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6 Pennsylvania Teens Face Child Porn Charges For Pics of Selves
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Jan 20, 2009 11:39 AM
from the nudity-is-for-in-person-only dept.
from the nudity-is-for-in-person-only dept.
mikesd81 writes "MSNBC reports six Pennsylvania high school students are facing child pornography charges after three teenage girls allegedly took nude or semi-nude photos of themselves and shared them with male classmates via their cell phones. Apparently, female students at Greensburg Salem High School in Greensburg, Pa., all 14 or 15 years old, face charges of manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography while the boys, who are 16 and 17, face charges of possession. Police told the station that the photos were discovered in October, after school officials seized a cell phone from a male student who was using it in violation against school policy and the photos were discovered at that time. Police Capt. George Seranko was quoted as saying that the first photograph was 'a self portrait taken of a juvenile female taking pictures of her body, nude.' The school district issued a statement Tuesday saying that the investigation turned up 'no evidence of inappropriate activity on school grounds ... other than the violation of the electronic devices policy.'"
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News: ACLU Sues Penn Prosecutor For Empty Threat of Child Porn 590 comments
TechDirt is reporting that the ACLU has stepped in on behalf of several teens facing the threat of child pornography charges in Pennsylvania for sharing nude pics of themselves. Unfortunately for a girl in New Jersey, she is facing much more than just a threat, as she was arrested yesterday for posting almost 30 explicit pictures of herself on MySpace for her boyfriend to see. "...the ACLU has sued the prosecutor on the girls' behalf, saying he shouldn't have threatened them with baseless charges — which haven't yet been filed — if they wouldn't agree to probation and a counseling program. The prosecutor says he was being 'proactive' in offering them a choice, but the ACLU says he shouldn't be using 'heavy artillery' to make the threats. As its attorney points out, teaching kids that this sort of behavior can bring all sorts of unwanted and unforeseen ramifications is a good idea, but threatening them with child-porn charges isn't the best way to do it."
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Think of the children (Score:5, Funny)
We need a world-wide ban on all phones with cameras!
Re:Think of the children (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no expert on American law, but wouldn't this evidence be inadmissible in a court case, as there was no warrant, and therefore the search of the phone was illegal?
I realize this is a "OMG!!THINKOFHTECHILDEEHJRJEIEAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!111LOL!!" kind of thing, where legal formalities are frequently tossed aside because "they're only child molesters."
But seriously....wouldn't this be a illegal search in the first place?
Parent
Re:Think of the children (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure they're going with the idea that every student consents to a search when they attend school.
Of course, they are required to be a school and failure to attend can result in charges in some states. Thus, they are required to consent to searches.
Parent
Re:Think of the children (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, most of the unlawful search and other illegal evidence laws apply primarily to the police, not to actions taken by others. Often times, if somebody else obtains the evidence, even illegally it can be used by the prosecution in the case. The party that obtained the evidence illegally could potentially be subject to prosecution as well, but that is not surprising.
Now not all evidence works like this. For example phone recordings in some states may be inadmissible as evidence if the state's rules regarding it are not met, even when neither party is the police. But in most cases, as long as it was not the police (or prosecution) that obtained the evidence illegally it is admissible.
Now in this case, this is moot. No warrant was necessary. Anybody (police or otherwise) may search property without any warrant if the owner of said property agrees to the search, and any evidence obtained is admissible. In general, although there are exceptions such as probable cause, law enforcement requires warrants to search a person's property against his/her will. Private individuals never need a warrant to do this, although usually searching of property by a private individual against the property owners will is a crime. However, school officials generally have the legal right to search any property on school grounds. Thus the evidence was lawful.
IANAL, but all the above is my understanding of how it works.
Parent
Re:Think of the children (Score:5, Informative)
It may have been years since I researched this topic, and it may have been in a Pennsylvania public school that the paper was written, but here's what I can recall from memory about the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution, specifically about illegal search and seizure and how it relates to public schools:
Police entering the school to complete a search are just that: Police. As such, they are bound to the full effect of any Local, State, and Federal laws regarding search and seizure. That part is clear-cut and dry. Immediately after that, however, it gets fuzzy.
