Anatomy of a Child Pornographer

What happens when adults catch teenagers "sexting" photos of each other? The death of common sense.

Nancy Rommelmann from the July 2009 issue

On a chilly Tuesday morning in November 2007, 16-year-old Alex Davis was taking a shower before school when his mother, Betty, knocked on the bathroom door. There was someone downstairs, she said, a New York state trooper who had come at 7 a.m. to the family’s farm outside Rochester.

“She said, ‘I think it’s about Laurie,’ ” Alex recalls. “My stomach kind of dropped, and I thought, ‘This is not going to be good.’ ”

The previous Friday, after coming home from football practice with a few teammates, Alex had exchanged text messages with Laurie, a 14-year-old freshman (whose name has been changed in this story, as has Alex’s and his family’s). While his friends played Guitar Hero on his PS2, Alex, captain of the football, basketball, and tennis teams, read a message from Laurie saying she wanted to be a cheerleader.

“I said, well, I needed a cute cheerleader this year,” recalls Alex, a deep-voiced kid with an open face, dark eyes, and the synaptic quickness of a natural athlete. “And she said, ‘Oh, yeah? Well, is this cute?’ And then…”

And then Alex made what he now calls “that little two-second decision to mess up my whole life.” He opened photos Laurie took of herself with her cell-phone, in her bra and panties, and then just her panties. Alex texted back, asking for more and noting that the reception on his Verizon LG phone was crap. No problem, Laurie replied. She would send the photos to his email address. They soon arrived along with a bonus attachment: a video clip of Laurie performing a striptease. Alex was happy to receive the images and says Laurie seemed happy to send them, “like she was willing and she wanted to show more, I guess.” That might have been the end of it, had the files not, as digital files will, leaked onto the Internet. Within a day after Alex saw them, so did Laurie’s mother, who phoned Betty to say, “You need to talk to your son.”

So Betty and her husband Bill sat Alex on the stump that serves as a stool before the hearth of the home where three generations of Betty’s family have lived and asked Alex, a leader of their church youth group and recipient of several good citizen awards, what had happened. Alex told them. He said he was sorry and wanted to apologize. Betty called Laurie’s mother, who told her that an apology would be insufficient. Alex texted Laurie to ask what was going on. She answered that her father really wanted “to lay down the law.”

And now the law stood at Alex’s front door, asking on behalf of the Genesee County Sheriff ’s Department how the pictures came to be distributed. Alex explained that he had left the email inbox open on his Dell desktop. His buddy had forwarded the images to his own address. (According to Alex, he hadn’t shown the photos to anyone or posted them to his MySpace or Facebook pages, so he assumed this was how they made their way onto the Net. Later he would learn he was one of four boys who had received snapshots from Laurie and from whose computers the images had, like mononucleosis, spread exponentially.)

The trooper printed Alex’s statement on a printer he’d brought with him and watched while Alex signed it. Charges, he said, were pending.

Peer-to-Peer Flashing

Not far from the Davis farm stands the George Eastman House, a Versailles-size mansion in downtown Rochester that includes displays of the Eastman Kodak Company’s myriad photographic inventions, including the Brownie camera. Released in 1900, Brownies were designed for youngsters and marketed with the slogan, “So simple, they can easily be operated by any school boy or girl.” Pictorial ads of the time show young folks preserving memories of outdoor games and train rides.

Eastman likely never imagined that young people, empowered not only with cameras but mobile wireless network nodes, would instead shoot naked pictures of themselves and send them to friends, who often return the favor. We’re not talking about a few exhibitionistic teens, but millions of kids. In a 2008 TRU survey of 1,280 teenagers and young adults (all of whom had volunteered to participate), 20 percent of the teenagers and 33 percent of the young adults said they had transmitted nude or semi-nude photos or videos of themselves, a phenomenon the media have dubbed “peer-to-peer porn” or “sexting.”

This practice might be considered relatively harmless, the 21st-century version of “you show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” if it weren’t for federal and state laws that deal harshly with those who traffic in child pornography. The federal statute criminalizes the production, distribution, and possession of images depicting underage subjects engaged in sexually explicit conduct; depending on the charges, it mandates sentences of five to 30 years in prison. Because the technology that allows sexting is new, age-appropriate punishments have yet to be hammered out. Instead, laws designed to thwart middle-aged people who prey on children are being applied to the children themselves.

