A 15-year-old Ohio girl was arrested earlier this month for sending nude photos of herself to other minors and was facing felony criminal charges for illegally using a minor in nudity-oriented material and for possession of criminal tools. If convicted, the teen could have been forced to register as a sexual offender annually for ten years.
This week the girl, a student at Licking Valley High School in Newark, Ohio, reached an undisclosed agreement with prosecutors to resolve the case. Details were not released, but the teen won't have to register as a sex offender.
The teen allegedly sent the photos to friends via her cell phone after a Licking County prosecutor visited her school to discuss the legal repercussions of possessing or sending pornographic images of minors to others. Another student notified school authorities after she sent the image to friends.
According to Ohio law, possessing material that shows a minor in a state of nudity is a fifth-degree felony. The law provides an exemption for parents or guardians to photograph their unclothed children for certain purposes, but doesn't allow a child to photograph nude pictures of himself.
The statute governing this issue is part of Ohio's version of Megan's Law, which was enacted in 2002.
State representative Jay Hottinger told the Newark Advocate that legislators had been well-intentioned in passing the law and never envisioned a case like this would come from it.
"What we're aiming at was a growing problem that we were seeing amongst juveniles and that was they were committing some very serious adult-like crimes," he said.
UPDATE: Apparently this is a trend. Another story out of Pinckney, Michigan, this month involves a 14-year-old girl who e-mailed a photo to friends that showed her genitals and face. The girl took the photo during the summer and shared it with a few friends this fall, who then shared it with a few more friends who shared it with a few more friends. Authorities estimate at least two hundred students in her county and beyond have received the image by now. Perhaps even more have viewed it if anyone posted it on the internet.
Livingston County Sheriff's Lt. Todd Luzod told the Ann Arbor News, "The girl involved committed a crime by sending it to her friends. And it's really important to educate the students to realize once you put something like that out over the air like that, you have no idea how many cell phones or computers it could go to.''
Police confiscated about a dozen phones, which will not be returned to their owners. Authorities haven't decided yet whether to charge the phone owners with possession of child porn, but those who also distributed the image to others could face separate charges for distributing illegal material. If charged and convicted, they might be required to register as a sex offender, which will stay on their record for years.
"The bottom line is that kids need to realize there can be unintended consequences from this type of behavior,'' Livingston County Prosecutor David Morse told the Ann Arbor News. "And for parents, it's one more reminder to keep a close eye on what their kids are doing both with computers and cell phones.''
Similar cases have been reported in Alabama, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah.
And here's another case in Florida sent by a reader in which two teens -- a 16-year-old girl and her 17-year-old boyfriend -- photographed themselves while having sex and were charged with producing, directing or promoting child porn. Neither of the two teens had shared the images with anyone else.
Photo: AP
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