A sprawling central Virginian “sexting” ring was busted up by authorities after pictures of naked 14- and 15-year-olds sprang up on Instagram, cops say.
The disturbing investigation revealed more than 1,000 pictures, some videos and more than 100 involved teens through six different counties who may not realize sharing such photos of underage kids can be a felony, police told the Central Virginian.
Out of those thousand images, there are some of them that are not sexually explicit, but are what we would call inappropriate or provocative — in their underwear,” Major Donald A. Lowe, chief deputy of the Louisa County Sheriff’s Office, told the newspaper. “It looks like the majority will be sexually explicit.” Full Article
The ‘sexting’ ring ensnared them? No, the police did and they were not ensnared before that. Now, like with felony drug possession, they will get felonies to protect them from themselves. As if a felony record is not more harmful than the pictures of each other.
What an upside down world.
According to elected officials, sex offender laws are needed to protect children. In cases like these, the children are NOT being protected. Instead of jail time and a requirement to register for life, these children need counseling and/or advice regarding appropriate behavior.
The mother should have asked Instagram to take down all these photos and called as many of these teens together to discuss the wrongness of what they were doing. Instead, she allowed these private photos to be displayed to various anonymous men in police offices. Right, none of them have any devious sexual thoughts.
Why is it kids discovering and exploring their sexuality has never been a problem throughout history until someone cooked up the sex scare? Society needs to stop imposing their morals on everyone; they have proven time and time again to be less than good and wise arbiters of other people’s sex conduct. The very word “freedom” implies that this decision be left to the individual. Kid’s aren’t stupid and do in fact learn from their mistakes.
Part of the problem is the “lockem up” mentality that the police state of American has become.
In fact, 41% of kids under 21 here in America will be arrested and they are simply starting younger and younger.
America, with 5% of the world’s population has 25% of the world’s prisoners and you thought North Korea was the oppressive country. Think again – Welcome to the Land of The Free!
http://youtu.be/NaPBcUUqbew
So kids are constantly bombarded with sexual messages and ads on TV, internet, billboards and movies. At school they’re taught about birth control and given birth control if they so desire. They’re taught how to masturbate in “human sexuality” classes, always being given the message that they interpret as sex isn’t bad. Add to that peer pressure, absentee parents and chances are you’ll get this crap. For a few federal dollars, these kids lives could be ruined.
Am I the only one who sees how nightmarish this is? Federal laws were created to protect children (those under 18) and now guess what? Children broke the laws created to protect them! I hope this blows up in the face of the federal government and it should if they decide to prosecute most of these teens. Social standards and laws create a really screwy country with extremely confused priorities about acceptable sexual standards. We could not get anymore upside down and backwards than this.