Sexting cases are piling up in courtrooms across the United States. Three Pennsylvania girls, ages 14 and 15, who took semi-nude pictures of themselves with their phones and sent them to their boyfriends are awaiting trial on charges of distributing child porn. (The boyfriends are charged with possession.) Last October a 15-year-old Ohio girl was taken in handcuffs to a juvenile detention facility after sending nude photos of herself to classmates. “I wasn’t really thinking when I did it,” she told the court, which threatened felony charges that would require her to register as a sex offender, charges that were dropped when she agreed to have her cell phone and Internet use monitored. Two teenagers in Florida were not as fortunate: In 2007 a state appeals court upheld their convictions for producing child porn. Although the pair didn’t pass around the snapshots, which showed them engaged in an “unspecified sex act,” the judges found a “reasonable expectation that the material will ultimately be disseminated.” Were that to happen, they observed, “future damage may be done to these minors’ careers or personal lives.” They did not say anything about the potential impact on their lives from a child pornography conviction.

Alex’s case isn’t even the first to arise in his part of the country. Genesee County, with a population of about 60,000, has seen “a dozen, 15 maybe” in the last two years, according to Assistant District Attorney Will Zickl. “I’m glad they didn’t have this technology when I was in high school,” he says. “Once you put your image out there, it’s out there. God knows where it can go. As computer-savvy and Net-savvy as kids are, they don’t think about that.”

Or maybe they do, and they just don’t care. While it’s hard to argue that it’s an awesome idea for teenagers to launch pictures of their genitals into cyberspace, the sheer number who do so suggests that they don’t share the concern for privacy that held sway over previous generations. When they close their bedroom doors, it is not necessarily to be alone. It might be to hook up with the whole world.

Better Than We Thought

The call that Tom Splain took from Betty and Bill Davis was not the first the attorney had received about a kid caught looking at dirty pictures. “At least in this case, the fricking sheriff didn’t send out a press release,” says Splain, a big man in a dress shirt and tie. Between answering calls from several clients and a judge, he relates an earlier incident in which an overzealous police chief acted as though he had a big cyber-crime on his hands. The official alerted a Rochester TV station, which splashed a mug shot of the boy—bangs in his eyes, cheeks spackled with acne—all over the 6 p.m. news.

If there’s culpability on Alex’s part, Splain says, it’s that he did what might be expected of a kid his age: He looked at the photos and asked for more. “The thing to bear in mind,” Splain adds, “is she sent him these pictures unsolicited. He’s [got] hormones galore—hey, yeah, holy cow! It’s Christmas morning!”

Alex deleted the files as soon he realized his and Laurie’s virtual encounter was about to have very real consequences, consequences Splain knew could be extremely serious. “We’re talking about C, D, and E-level felonies,” he says. “A C-level is a mandatory minimum three and a half years in state prison and up to 15. In our system, Alex wasn’t a juvenile. He was a youthful offender. If you’re 16 or older, you’re treated as an adult.” The Davises could have agitated for a charge against Laurie of disseminating indecent materials to minors in the second degree—a class E felony—but they declined, and they have had no further communications with her family.

(Contacted for this article, Laurie’s father would only say on the record, “This country has laws in place to protect children. Those laws need to be enforced, and parents need to pursue those laws to the fullest extent to protect their children.”)

Adults who have been drawn into the drama of kids and their cell phones tend to be caught between the desire to punish and the reality that kids can flout conventional standards of decency, morality, or what-have-you and still grow up to be productive members of society. “Schools are really struggling at the policy level, as are the courts, to establish a body of case law and guiding legal principles for what is acceptable,” says Samuel McQuade, graduate program coordinator at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Center for Multidisciplinary Studies. His 2008 Survey of Internet and At-Risk Behaviors, which polled about 40,000 upstate New York students, charts the online intersections between kids and sex, which are seemingly infinite. “The last thing we want to do for youth is to clog up our juvenile justice systems with the massive amounts of computer-enabled crime,” he says. “It’s not possible to do it, nor would you want to do it. The answer is through education.”

So far, that line of thinking has led to efforts of dubious value—McGruff the Crime Dog for the digital set. McQuade’s own organization, the Cyber Safety and Ethics Initiative, puts its energy into hanging posters promoting “good digital citizenship,” embedding ethical messages in school websites, and publishing a pamphlet called It’s Worse Than We Thought. Actually, it’s probably better. A recent study by Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society suggests that the threats children face online, in particular from sexual predators, are no worse than those they encounter offline. This is in sync with other research, including the 2007 Pew Internet and American Life Project, which shows that when social networking, kids can tell a pervert from a potential friend.

