A 15-year-old girl sends nude pics of herself to friends. She’s charged with distributing child porn (“possessing criminal tools and the illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material”) and may have to register as a sex offender.
That’s dumb enough on its face, but check out the brain-dead prosecutor, Ken Oswalt of Licking County, Ohio.
“There’s a totally false perception among juveniles that there is no risk to this,” he told ABCNews.com. “That picture, once taken and sent, gives anyone who receives it the ability to do anything with it, forever. If a picture of you found its way onto the Internet, that’s going to haunt you, potentially forever.”
So, to punish her for doing something that might hurt herself, he’s going to destroy her life — which is, in effect, what a felony conviction for child porn would do.
Who elected this idiot?
Further, Oswalt says he might charge the people who received the images with possession of child porn. They did nothing wrong, and had no way to prevent this from happening, yet Oswalt wants to ruin their lives?
Here’s a guy who ought to be run out of town.
The Fray
Trae says:
You know, I think she should be punished in some way. The statement is true that teenagers should realize that there is a risk to this and some type of legal action should be taken.
But, common sense says making her register as a sex offender is stupid. Slap her with a fine, maybe some community service, and them maybe warn her that if it happens again stronger legal action will be taken. But this guy must have some personal ties with some sort of child porn situation, whether through a case or a more personal connection. I can’t see any other reason why he’d push that hard.
gnomic says:
She should claim that its art. A nude pic is not porn per see. Of course, charging a juvinile with a victimless adult crime is absurd. She is stupid and there are photos to prove it.
There are just too many (scumbag) lawyers that are trying to make thier bones by criminilizing everything. Land of the free my arse – this is the right wing nuts trying to tell everyone how to live.
Smart people need to take a stand before they are charge with receiving spam porn from some oversexed kid and have thier lives ruined.
Did the persecuter (no, I intended that one) look at the photos? Will he be charging himself in the crime. Will he be showing them to the Jury? We he arest himself for distribution and they Jury for thier crimes?
Killer says:
Its a wrong case after all. Sending your own pics should be registered as crime of passion rather than a sex crime because logically its a sex crime and not a sex offender crime.sex offender crime is more related to child sexual abuse.
Randy says:
Same thing happened a year or two back in Florida. I thought it was stupid then, and still think it is stupid. This is right up there with zero-tolerance *ANYTHING* policies. It’s insanity, brought about people who refuse to engage their brains in dealing with odd-ball situations.
tommy says:
let history do its work, 15 years old is too young to be sending out nude photos of herself, and it’s a stupid idea but who’s going to stop her from doing it, and how?
if it were some 42 year old man sending those photos out of someone under 18, he should end up in prison, but they should leave her punishment to karma.
stupid is as stupid does. they’re just ruining her prospects for being a pole dancer.
Vince says:
We had a similar situation here a couple of months ago. A girl sent nude pictures that she took of herself to a guy she was interested in. He then sent to all his buddies (we’re talking teenagers here, so that’s not a big surprise).
He was arrested for owning and distributing child porn. She wasn’t brought up on any charges.
Do you think she should be punished? She owned and distributed the same child porn images, but she was never charged.
Why?