Charges against 'sexting' teenagers highlight legal gaps

Most of the students agreed to take the classes. But the parents of three of the students felt the district attorney had gone too far in threatening felony charges. They went to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which brought suit against the district attorney charging that he was “standing child pornography laws on their heads.”

Sending seminude pictures is “stupid, careless, naive, poor judgment – all of the things that teenagers are and it could have really bad consequences for the future. But is it criminal and is it child pornography?” asks Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU in Pennsylvania. “These photos are not child pornography by production or by content – the Supreme Court has repeatedly said the definition of pornography is much narrower than just nudity.”

The district attorney’s decision to threaten child pornography charges against kids wearing underwear or in a bathing suit, Mr. Walczak says, is “a complete abuse his authority.”

District attorney Skumanick disagrees. “We tried to do what we thought was the progressive and the right thing by not charging them – by giving them the ability to avoid any record whatsoever,” he says.

The ACLU’s stance on the issue, Skumanick contends, would make it possible for anyone to bypass state laws and go directly to federal court charging their civil rights were violated before they were even charged with a crime. “That could cripple the criminal justice system,” he argues.

A judge is currently reviewing the ACLU’s request for a temporary restraining order against the district attorney. A ruling is expected this week.

For cyber-safety and teen advocates trying to raise awareness of the issue, the complexities of the Tunkhannock case simply reinforce the need to educate parents about the extent of “sexting” and students about the potentially severe consequences of the practice.

“Parents do not realize how widespread sexing is or how quickly the number of cases are rising,” says Casi L., an 11th grader at Ursuline School in New Rochelle, N.Y., who’s been working on cyber-safety issues since the 8th grade.

“A lot of kids feel anonymous online so they feel more comfortable doing inappropriate things because they think they won’t be linked back to them.”

The survey by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy also found that one in three young adults aged 20 to 26 had also sent nude or seminude pictures by phone or posted them online. Bill Albert, a spokesman for the National Campaign, says he believes those numbers are low because they were self-reported.

“We specifically put this question so that it was not open to interpretation,” says Mr. Albert. “Nude is nude, and seminude is seminude. If a person is in their bra, we wouldn’t classify that as seminude – if one of the 13-year-olds involved in this [Pennsylvania] case took our survey she’d check ‘no’ and appropriately so.”

The survey also found that young people have mixed feelings about the practice. The vast majority – 66 percent of teen girls and 60 percent of teen boys – say they thought of sexting as “fun or flirtatious,” but more than 70 percent also recognized it could have serious, long-term consequences in terms of their careers or social standing.

“But legal consequences were very low on their list of concerns,” says Albert.

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