Meanwhile, law enforcement officials are learning that the tough-guy approach can do more harm than good. Splain describes how one local D.A. is handling cases. “He’s like, ‘I get a call almost every day from the school resource counselor in Genesee [County], saying they’ve intercepted another phone with these pictures,’ ” Splain says. “They’ve taken the tack, we don’t want to hurt anybody. We want the school resource officer to intercede and put the fear of God in these kids. If there are further problems, let us know, but word is going out to the parents that the school is handling it internally.”

That isn’t what happened in Alex’s case. Three months after receiving the pictures, Alex was arrested. Splain called Bill Davis and asked him to bring his son to the station. There, the trooper who had taken the initial report at the Davis house joined the father and the attorney as Alex was being led away for fingerprinting. Splain recalls: “The trooper said to me, ‘Tom, when we were that age, we snuck a look at our dad’s Playboy and passed it around. What do they expect?’ ”

The Death of Common Sense

It’s 4 p.m. on a Friday in January, and the Davis home is a thoroughfare. Every five minutes, someone walks through the front door: a young Chinese woman who lives with the Davises while she spends the year teaching, several employees of the Davises’ large farms. Betty pours a cola in the kitchen beneath a plaque on the stove hood that reads, “Be still, and know that I am God,” before joining her husband at the dining table.

“The reason we’re sitting here is we’re hoping we can help somebody else through this,” says Bill, his overalls filled by a stout belly. “The girl moved to our school that year; she had been homeschooled up until then. Obviously, she was trying to fit in somehow, and she sent a picture to my son, and he asked for more.” He looks to Betty. “In our eyes, that’s fairly normal.”

Not that they were sanguine about it. “The last thing Alex wants to do is disappoint us, and he knew at that point, he had,” Betty says. “And the parents wanted some type of a punishment for the embarrassment.”

“If I were in their shoes, I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done the same thing,” Bill says, adding that, while he and Betty had never met Laurie or her folks, “I’m sure they’re a great family.”

What might have been settled quickly between the families—with apologies, or confiscation of cell phones, or a smack upside the head and the words, “What’s wrong with you?”—instead became a prolonged and anxiety-ridden ordeal. Bill and Betty worked assiduously to contain the damage and did everything Splain, their attorney, told them to do. They agreed to pay if Laurie needed counseling, for instance, a recollection that causes Betty to widen her eyes in incredulity. They took Alex to a sex counselor, a $350 meeting that ended with the counselor telling Betty what she already knew: “There’s no sex problem with your son.”

Then there were the things they could not control, such as the confiscation by police of the computer belonging to the dean of students at Alex’s school. The dean had requested the images in an effort to sort things out—but that made him a suspect, a turn of events that enrages Bill to the point that he appears to levitate in his chair. “They don’t make better people than this man,” he says. “I was worried he’d lose his damn job! There’s the death of common sense, is how I refer to it.”

And there was the ongoing specter of prosecution. The D.A. had yet to press charges, but the worst-case scenario was three felonies, including passing child pornography, which would require Alex to register as a sex offender. “How can you go to college?” asks Betty, the pitch of her voice rising as she recalls her fear and umbrage. “How can you do anything with this on your record?”

For several months, it looked as though it might all go away. Then, in February, Splain called to say that Alex would be charged. “The officer said I could bring [Alex] down at a time convenient for both of us,” says Bill, his voice thickening with tears. “So I waited for him after basketball practice, and we went there. We walked in the door, and when I tried to go in with [my son], an officer said, ‘No, you have to stay here.’ ”

Betty pats his hand. “Dad was scared,” she says.

“Yeah, Dad was scared,” he says. “Because Dad has common sense.”

Betty says she put her faith in God and knew it was going to be OK. Which, as these things go, it was: Alex was charged with endangering the welfare of a child, a Class A misdemeanor that doesn’t require serving time. If he stayed out of trouble for six months, the record would be sealed.

Aftermath

The walls of Alex’s room are covered with posters: former Dodgers pitcher Greg Maddux, eight-time NBA All Star Paul Pierce, and a lone shot of Britney Spears. Alex is willing, in the bashful way of a 17-year-old boy talking to a lady he doesn’t know, to discuss what happened.