For example, a student's locker is their personal space, right? Not always. It's government property, but there is a confidence held with the school that possessions stored within specifically designated areas will remain private. This has gone both ways in court, and largely depends on the circumstances.
If the police want to avoid that whole argument, then they have the easiest of ways to have that space searched and items collected: school administrators. This is where a student will realize that, because they are under 18 (and under 21 in some states), they have very little say in the situation.
Police need Probable Cause to search without a warrant. School administrators need only "Reasonable Belief", also called "Reason to Suspect" or one of many other phrases. As long as the student or the property are on school grounds, a school administrator has full and complete privilege to any of that students belongings, and the option to detain the student against their will until Police arrive.
So, what constitutes Reasonable Belief? Quote simple, really: anything at all. Did the kid look funny? Did the administrator think they overheard a foul comment? Reason to believe.
This may have been a long way of getting around to it, however the fact remains that this cell phone was taken in accordance with the law and is fully permissible as evidence. It doesn't matter why the administrators were looking through the kid's pictures, they can claim anything now.
The real test of law here is whether child pornography prosecution can be used against minors who willingly took and distributed the pictures of themselves. Furthermore, can the boys be charged for receipt of something they did not have the option to reject? I don't know about you, but I don't have a choice to reject an SMS on my phone, it just accepts it no matter what.
Parent
Re:Think of the children (Score:5, Insightful)
Teacher who confiscates a nude photo that a teenager took of herself, becomes the first adult in possession of the image. Where is the specific guarantee of immunity to charges?
Parent
Re:Think of the children (Score:5, Informative)
Like it or not, agree with it or not, minors do not legally have civil rights so they can not be infringed upon.
They don't have the right to vote, and they are considered mentally incompetent. But yes, they do have civil rights.
Parent
Re:Think of the children (Score:5, Funny)
You know, in all the years I have heard "Think of the children" as a battle cry expressing concern over the welfare of children, it just occurred to me that it can be read the wrong way by paedophiles... they TOO are thinking of the children. And as it turns out, they think of themselves as well.
Parent
Re:Think of the children (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
Think of the negative body image that results from thinking your body is some evil thing that must be hidden from the world.
Think of how they're going to think they are "disgusting" because nobody should be allowed to see them.
Think about how, oddly, sex between these minors would have been legal, but a private photo is supposedly not.
There was no abuse. There was no child molester. There were just 6 teens, doing completely natural things. What they were doing was ok, it was healthy, and telling them it was bad is not healthy. Like I said, think of the children v.v
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
On a more serious note, when did mere nudity = porn? There are nude beaches, nudist colonies, clothing optional hotels, cruises, etc. I think someone may have crossed nudity with porn. Was there a sex act or adult involved?
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
What should be done is to simply extend what already exists in common law (Jamaican, not US) for statutory rape to pornography. Specifically consent is a valid defense if the victim is the same age or older than the accused. Not only that when the accused is older the age gap in cases where consent is admitted is used to mitigate the sentence.
I.e. a 25 year old guy will spend years in prison for screwing his 15 year old "girlfriend". A 18 year old guy gets probation.
Apply that principle to child porn and you won't waste time prosecuting kids for pictures of themselves or their classmates.
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Not good enough. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we neuter them ? We don't want that kind of genes polluting our gene pool.
Parent
A great victory in the fight against child porn! (Score:5, Funny)
truely a great day for the protection of children, personally I hope these scum get put on the sex offenders register for life so that concerned citizens can be warned of their presence in the neighbourhood and can act accordingly to protect their children from dangerous sex offenders!
Hangings too good for them!
Re:A great victory in the fight against child porn (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed. Thankfully because we caught them early on they now won't be able to become teachers or run for office. On every job application they ever fill out for the rest of their lives they'll have to put that they're a sexual offender.
When they move they'll have to notify the county where they live. They'll have to let their neighbors know (So they can keep their kids away from these nasty people). In certain states they'll have to turn over their e-mail addresses and passwords.
Hurray for the war on child porn, lets see if any of them have tried marijuana (as the last 2 and current president have admitted to doing) then we can sweep them under with the War On Drugs too.
