TEENAGERS who sext are in a precarious legal position. Though in most states teenagers who are close in age can legally have consensual sex, if they create and share sexually explicit images of themselves, they are technically producing, distributing or possessing child pornography. The laws that cover this situation, passed decades ago, were meant to apply to adults who exploited children and require those convicted under them to register as sex offenders. Full Opinion Piece
Related posts
-
Sex Offender Registration Doesn’t Help Victims, Hurts Young Offenders
Jason was 14 years old when he met his first girlfriend, a 13-year-old neighbor of the... -
KS: Offender registry changes needed in Kansas
Do offender registries make us safer? The Kansas Legislature is tackling that question in the current... -
Letter: The punishment must fit the crime
About 100 U.S. teachers, mostly women, are charged with sex crimes each year, although many others...
Hmmm that’s interesting.
Not sure if the author of the opinion piece grasps the concepts at hand.
Here’s the underlying problem with treating teen sexting as something other than child pornography; if an image or video ends up becoming part of a case weeks, months, or years later the material regardless of how explicit should not be counted as child porn. If original consensual sharing occurred (which would be difficult to prove without records) then any unanticipated sharing in the future should despite likely not being authorized by all parties have the same non child pornography status. Otherwise it becomes conditional child pornography based on who received, possessed, or distributed it and even more people will get caught up in a tangled web of already convoluted laws.
I don’t care if someone is into looking at images of a mound of Oreo cookies being consumed by a hairless chimpanzee riding a ventriloquist elephant or any other outlandish thing imaginable. Just because someone or even a minority or majority perceive something as sexual doesn’t mean anyone else ought to give credit to the perception. This includes anything labeled as child pornography.
We can’t allow double standards on this issue or others to exist. If teen sexting is not child pornography then regardless of where the content might one day end up it should still not be treated as child porn. Another thing; if say the age of consent is sixteen or seventeen in a particular state maybe provisions should be added to laws in those states that allow consent to extend to media produced during a relationship or hook up.
Finally rather than assuming that materials produced in other countries with different standards should be classified as if produced here maybe it would be best to take a different approach. Unfortunately a lot of nude art photography and videos created throughout Europe in the nineties and early 2000s is considered child pornography in the United States. The lack of or inclusion of nudity should not be an automatic check to see if something meets the minimum requirements for child pornography classification. I am sadly aware of far too many individuals who participated in the creation of artistic material, that was not only legal, but not created through a sexual lens, who according to the US government and possibly other governments in countries other than their own are victims of child pornography. Imagine being unable to speak up as an adult and say no the perception of events in this instance is not real. Its as bad or worse than someone who was hurt not being taken seriously. Actually both are still victims who have been reduced to a very negative concept; the victim. Not a person, but a category of individuals who are treated a certain way because one or more experiences. Their essence quantified by their worth as objects. What a twisted species we humans can be.
Underage sexting is definitely child porn. They’ve convicted people for cartoons and putting photo’s of the faces of children on pictures of naked adults. People have been convicted for naked kids on the beach, and for naked teens just standing there.
Let’s call it what is is…based on how US courts and law enforcement obviously see it (based on the arrests and media hype over the past decade). If there is nudity that is “sexual” in nature and the person is a minor…it’s CP. You can not call it sexting rather than CP when a minor teen produces, possesses, and/or distributes it (slap on the wrist) and then call it child porn when somebody over 18 does any of the same (labeling them predators and locking them up for years or decades).
I guarantee you law enforcement will document the hash values of all the sexting materials they stumble upon (pics and videos) even if the minors only get a slap on the wrist. The second they find an adult (18 or older) in possession of those files that they downloaded from the web (likely P2P), they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But the 16yo female that intentionally produced and distributed the file(s) maybe gets a stern talking to because she was just sexting? This is not acceptable and will only serve to perpetuate the media hype and ridiculous sentencing associated with any adult arrested for CP.