“I didn’t pressure her into it or anything,” he says. Not that he didn’t appreciate the gesture or didn’t like the photos. “It was all right,” he admits. “It was good.” As for the images themselves, they were not shocking or unusual. His friends frequently show him sexy pictures sent by female friends of theirs. Now, though, he has a policy about looking. “I always ask my friends, how old is she?” he says. “My rule is, 18.”

Around Alex, the supposition that kids who swap naked photos shred social decency while laying waste to their own futures falls apart. If there’s blame to be assigned, he’s ready to take it. “It’s kind of like that for everything,” he says. “Like when I play basketball. If we lose, it feels like I did what I had to do but I still have most of the blame on me. I’ve learned to deal with it.”

And he would have dealt with it, whether it meant going to jail or delaying college (where he plans to study business administration, with the goal of helping run his family’s farms) or apologizing to Laurie’s parents. The latter doesn’t seem to be in the cards. When they see him, it seems to Alex they avoid eye contact, and he hasn’t been sure they want to hear anything from him, including that he’s sorry. “But I think one of these days I will apologize, just for how everything went down,” he says. “I don’t want her family to think I’m that type of kid.”

Alex pauses, broad-shouldered and loose-limbed, wearing sweats on a Saturday morning after winning the big game. While the photos may have been a big deal to the grown-ups, to him and Laurie they weren’t. “I mean, this is my senior year, and I just want to have fun with it,” he says. “I see her. She’s a star cheerleader. We don’t let it faze us.”

From his point of view, the problem wasn’t the pictures but the aftermath. “This is a 16-year-old boy and an almost 15-year-old girl going through their young adult lives here,” Alex says.

“I just wish the families could have handled it better. I mean, I would have been glad to mow their lawn all summer.”

After which, maybe, she could have mowed the lawn at his house.

Alex grins. “Exactly.”

Nancy Rommelmann ([e-mail]) writes for the L.A. Weekly and other publications. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Comments

DHS Thinks I\'m a Terrorist|6.4.09 @ 12:23PM|#

Our society seems to forget that humans beings are animals with animal needs. The teenage years are when we become aware of this and before many of us have been brainwashed to think there is something wrong with this.

Frederick|6.4.09 @ 12:26PM|#

Our society seems to forget that humans beings are animals with animal needs.

Sure, but it is illegal to act on them before 18.

The teenage years are when we become aware of this and before many of us have been brainwashed to think there is something wrong with this.

And there isn't?

|6.4.09 @ 12:39PM|#

Damn this stupid shit has just got to stop. Some kids ought to organize a gigantic 'naked teens' protest by facebook. Get millions of kids (or hell, even thousands would do it) to take nude shots of themselves and forwarding them all to the local police and to the whitehouse on a given day and overwhelm the fucked up system.

slutmonkey|6.4.09 @ 12:39PM|#

This whole thing is fucking stupid. If Laurie's parents weren't so retarded as to take this to the police no one would have been harmed. What they did costed everyone involved thousands of dollars for nothing.

From the legal angle they need to change child pornography laws to exclude people under 18, the same way many statutory rape laws do not apply to minors.

From the societal perspective, Lauries dumbass parents need to learn the Gran Torino Solution: When kids mess up, you assign them a mentor and make them do some manual labor. You DON'T waste police and judicial time with it.

Why doesn't anyone just talk to their neighbors anymore? It's usually not hard to work things out if you really try.

|6.4.09 @ 12:42PM|#

forwarding them all to the local police and to the whitehouse

If your local police chief and President Obama are accused of receiving child porn, this could get really awesome really quickly.

BeesInTheBrain|6.4.09 @ 12:43PM|#

Also amazed at the power that is being handed over to the schools in these situations. Given that students have very little 14th amendment rights or due process that is as scary as anything else.

Hammered Head|6.4.09 @ 12:44PM|#

It is bizzare that Alex feels that he needs to apologize to Laurie's family. They destroyed his life and should apologize to him.

It is probably best that he never talk to anyone in that family again

libertarian democrat|6.4.09 @ 12:48PM|#

That would be sexism, HH, plain and simple.

|6.4.09 @ 1:04PM|#

It seems to me that anyone with a modicum of common sense can differentiate between child pornography and teens acting like teens.

coyote1284|6.4.09 @ 1:12PM|#

"The teenage years are when we become aware of this and before many of us have been brainwashed to think there is something wrong with this."

"And there isn't?"

