Comments

1
America really needs to experience a good old fashioned carpet bombing of all of our populated areas. Then we will have something to actually worry about.

I used to think problems like climate change and income inequality would drive us to action but after reading this.....no it won't. We need something more......extreme.
2
Kids facing felony charges for being kids. Ah, America... truly great.
3
Wow, that is an awful lot of nudes being passed about.

I wonder what triggers a "crackdown" like this, as I kind of doubt the cops chose a random school to go fishing for underage sexting.
4
Mooning happened occasionally in my high school, 50 years ago.

And at my sister's college over 40 years ago, about the same time I would sun bathe at a nude beach.

Near where coincidently I shared a cottage rental with one of the professors at her college.

As a prank, I took his nude photo on the beach and then gave it to my sister to do with what she will.

Omigod, all us senior citizen sex offenders!

How has the country survived without us locked up or monitored this half century?
5
child pornographers! send them to mcneil island FOR EVER! no quarter!
6
Ooops, meant to write about streaking at my sister's college.

We baby boomers covered the gamet.
7
Good fucking Christ. More proof that adults can be perfectly horrible when they exercise their power over the powerless.
8
Our justice system is clearly anything but just.
9
Just give each miscreant 5 minutes in a room with that exemplary mall/school cop that beat the shit out of that uncooperative girl in South Carolina. For Freedom®!
10
One of the nice things about Facebook (besides my stock going up a dollar a day) is that all the teenagers left. The adults are left to blissfully trash Hiliary, taxes and over-immigration.

However, it seems like the Feeds and Blogs, even in an adult arena, constantly want to ferret out all sorts of prurient stories about what teens are doing...saying...listening to...imaging.

Why in the world should an adult care? I mean, even when I was a kid, I used to read this column in Parade Magazine called "Keeping Up With Youth" the reason being because it was so hilarious. No kid cared about anything they were talking about, but somehow it was like insulin to a diabetic, flashing "youthful" pictures amidst all those posts about the Johnson Administration.

Seriously, am I supposed to opine about whether or not 8th graders store nudie pictures of themselves on a social media app? Isn't this lose-lose. Stand up for their right to be nude (ewwwww) or the right to prevent them from being nude (Blue Meanies)?

Let's just leave the whole thing on the Children's Table...or blog...feed........stream.........and in the hands of the proper authorities.

11
I wonder if the fact that Canon City is a prison town has anything to do with the determination of police and prosecutors to hunt for potential felony charges within the local youth population?
12
Wait, all those kids are under 18... they can't be charged with any adult crimes because they're not adults. So what's the worst that can happen?
13
I wonder what triggers a "crackdown" like this

All you need is one adult freaking out--a parent who finds out from their kid, a teacher who overhears kids talking about it, etc.
15
So, how many cops now have a few of those nude photos on their computers/phones? How many of them will end up on the sex offenders list?
16
I'll bet $100 that if punishments are handed out, the women will have worse punishments than the men.
17
@16- I'd take that bet. This is one of the areas where the patriarchy works against boys, since they're assumed to have more agency than girls.
18
if this were in a horror movie all these kids would be dead by now ..
19
Every time a minor is charged as an adult, there should be simultaneous challenges to the laws about legal drinking age, legal voting age, legal driving age, etc.

Either they are minors or they are not. Choose one and stick with it.
20
@13: True, still it should be stopped. The kids shouldn't be charged with crimes but there should be repercussions or some sort of action. How awful it would be if these pics made their way to the dark web, -- if they haven't already.
21
This from a state that legalized pot? Does not compute.
22
Wtf are school authorities doing getting into the phones of these kids?
Is this legal. America sure continues to amaze and fascinate.
23
@ 20 - "How awful it would be if these pics made their way to the dark web, -- if they haven't already"

That would be a lesson for the kids in unexpected/unwanted consequences, and I think that's punishment enough.

They took the photos themselves, so it's not like they were forced to do it by pedophiles. They are not victims any more than they are culprits.
24
@1 I agree and I often wonder what sort of easy life brought on the Salem Witch Trials. Often when things like this crop up I think of a Bukowski poem with the final line “The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up.”

25
@19 - Everyone tried as an adult should be automatically granted the rights and privileges of a 21-year-old adult.

"No, it's okay, I was arrested on some bullshit child porn charges last year. Now hand over the booze."
26
This should not be a crime, minors texting pics to other minors? This is the most ridiculous over reaction ever. Ruin kids lives, for something that had no victim. The police behind the investigation should be taken out of office, they obviously lack any fiber of human decency.
27
Years ago my step nephew in his late twenties was dating an older woman with a 15 year old daughter.

The jealous ex husband accused him of hitting on the daughter.

Instant child sex abuse status.
28
@22: Kids have VERY restricted rights when in school In the USA.

We still operate under this kind of "parents own their kids" idea. It is pretty shitty.
29
Parental controls are easy to do, take iOS for example.
30
It's Canon fucking City, the town's only industry (if you can call it that) is prisons. What else are these kids going to be doing?
31
@25,
Glory Hallelujah!
32
too bad nobodies there to protect those kids from the 'criminal justice' system
33
@15: Exactly my thought. The only adults in possession of nude photos of children are the police, so they should be charged with child pornography. Or does the "but it was for their own good!" defense work for everyone?
34
So I'll be a parent here.