Never mind you're more likely to be molested by your Uncle or your Mom's new boyfriend than some stranger in a van.
Parent
Re:A great victory in the fight against child porn (Score:5, Insightful)
after school officials seized a cell phone from a male student who was using it in violation against school policy and the photos were discovered at that time.
So whomever confiscated the phone didn't just turn it off and give it back after class, but the sick voyeuristic fuck actually rummaged though the phone's pictures, ran into the bathroom and beat off to it, then felt dirty and decided to call the cops to report CP?
What is up with all of the voyeurism lately? Are peoples' lives so pathetic that they have to spend inordinate amounts of time and effort to gawk at others'?
Parent
Re:A great victory in the fight against child porn (Score:5, Funny)
When they move they'll have to notify the county where they live. They'll have to let their neighbors know (So they can keep their kids away from these nasty people).
*Ding Dong*
"Hi my name is Megan, I just moved in next door. I'm 20 and I have to inform you that I will probably force you to see me naked."
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! We can't let that happen.
Parent
Re:A great victory in the fight against child porn (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:A great victory in the fight against child porn (Score:5, Insightful)
"Troll"
WTF? Someone certainly must be on crack here. Children who did nothing, other than violate school rules, and experiment with their sexuality get to have their entire lives ruined... and nobody along the way says "hold on..." ... and I get marked "Troll". You guys have a twisted view of the world...
Parent
Re:A great victory in the fight against child porn (Score:5, Insightful)
I recognize that your comment was intended to be sarcastic.
We attempt to paint this picture that is far too black-and-white for practical purposes when reality is too far removed from the ideology behind the laws we have in place.
Fact is, teenagers will figure out sex and sexuality with or without adult guidance. Making their own experimentation criminal is simply a huge mistake. At the very least, an institutionalized grey area needs to be present. For example, if there is a "teen" in the age of the suspects, a lot more consideration needs to be applied. Do the words "raging hormones" mean nothing to legislators and prosecutors? Does the fact that for most people their first genuine sexual feelings begin prior to the age of 13?
Criminalize nature all you like, but it will not change nature. Today's ultra-cautious political state is simply out of control. If today's standards for children applied when I was a kid, I'd have been put into jail forever for some of the crap I did. Everything from fireworks to B-B guns would have gotten me marked for life. And yes, I too had partaken in various forms of cruelty to animals as there was an abundance of insects, frogs and tortoises in my area where I grew up... not to mention birds and squirrels.
We need a LOT less legislation of morality. Some child pornography is very obvious and needs control -- older adults with ten year olds is very obviously wrong. A 20 year old and a 16 year old is less obviously wrong. And kids taking pictures of themselves and sharing them with friends in an environment commercial exploiting sexuality as a means of getting attention for their selling ads is just wrong. You can't allow the environment to exist without expecting young people to be affected! Take Paris Hilton off the air, off of covers of magazines and newspapers! She is famous for ONE reason alone.
Frankly, if I was the parent of any of these teens, I would start filing suit against EVERY major media provider that influences children with their unavoidable crap selling sexuality to teenagers. You can destroy every TV, magazine and newspaper in the home and teens are STILL going to be at risk of influence from it. And yes, I know it is futile and stupid. But attention to the real problems will never be drawn until obvious clashes between culture and law are reconciled.
Parent
Re:A great victory in the fight against child porn (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, my last lines spell it all out.
The REAL problem is the disconnect between nature/culture and our morality laws. They are moving in separate directions.
We had similar problems with smoking at one point until laws were create to reign that in... now that we have laws preventing children from smoking and laws preventing its advertisement, we are at least consistent. But laws against sexual expression in advertisement will be a LOT harder to come by and a lot harder fought. Meanwhile these sappy laws "protecting the children" even from themselves are in dire need of revisitation and reconciliation with our present day standards and culture.
Parent
This is going to raise a lot of legal questions (Score:5, Informative)
Most notably did the school have the right to search the student's phone/does a student have the expectation of privacy. There have been varying rulings over whether the police can search a cell phone or PDA of an individual placed under arrest. In the case of a school, they are not the police and do not have the authority of the police (despite some administrators thinking that they do).