There *is* something wrong with exposing yourself in public, and it is naive to think that a picture sent electronically is "private", but when produced by the individual herself, it should not be punished at the same level as a young woman being coerced into revealing herself for "modeling".

There is nothing wrong with young people exploring their sexuality, but they must be educated on the dangers and consequences associated with sex. Teaching abstainance as the most effective method of avoiding unintentional pregnancy and disease is admirable, but it *must* be combined with education about how to be safe about having sex. "Abstainace only" creates more problems than it is intended to "solve". Sure, screwing everything that moves is not a healthy lifestyle, but having a few sexual encounters before you settle down with someone is not the worst thing you can do to yourself.

|6.4.09 @ 1:13PM|#

It's offical, the last vestiges of common sense have left America.

I mean charging those girls with distrubuting porn when it's was pics they took of themselves???

Sometimes you wonder how we can get any dumber, but then a story like this comes along...

|6.4.09 @ 1:14PM|#

Christ. Fucking fascist government.

|6.4.09 @ 1:16PM|#

The problem, Tim, is that this is classic behavior, both of the leftist and rightist kind.

"I see a behavior I don't like, let me find a way to stop it."

Criminalizing it is, in their minds, the easiest way to stop it. From drugs to sex to transfats to "hate speech", it's all the same rationale.

|6.4.09 @ 1:16PM|#

Contacted for this article, Laurie's father would only say on the record, "This country has laws in place to protect children. Those laws need to be enforced, and parents need to pursue those laws to the fullest extent to protect their children."

Then I guess he'd have no problem with having his daughter prosecuted. After all, it's for the children.

I almost forgot: yo, fuck Laurie's father.

|6.4.09 @ 1:23PM|#

Now, this is where the digitized, instant-gratification concept of youth culture is getting them in trouble. Instead of sending MMS picture messages, which could get intercepted and forwarded, why not just stick with doing things the old-fashioned way, like asking the girl over and have her do the striptease there?

Just looking out for the youth of this country.

IceTrey|6.4.09 @ 1:36PM|#

"Once you put your image out there, it's out there. God knows where it can go. As computer-savvy and Net-savvy as kids are, they don't think about that."

Well anyone who doesn't know pics can get out isn't very net savvy at all. BTW, fuck Laurie's dad too.

|6.4.09 @ 1:53PM|#

Why wasn't Laurie prosecuted? She distributed the photos to begin with. Why was only Alex prosecuted?

|6.4.09 @ 1:54PM|#

Alex says he just "left his computer open" inadvertently, causing the pictures to be forwarded. Also, he has no idea how that baggie got in his car - it must be a friend. Assuming that were true, is there still a crime?

I've got a lot less sympathy for the kids who forward the e-mails than for kids who receive them. At the very least, they're pr*cks.

Robert|6.4.09 @ 1:58PM|#

Prosecuting someone's distributing pictures of herself as a child pornographer is like prosecuting someone who gives gifts as a thief.

Zeb|6.4.09 @ 2:05PM|#

"having a few sexual encounters before you settle down with someone is not the worst thing you can do to yourself."

Ans many might say that that is one of the better things you can do for yourself.

Here is the point that the law fails to account for in cases like these. Teenagers are not children. THey are not adults either, but they really don't belong in the same legal category as children, especially where sex is concerned. A 30 year old having sex with a 16 year old is inappropriate and probably wrong in some moral sense, but it is a whole different ball game from diddling a pre-pubescent child.

And why assume that the naked picture is pornography? Perhaps she took the picture purely for the aesthetic value.

|6.4.09 @ 2:27PM|#

Alex explained that he had left the email inbox open on his Dell desktop.

What the hell does that mean? I'm not a Windoze user, so maybe that's a common occurance over in Redmond. But out here it takes at least a modicum of hacking skills to get into someone else's email account.

LarryA|6.4.09 @ 2:36PM|#

As computer-savvy and Net-savvy as kids are, they don't think about that.

Computer-savvy is irrelevant, it's the "thinking" part that doesn't happen. They're teenagers!

Note that in most states Alex could have invited Laurie over and he and his friends could have had an orgy with her and the other cheerleaders without any legal repercussions whatsoever.

Although the pair didn't pass around the snapshots, which showed them engaged in an "unspecified sex act," the judges found a "reasonable expectation that the material will ultimately be disseminated." Were that to happen, they observed, "future damage may be done to these minors' careers or personal lives." They did not say anything about the potential impact on their lives from a child pornography conviction.

That's just obscenely stupid. Is there a justification clause for contempt of court?

