They've been calledthe child pornographers next door. Who are these dangerous perverts? Are they, as the name suggests, seemingly normal adults who assault little children and document it on film?
Well, not exactly. This new breed of child pornographers includes high-school students like Marissa Miller and Grace Kelly, who took waist-up pictures of themselves in bras and sent them to classmates. A county prosecutor - who apparently has nothing better to do than ogle underwear-clad teens - decided the pictures wereprovocative and threatened the girls with felony child pornography charges.
According to columnist Ashleigh Banfield, prosecution is appropriate becauseunless girls and boys live in fear ... there is little left to help them digitally police themselves [and] preserve their integrity.
We have a term for this kind of fanatical overreaction: It's moral panic. While teen sexters might be naive, it's hard for anyone with common sense to consider them pornographers. And it takes a special type of zealot to consider them sex criminals.
Unfortunately, the moral panic over sexting is part of a disturbing trend. All over America, out-of-control prosecutors and politicians are making felons out of teens who engage in harmless experimentation.
In Kansas, Attorney General Phil Kline ordered all doctors, social workers and school personnel to report any sexual activity between teens under 16. Kline defined sexual activity asany lewd fondling or touching of the person of either the child or the offender.
What does this mean?
If a 15-year-old touches a 13-year-old
touches their breasts they are now guilty of a crime public defender Chris Phillis told ABC's John Stossel last year. In other words, junior high makeout sessions are now breeding grounds for felonies.
Once convicted, these teens become lifelong registered sex offenders. In most states, they'll be unable to live near a school or park, work with children, move without notifying the police, or find a decent job.
They can't go anywhere children frequent. So that's McDonald's
that's Jack in the Box
Phillis said. Children have actually been told if you go to a movie and another child walks in ... then you're to get up and leave.
And don't think these extreme laws go unenforced. In Oregon, seventh graders Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison spent six days in jail before being charged with five counts of felony sex abuse. Their crime? Slapping a few female classmates on the butt. (The girls told police it was part of a mutual game calledSlap Butt Day.)
Frank Rodriguez was arrested at age 19 for having consensual sexual contact with his then 15-year-old girlfriend, whom he later married. Although the girl insisted she hadn't been victimized and tried to get police to drop the charges, Rodriguez is now a convicted felon. His name appears on a sex offender registry alongside those of child rapists and murderers.
They literally just break you down to nothing
Rodriguez told ABC. They tell me I can't do this
I can't do this
you know. It gets real bad.
Now the fanatics have now set their sights on teenage sexters. While no one believes that teens taking nude snapshots is a good thing, teaching sexual morals has always been the job of parents, not police. This is the first time in American history that teen sexual experimentation has been considered a law enforcement issue.
And, unfortunately, we're willing to ruin perfectly normal kids' lives to quell a few adults' moral hysteria.
Ashley Herzog is a senior studying journalism. Send her an e-mail at ah103304@ohiou.edu.
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