Prosecutors Weigh Teenage Sexting: Folly or Felony? (original) (raw)
U.S.|Prosecutors Weigh Teenage Sexting: Folly or Felony?
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Cañon City High School in Colorado. More than 100 students there were apparently exchanging nude pictures, and the district attorney is trying to sort out potential charges.Credit...Nick Cote for The New York Times
- Nov. 13, 2015
The high school sweethearts were 16 when they traded nude cellphone pictures. There was no evidence of coercion or harassment. But under a literal interpretation of North Carolina law, each had distributed child pornography.
In February, prosecutors in Fayetteville charged the two teenagers with the felony of “exploiting a minor,” which could have brought them years in prison and decades on the sex offender registry, for privately sharing images of themselves.
After an outcry, both were eventually allowed to plead, instead, to misdemeanors. They were put on a year’s probation.
Whether and how to charge teenage sexters has become a quandary for prosecutors nationwide, forcing them to weigh when to muster the harsh force of criminal justice, often with ill-fitting laws from a pre-Internet era, and when to back off and let schools and families deal with youthful indiscretions.
Facing those choices on a large scale now, in the glare of national attention, is Thom LeDoux, the district attorney in the county that includes Cañon City, Colo., where more than 100 students at the high school were apparently exchanging nude picture s.
Mr. LeDoux said in a telephone interview that he does not plan to file charges against those who simply passed around pictures. But felony charges could be in store for some, he added — if an adult was involved; if there was evidence of coercion, illegal sexual activity or bullying; or if pictures were posted on public websites.
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