What the hell does that mean? I'm not a Windoze user, so maybe that's a common occurance over in Redmond. But out here it takes at least a modicum of hacking skills to get into someone else's email account.

It probably meant that after looking at the graphics he left his computer on with email open, and while he wasn't looking his buddy walked over to the desk and forwarded the message. The boys were all at the same location.

bob42|6.4.09 @ 2:48PM|#

Frequently, questionable photos are found by school authoritahs who confiscate mobile phones in the classroom. I suppose that's justifiable, but I often wonder how they justify extending their power to include digging through the contents of students' private property.

Additionally, if the state is going to classify teens as child pornographers for taking pics of their boobies, shouldn't they also be charging the school admins who unnecessarily and voluntarily view such photos with possessing kiddie porn?

Dr. Dale Archer|6.4.09 @ 2:50PM|#

With all this talk about "sexting," it boils down to personal responsibility. It's imperative that a teenager feel that a parent could confiscate or check activity at and moment. It's the parent's primary responsibility to teach their children that these devices are a privilege with rules and standards in place.

Sad thing is, this trend will not go away since it's human nature and the "cool" thing to do, but there are things a parent can do to help prevent this behavior.

http://telldrd.com/Blog/BlogDetail.asp?p1=12030&p2=138&p7=3000

|6.4.09 @ 3:06PM|#

The Davises could have agitated for a charge against Laurie of disseminating indecent materials to minors in the second degree-a class E felony-but they declined

Wow. I admire their restraint. They're a whole lot less vindictive than I'd be in their shoes - I know for damn sure I'd have pursued a Mutually Assured Destruction strategy.

Charles C. Johnson|6.4.09 @ 3:06PM|#

Thank God picture phones weren't around when I was that age!

I'd be doing harm time still.

Kreel Sarloo|6.4.09 @ 3:19PM|#

In the midst of all this douchebaggery Alex's parents conducted themselves very well, I think.

They deserve to be commended. Lesser people might have pressed charges against Laurie just to spite her douchebag old man.

Kreel Sarloo|6.4.09 @ 3:23PM|#

I see Dr K said pretty much the same thing.

I started to compose my post quite a while ago but got called away to do my actual job. And didn't read all the posts after refreshing my screen.

Oh, and I think we've both answered ChicagoTom | June 4, 2009, 1:53pm.

|6.4.09 @ 3:44PM|#

The thinking is that children are not capable of consenting to naked pictures. We make that rule the same way we do lots of rules for kids. We say that kids are not old enough to handle drinking. So when the cops catch kids drinking, they arrest them. The same logic is aplied here. Does drinking harm anyone but the kid? Unless they are drinking and driving, I don't see how it does. The same is true here. I don't see how a kid taking naked pictures of herself harms anyone but her. But the cops arrest her to "save her from herself" just like they arrest the kid who is drinking. They do it both to save them from themselves and to deter others.

The logic is the same in both cases. Yet, the naked picture case revolts our sensibilities much more. Perhaps that is because having their pictures taken naked isn't as damaging to teenagers as we think it is.

|6.4.09 @ 4:24PM|#

John,

I thought the same thing at first, but the offense of drinking undersage is different than the offense of child pornography. Drinking underage is illegal because the underage child is doing somethiing to themselves that society deems harmful and has decided to prohibit as a matter of public policy. Child porn laws are different - they are written to prevent one person from being exploited by another. There is no prohibition against harming yourself in this way. Child porn laws are being stretched to cover the act of sexting in a way that underage drinking laws are not. The simple solution would be to write a bill prohibiting underage people from photographing themselves nude and distributing. If this is what people want, they can have their representatives enact it. But the DA's aren't doing this. They are taking an existing statute that was enacted for an entirely different reason and re-purposing it to prevent a behavior they object to for entirely different reasons than society objects to actual child porn.

|6.4.09 @ 4:58PM|#

Note that in most states Alex could have invited Laurie over and he and his friends could have had an orgy with her and the other cheerleaders without any legal repercussions whatsoever.

Well, except for the statutory rape.

|6.4.09 @ 5:43PM|#

"Once you put your image out there, it's out there. God knows where it can go. As computer-savvy and Net-savvy as kids are, they don't think about that."

OK, yeah -- so what? How many naked images are there 'out there' of, say, Kate Winslet? And this puts her in danger and ruins her life prospects...exactly how? I mean, if I ever walked past her in the street, I could say, "Hey, I saw you naked!" and then she could shrug and walk on by.