Re:This is going to raise a lot of legal questions (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:This is going to raise a lot of legal questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Their lives are ruined
how long will it be before someone whose life is ruined like this takes matters into his/her own hands and 'snaps', seeking revenge?
its not hard to understand the terrorist mind; when you are pushed and have NOTHING (perceived) left - you do what you feel 'needs' to be done to right a major wrong.
suppose some kids are given criminal records and they find they can't find jobs (etc) later in life. do you REALLY think they will sit quietly and accept a ruined life?
we are creating time bombs. count on it - its just a matter of time.
I hope that those kids find justice before their lives truly are ruined. this is a FAIL on society that kids can have a life ruined for 'being kids'. ;(
Parent
Re:This is going to raise a lot of legal questions (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if the school administrator who turned them in realized the damage that would be done to these kids. Their lives are ruined. They will fight for a long long time to get this off their record.
Probably didn't even think of it. I work for a large school district, and the one thing I've noticed is that it's not just the cream that floats to the top. A depressingly large fraction of school admin people are complete idiots--- and not just the regular street-variety dodo, but the worst kind of idiot, the kind that has a degree and subsequently thinks they're brighter than everyone else. The kind of self-righteous twit that makes a stupid decision and then defends it to the death, even when faced with prima facie evidence that they totally screwed the pooch.
Parent
Re:This is going to raise a lot of legal questions (Score:5, Funny)
... that they totally screwed the pooch.
Offtopic: That would be zoophilia, not paedophilia...
Parent
Re:This is going to raise a lot of legal questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:This is going to raise a lot of legal questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats a misconception. They want you to think you do, however just because you enter a school doesn't give them the right to remove your rights.
Parent
Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, talk about punishing the victim here...
Oh wait, I forgot Child Porn laws are no longer about the harm and damage done to the child during the creation of the material in question...
Way to be society.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
How the fuck is this a troll?
Charging a child with taking their own picture is punishing the victim!
Jesus people.
Parent
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's some more mental gymnastics for you: What happens if they are tried as adults?
If they're charged as adults then they obviously have the maturity to understand the full consequences of their actions and so forth, but the original incident was illegal because they DONT have that level of maturity yet.
Parent
child pwnography (Score:5, Funny)
Take this as a lesson (Score:5, Interesting)
looking in a mirror (Score:5, Funny)
Next time you get out of the shower, don't look in the mirror or you could get nabbed for being a peeping tom... wouldn't surprise me the way people have gotten so unhinged with this issue...
Hmmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
investigation turned up 'no evidence of inappropriate activity on school grounds
That seems hard to believe, but ok.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say the investigation itself, at least by the administration, is inappropriate activity on school grounds.....
Parent
Family album (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope they do not look in our family album. Several images of nude children can be seen. Not only that I was forced to look at other peoples family albums containing nude children as well.
This all while I was underage myself. So who can I sue that has money enough to make me rich? Mmm. Kodak?
Must be all my moms fault for putting that nipple in my mouth shortly after I was born. That turned me into a sex offender.
Whats the big deal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Laws != prevent harm (Score:5, Insightful)
Hahahaha, you think that laws are about preventing harm done to anybody?
There are plenty of laws that cause harm, from the bans on marijuana, prostitution, speech, guns for self-defense, carrying over $10K in cash, etc.
(I agree with you, but laws haven't been about preventing harm for a long time. Really a law should have to show that something is harmful to other people before it can be banned. Water being more toxic than marijuana by LD50 [wikipedia.org] is a good example for that.)
Parent
utter crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Its now only a small step to being done for having photos of your own kids nude. Hell, ive event sent pics of my kids nude to my mum, so guessing i could also be done for distributing child porn.
Amazing.
And how is this different from girls flashing boys in the woods or stripping off at parties (yes, there were such parties when i was at school).
Its called life and growing up. Boys are interested in girls, girls are interested in boys, and sometimes even same gender likes same.
Mobile technologies just add an extra element to this and make it a bit easier to do for the kids. Also safer. Girl can take a pic in the privacy of her room and send it to boy who can whack one off in the privacy of his room. In my day there was always the risk of getting caught with the girl in the woods and getting an ear bashing from the local bobby or parents.
replacement repression (Score:5, Insightful)
Psychologically, I say this is the extreme conversatives who would really like to outlaw nudity, masturbation and while we're at it, even thinking about sex. Since they can't, they are looking for alternatives.