One, what likely triggering this upheaval is...kids showing each other stuff and irritating a teacher. Who probably said, "Hand over the phone" and looked down. I doubt adults did this on a rumor. I'm not even sure they could do it on a rumor.

Two, flashing someone and sending nude photo (if not on Snapchat), are two totally different things. Technology changes ALL of this.

Three, if I had a child doing this, I'd want to know. Not to punish them but to counsel them against doing it. I would like to have someone help me help my kid.

Lastly, no, I don't think these kids should be arrested or charged or anything (unless there was coercion involved.) And Dan, it's not the cops who make the laws, it's legislators. Direct your ire there because the cops have to enforce the law. Prosecutors may or may not have latitude on prosecuting offenders but it's lawmakers who create and pass these laws.

I have to laugh b/c there was a recent story about a high school that blocked Snapchat in the building and one kid moaned that it was just one more thing adults did to make high school more boring.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

35
@16
Yeah, that's why men's sentences are, on average, 63% longer than women's for comparable crimes.
Darn patriarchy.
36
These kids should all be locked up in a prison of student debt and limited job opportunities for life! If only we could design such a system.
37
@34 - I agree; it's all about the technology. Kids have always had sex. They will always have sex. But before it wasn't so easy to document and record in high res. The really sad thing here is that the adults are stepping in and doing exactly the thing they are trying to protect kids from: putting these private photos in the hands of people they were not intended for. If anything, this should teach them the exact lesson it's supposed to (though not in the way the adults intend). Nothing you do online is completely private. Everything you send is out of your control. Even people you think you should be able to trust (teachers, parents, police) can make your life hell if they get the wrong bit of information.
38
" Teacher, leave those kids alone. "
39
Dan, On the one hand you appear to forgive the sexting by acknowledging that adolescents are naturally curious and mature enough to handle the consequences of such adult behavior yet on the other hand you state they're children and sexual predator laws were designed to protect children. You well know that, within a certain age range, there exist adolescents who are predators and there are those who are prey, and that while the difference in sexual maturity between, say, a 20 year old and a 35 year old is relatively slim, the sexual maturity between a 14 year old freshman and a 17 year old senior is vast. You cannot state with any sense of credulity or authority that a 14 year old will sext with a 17 year old without a large degree, on the part of the 14 year old, saying to him or herself, "This is weird but exciting" and the 17 year old simply thinking, "This is hot and I'm going with it even though it's probably wrong." The 17 year old will have a far greater capacity to understand the consequences should he or she get caught than the 14 year old. While I don't believe a sweeping prosecution of all involved is in order, I do think there should be an investigation to sort those who participated willingly from those who felt compelled to do so and they should be punished. A categorical, "hands off" is a blinding disservice to those who are left feeling ashamed for being compelled to compromise their values in order please the crowd.
40
The sexual maturity between a 20 yr old and a 35 yr old is relatively slim,
David@39? Can't agree with you there.
The difference between a 17 yr old and a 14 yr old, though it may be legally a problem, I don't believe their levels of maturity are greatly apart.
All opinions , of course.
The answer surely is to talk about these issues in class. Talk about sexting, and sending naked pics etc..
Don't go looking in their phones, gross invasion of privacy. And don't charge them.
I dealt with the whole area of mobiles with my kids by telling them, when they can afford to pay their own phone bills, then I'd help them get one.
There was one computer and it was in a public space.
there are pre paid phones kids can have for emergency.
41
The school has done a few things, but few if any charges have yet been brought. The prosecutor said he had no intention of charging most of the kids, that he did not take the sex offender registry lightly. The they were checking to see if 18-year-old students or other adults were involved or if anyone was coerced.

They are not charging half the school as pervs. That is a lie.
42
@21: I have a perfectly good explanation for that.

Police resources have been freed up from prosecuting potheads, so they've turned their attention to...
43
Back when I was in high school, this one friend of mine used to like to flash her tits at passing motorists on the freeway out of a car window. It seemed relatively harmless fun at the time, but looking back that's actually pretty dangerous. Sexting is way safer as long as the police don't get involved.
44
I'd rather they be sexting each other than knocking each other up, or trying meth, or driving drunk or any of the traditional teenage activities.

And photo vault is an awesome app. That's where I keep all of my naughty pictures as well.
46
@37 Yes, thank you.

I read the article -- it sounded like there had been multiple reports and complaints before the investigation, so more than a few rumors.

I don't think teens sending photos to each other should be charged with anything. But the pissant little wastes of space who pass those photos on without consent? They should be paying monstrous fines with their summer jobs at the least. And getting a public shaming instead of the teens whose photos they circulated. The entitlement, the creepiness, and the lack of empathy involved -- if you read the article, it's clear the photos are being passed around, not just exchanged by couples or posted knowingly to a group by the person in the photo -- are disgusting.

It's wrong when it happens to celebrities, it's wrong when it happens to adults, and it's wrong with extra sprinkles when it happens to teenagers, who are even more prone to social and sexual shaming than adults. Gross shitty behavior.
47
Cat in Fez @46,

The article is unclear, but yes it sounds like we might be talking about the kind of thing that resulted in the suicides of Amanda Todd, Rehtaeh Parsons and Audrie Potts. Not a minor issue at all.

See also Tyler Clementi and Steubenville.

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