Trust me, Maya’s in there somewhere. So I’m sure the sexting thing has been doing the rounds, and while I’m not at all interested in the latest oprahoutrage, I am very interested in the legal response to it. This article had some choice quotes about the situation.
Someday, that kid will do great things. Or run an internet porn site.
Mr. Skumanick told them he could have simply charged the kids. Instead, he gave them two weeks to decide: take the class or face charges.
He then told the parents and teens to line up if they wanted to view the photos, which were printed out onto index cards. As the 17-year-old who took semi-nude self-portraits waited in line, she realized that Mr. Skumanick and other investigators had viewed the pictures. When the adults began to crowd around Mr. Skumanick, the 17-year-old worried they could see her photo and recalls she said, “I think the worst punishment is knowing that all you old guys saw me naked. I just think you guys are all just perverts.”
Mr. Skumanick dismisses the criticism, saying that no one could see photos of teens who weren’t their own children.
Clearly, the only judge fit to preside over this case is the formerly honorable Donald Thompson.
Everything else aside, this phrase struck me as particularly silly
I think the worst punishment is knowing that all you old guys saw me naked.
Girl, you need to understand that once you take the naked picture and put the naked picture out there, it will eventually find its way to the internet. Once that happens, the worst punishment is knowing that Bill D* is looking at it and getting sweaty.
It’s about control and respect for authority. Teenagers have to learn that they should only get naked for the school administrators performing body searches for advil.
It’s about control and respect for authority. Teenagers have to learn that they should only get naked for the school administrators performing body searches for advil.
This is one of the reasons why Europeans tend to strain their eyes from rolling every time an American starts pointing and shouting about “nanny states”.
I think the punishment of people having photos of themselves naked leaked to the internet fits the “crime”
Why is this even an issue? If people take naked pictures of themselves and they get leaked… so be it… They take punishment through losing their privacy.
Anyone committing naked images of themselves to digital media HAS to be aware of the likely outcome of that. The moment a single copy leaves your absolute control, it’s going on the internet.
For some reason Americans believe that all Constitutional rights end the moment you set foot on school property. I’m not exaggerating either, many of these issues have gone to the Supreme Court.
It’s completely, utterly insane, but the “protect teh children!” instinct is so strong it leads to some unbelievable abuses against children. Add in the fact that most schools are run by people with serious inferiority complexes who are suddenly put in charge of hundreds or thousands of kids that have zero respect for them (with good reason), and you have a recipe for some pretty interesting sociological experiments.
14-year-olds aren’t always that great at long-term consequence analysis.
The article says she was 17. At any rate, I’m sure she has a Facebook account with hundreds of images uploaded to it. The awareness of the picture getting into the wild must be there somewhere.
Well, they clearly understand that the picture gets from the camera/phone to the internet and that they can share that photo with friends. The rest isn’t a huge stretch.
The was a pretty wide age range of photos and nakedness according to the article. I think Epicboy is expecting a bit much from them. I do agree that there needs to be some kind of disincentive and education about the potential consequences but the threat of sex offender felony status should not be it.
I think the step they need to learn is that you can’t trust everyone, and all it takes is one.
Americans hate the coddling of the Nanny State, but they love the casual abuse of the Alcoholic Uncle State.
There is something fundamentally wrong with a system that would even allow charges of child pornography to be threatened against the subject of a photo. Especially when that person is not a child, and the photo contains no nudity.
Anyone can threaten charges of anything against anybody. You don’t have to be reasonable or reasonably smart to become a school administrator, I know, I was in high school just last year.
It’s not a school administrator, it’s a DA. As far as I can see, all the school did was confiscate phones and then search through them for compromising pictures of nubile teenaged girls, to show to the DA. Nothing wrong with that!