Stripping away all the legality nonsense, what they've done is outlawing the naked human body, at least as long as it's young. That's a step in the "proper" (according to their belief) direction.
There is no thought about "harm" because it is replaced by a strong belief that there is "irrepairable moral harm". And by "strong belief" I mean "belief that is unimpressed by proof".
Klump vs. Nazareth High (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong way to stop this activity (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, that is always the case...
Seriously...WTF?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, what? First of all, no, the cell phone isn't put on the internet, the photos might be, but whatever, that's nit-picking. The real issue is that first statement. They're going to make these kids register as sex offenders to "send a strong message to other minors"?!
These kids didn't do anything wrong. They're teens, they're full of hormones, and they're going to have sex with each other. And it's not the state or federal government's place to stop them. This has gotten far out of hand when 15 year olds willfully showing their bodies to 16 year olds can be prosecuted as child porn.
Also in Utah (Score:5, Informative)
Charges coming in Davis County over nude photos [deseretnews.com]
"It's out there and it's happening," Dunn said. "It's felonies, potentially federal felonies, and kids are clueless. They think that because the person is across the room and you're sending it across the room that it isn't a big deal. It's not the case."
These kids could end up on the sex-offender registry, which would further deflate its usefulness and also deny a whole host of opportunities from these kids. What they did amounts to "show me yours, I'll show you mine" in my opinion -- but our culture is so wrapped up in sex offender mania that we're conflating rapists with innocent behavior.
When we bought our house close to the University of Utah, we looked on the state's sex offender registry and were alarmed by all the incidents around. After drilling down to specific cases, however, it turns out that most of them were of the drunken-college-student variety. Now, when I hear that someone is a "sex offender", I'm not certain if they are a violent rapist, or if they took a dare to run down the block naked.
We've been heading this way for a long time now (Score:5, Interesting)
The United States has been heading this way for a long while now, at least since Anita Bryant started her "Save Our Children" campaign, when she was under the impression that homosexuals could only increase their number by "recruiting" innocent children. Then John Walsh turned his personal tragedy into a national, and now a global tragedy with his movement that deceived the nation into believing that the thousands of children who run away from abusive homes each year were in fact millions of children who were being raped and murdered by strangers each year. (The quasi-governmental organization Walsh founded, the National Center for Misusing and Exploiting Children, is the king of dubious statistics - at one point they were telling Americans that over a million kids went missing annually. More recently they have been claiming that the non-existent child porn industry is larger than the legal pornography industry and Hollywood, combined.) What started out as an anti-homosexual movement has turned into an anti-child and anti-man movement, and in fact an anti-everything-good-about-the-world movement.
(As a curious aside: Anita Bryant made a name for herself as a singer, and one of her hits was a tune from the 1950's musical "The Music Man", which was set in the early 1900s. "The Music Man" was about a charlatan who deceived parents into believing their children were in danger so that he could sell them the cure. Sound familiar?)
So now we have reached the point where we are putting children who are "doing what comes naturally" in jail, or blacklisting them for life, in the name of "protecting them". Protecting them from what, exactly, no one has been able to satisfactorily explain, but protect them we will, by God, if we have to kill every last one of them!
I feel for both the boys and girls who have been caught up in this situation, in which the only real crimes were those committed by the principal who violated their right to be safe from unreasonable search and seizure and those committed by the police and prosecutors who pursued charges.
When combined with such things as The Drug War, it is getting harder and harder every day to do anything but laugh at the notion that the United States is home to the free or the brave.
"And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the fear and the home of the slave!"
Play ball!
20% of all tenagers in jail? (Score:5, Insightful)
So Mr. Seranko wants to put 20% of all teenagers in jail? Yay for him and the twisted "justice" system.
Re:Nude != Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kidding right?
The think of the children nutcases would label him first as soft on child pornographers, then a pedophile sympathiser and finally simply as a pedophile.
Parent
Re:Nude != Porn (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent