Teens prosecuted for racy photos.

Police blotter: Teens prosecuted for racy photos | CNET News.com

Combine unsupervised teenagers, digital cameras and e-mail, and, given sufficient time, you’ll end up with risque photographs on a computer somewhere.
That’s what 16-year-old Amber and 17-year-old Jeremy, her boyfriend, both residents of the Tallahassee, Fla., area, learned firsthand. On March 25, 2004, Amber and Jeremy took digital photos of themselves naked and engaged in unspecified “sexual behavior.” The two sent the photos from a computer at Amber’s house to Jeremy’s personal e-mail address. Neither teen showed the photographs to anyone else.

It seems that the poor teens in this case were allowed to engage in sexual relations, but not to take photo’s – that child pornography.   It sure is a bizarre world we live in, or is it a sign of the times?   I would love to write “this could only happen in America” – but this could, and probably will, happen just about anywhere in the world.

The interesting thing about the case was that it did not come down as a unanimous decision.   The dissenting view can be summed up  in this statement:

The law “was designed to protect children from abuse by others, but it was used in this case to punish a child for her own mistake.” (Judge Philip Padovano)

The majority concluded:

“the reasonable expectation that the material will ultimately be disseminated is by itself a compelling state interest for preventing the production of this material. In addition, the statute was intended to protect minors like appellant and her co-defendant from their own lack of judgment… Appellant was simply too young to make an intelligent decision about engaging in sexual conduct and memorializing it. Mere production of these videos or pictures may also result in psychological trauma to the teenagers involved. Further, if these pictures are ultimately released, future damage may be done to these minors’ careers or personal lives. These children are not mature enough to make rational decisions concerning all the possible negative implications of producing these videos.… The state has a compelling interest in seeing that material which will have such negative consequences is never produced.”majority opinion

Surely this ignores the negative consequences of these teenagers getting a criminal record as sex offenders.