing, buying, selling, or inducing sexual pictures of naked children.
In this case, that started when the mother of the girl shared the images with the police, who apparently passed them around amongst themselves and then asked for more.
Do you think the pervy cops ended up in that town because the name seemed promising to them?
@M.S. Tack “how many … would be so complacent if their 15-year-old daughters were at the receiving end of of a horny boy’s penis pics?”
I would be very unhappy with her sending her pic and him sending penis. I would be also unhappy if I would find out they have sex at 15, I guess I would be happier with them sending videos over them doing to the real thing.
That does not mean that any of them should be charged with felony, arrested and risk being put on sex offenders list for life. If anything else, neither video nor picture can get anyone pregnant and noone gets STD from it. Alright, there is a risk of big humiliation if the video gets out on the internet.
Such punishments wont’s stop teenagers from exploring bodies. They will just make life of few unlucky ones unnecessary hard. Criminal punishments should not be based on someones feelings. Outraged parents do bad judges.
Have you seen “Porky’s?” It has a hysterical scene that now seems like it was satirizing this 25 years before it actually happened.