Why would this be any different for a non-famous person? Or somebody who is 16 rather than 18?

Robert|6.4.09 @ 6:22PM|#

I suppose the damage is that the viewer of the photo has proof that you have genitals, which are shameful things to have.

IceTrey|6.4.09 @ 6:42PM|#

@J Mann

If you read the whole article it says the chick had sent pics to other guys and that's how they ended up on the net.

@Zeb

In the majority of states the age of consent IS 16. So it's perfectly legal for a 30 year old to have sex with someone 16.

|6.4.09 @ 6:43PM|#

It seems to me that anyone with a modicum of common sense

Well that eliminates any Chief of Police or Prosecutor that wants to win re-election. They only count the wins and bodies in prison.

Robert|6.4.09 @ 7:05PM|#

To amplify my most recent comment, it's like an experience I had with my friend's little daughters. Apparently they had recently learned that genitals and excretory functions were not to be displayed publicly. I can only guess that they inferred that they must be objects of shame and/or ridicule. I infer this because they kept coming into the bathroom (no lock) to laugh and point at me while I sat on the toilet.

That's about the same logic displayed by the legal actions above -- that there's no difference in evil between invading someone's sexual privacy and sharing views voluntarily.

Robert|6.4.09 @ 7:17PM|#

Child porn legislation does seem to be protean in the hands of enforcers. First they tried to make it cover virtual child porn. Then they tried to use it to make all porn harder to make & distribute, by making the makers & distributors prove that the models aren't minors. Now this peer-to-peer stuff; not clear whether this effort will be legally rebuffed as were the previous efforts to extend it beyond the justif'n for it.

|6.4.09 @ 8:11PM|#

Typical.

The father abdicates all parental responsibility and then runs to Daddy Government to punish the recipient of his daughter's misbehavior.

And exactly why does a 15 and 16 yo need a cell phone for the love of God???

How in the hell did we ever make it through without air bags, booster seats, bike helmets, cell phones, stranger-danger, etc. I guess I dodged quite a few bullets.

Maybe I should wrap myself in bubblewrap and drive a Nerf car lest I run out of luck. ;)

Amy Alkon|6.4.09 @ 8:55PM|#

How many naked images are there 'out there' of, say, Kate Winslet? And this puts her in danger and ruins her life prospects...exactly how? I mean, if I ever walked past her in the street, I could say, "Hey, I saw you naked!" and then she could shrug and walk on by. Why would this be any different for a non-famous person?

Only in that Kate Winslet probably gets a body double so she looks like she has a really great ass on film.

|6.4.09 @ 9:00PM|#

Puritanism is a cancer. It destroys lives.

-jcr

Alan|6.5.09 @ 3:36AM|#

Others have already said it, so I'll skip making a long comment.

I just wanted to say, what did the American people expect when they passed idiotic law after idiotic law? And, oh yeah, Laurie's dad is a real piece of work.

The Wine Commonsewer (TWC)|6.5.09 @ 11:22AM|#

Those guys are just PO'd that nobody forwarded the pix to them.

I hate it that otherwise rational people cannot tell the difference between taking naughty pictures of an eight year old and taking naughty pictures of a fifteen year old.

In the former a shotgun is required (not for the eight year old, silly). In the latter, well, you hope your daughter has more sense than that.

|6.5.09 @ 11:32AM|#

The answer is for every underage child to take multiple naked photos of themselves, post them all over the net, and turn themselves in. The laws will be changed, or the "justice" system will grind to a halt. Your choice, you asinine, parasitic, bigoted, unthinking, parasitic legislators.

rubarb|6.5.09 @ 2:01PM|#

why wasn't the girl charged she was the one who created the "child porn" and sent it out..

|6.5.09 @ 4:54PM|#

Because she was suppose to be the victim.

Pepe|6.5.09 @ 9:30PM|#

This story made me think of the film American Beauty in which a then 16 year old Thora Birch revealed her ample bosoms on camera. Aren't all the people who viewed and distributed this film guilty of distributing child porn or is it only porn when done by cell phone.

As far as I can tell all this Laurie did was show off her boobs. That's pornography now?

bubba|6.6.09 @ 5:28PM|#

wow, "laurie's" parents are herculean assholes.

Wicks Cherrycoke|6.7.09 @ 12:11PM|#

I cannot tell you how angry this story makes me. The prosecutors who bring these charges against children are despicable, and the judges who uphold the conviction of children as "child pornographers" are idiots.

And just as despicable and idiotic are those who claim that this is being done "for the child's own good" as a means to "induce" them into obtaining "counseling" or "treatment." The criminal justice system is for prosecuting criminals, not for intervening in the lives of children and teens by using the threat of prison terms and lifetime registry as a "sex offender" as a form of blackmail.

I thought that "kiddie porn" meant photographing minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Since when is merely being un- or under-dressed "engaging in sexually explicit conduct?"

And at some point there has to be a constitutional violation in criminalizing the photographing of oneself.

|6.7.09 @ 5:26PM|#

I did not realize that a minor child could be charged with child pornography. Taking pictures of themselves; to the boyfriend/girlfriend. That is just ridiculous. So if two teens have sex it is perfectly legal but if they send each other nude/semi-nude photos it is a felony with prison time and a permanent record accompanied with weekly visits to your friendly neighborhood sex offender office? How insane is that? These prosecutors are completely out of their mind. And in the article why would the boy apologize? He did what any hormone crazy teen would do- "hey thanks! send me more!", she is the one who volunteered to send them. Now some 40 year old pervert soliciting them, YA jail, but not some teen boyfriend- who is a minor at that.

|6.9.09 @ 11:14AM|#

Message from Sweden (Europe, that is). This is just about the most ridiculous story I have ever read. In our country, having sex with a minor i automatically considered rape. Teenagers having sex with teenagers is not.

It is interesting, by the way, that the result of our more liberal attitude towards sex among teenagers is less STD incidence and fewer unwanted pregnancies than in the US.

|6.9.09 @ 11:55AM|#

Another moronic moral panic. What's the matter, mainstream media? Did you say the term "torture porn" out loud and realize how stupid it sounds?

Penn Jillette had a great bit about this on Penn Says:

http://www.crackle.com/c/Penn_Says/Sexting/2474297/

Anonymous|6.9.09 @ 8:29PM|#

It is my understanding that every time they have looked at it, the Supreme Court has said that full frontal nudity by itself of someone at any age does constitute child pornography? Are there any lawyers out there who can commet?

|6.10.09 @ 10:39PM|#

The nanny state strikes again! This is what happens when people stop talking to each other and instead rely on Big Brother to solve all of their problems. Imagine how this could have turned out if both families had communicated with each other and worked it out without involving the criminal justice system. This is so idiotic. Oh, and "Laurie's" father is a douchebag.

|6.11.09 @ 5:13PM|#

This is a really depressing story.

Also, Laurie and her family are a menace to the community.

|6.12.09 @ 7:50AM|#

The USA was founded on secular principles. Fundamental Christian assholes like Laurie's dad are leading the whole country back into the dark ages.

I'm glad I don't live there. But the USA is an 800 lb gorilla that affects the whole world. I'm very frustrated to have the threat of a Christian form of Sharia, globally enforced by the USA, hanging over me with little chance to do something about it.

What I'd like to see happening is: Laurie's dad convicted for the felony because of lacking parenting, and made to serve the 5-30 years for her so-called "offense".

Frank|6.12.09 @ 7:53AM|#

Crazy! The law process scares, initimidates, and traumatises half to death the very children it pretends to protect!

|6.12.09 @ 12:17PM|#

The girl's father is acting the way I would expect someone who was molesting his own daughter to act.

Nate|6.12.09 @ 3:41PM|#

> The trooper printed Alex's statement on a printer he'd brought with him and watched while Alex signed it. Charges, he said, were pending.

WTF! Never talk to the fucking pigs! What were this kid's parents thinking?!

Nate|6.12.09 @ 3:45PM|#

> The Davises could have agitated for a charge against Laurie of disseminating indecent materials to minors in the second degree-a class E felony-but they declined, and they have had no further communications with her family.

> (Contacted for this article, Laurie's father would only say on the record, "This country has laws in place to protect children. Those laws need to be enforced, and parents need to pursue those laws to the fullest extent to protect their children.")

What an asshole. Someone should in fact agitate for those charges. I'd love to see if he changes his tune after his prescious little whore, I mean princess, is the defendant in a distribution of child porn case.

Sickening.

|6.15.09 @ 8:25AM|#

All of these heathens should be stoned in the public square after kneeling and praying to Dear Leader Obama.

One or two stonings and it'd stop right quick.

Obama said it. I believe it. That settles it.