I’m not being bitch, truly, but what I get from that is:
15 is old enough to understand the ramifactions of one’s actions, but not to actually be old enough to perform such actions?
That seems like faulty logic to me. I would think that if they can understand the consequences of their actions, then they should be allowed to make their own life choices. And yes, I realise that the issue at hand (child porn) is illegal. But what I’m saying is that a 15 year old taking pictures of herself should not be considered child porn the same (and have the same legal consequences) as an adult taking pictures of a naked 10 year old.
Ok, you’re right - the justice system is not into education. However, I don’t feel that treating and punishing her actions as though they were the same as non-consentual child porn is the right way to go. I agree with you that it’s a matter that should be left to parental control and not judicial, my question is what are “They” hoping to gain/prove/teach by doing what they are doing?
I can’t argue with any of that.
I don’t know - I was kind of using hyperbole to illustrate a point, but I guess it is a good question. Maybe I’m better at this debate thing than I give myself credit for… Nah!
This will be an extremely rare instance : I’m going to agree with ** erislover ** on something…
You’re using circular logic. Erislover asked you why you wanted her to be prosecuted. You proceeded to answer basically because it would discourage other girls her age from doing the same thing. Which is, IMO, begging the question.
I could sum it up in the following way :
Q : Why is it bad for a 15 yo to distribute naked pictures of herself?
A : Because others 15 yo could then do the same, and it’s bad for a 15 yo to distribute naked pictures of herself.
Another example : Why should we prosecute people smoking weed? Because if we don’t more people will smoke weed, “and it is something which should be discouraged…right?”
IOW, your answer don’t explain in any way why you want her to be prosecuted.
And by the way, I’m unwilling to support the prosecution of a 15 yo who willingly (assumedly) distributed naked pictures of herself. A 15 yo is old enough to have sexual urges and some clues about what sex is about. More importantly, she doesn’t harm anybody, and I can’t accept the concept of punishing someone for doing something which doesn’t harm anybody.
At most you could argue that she’s harming herself. But since when do we send people to trial for harming themselves?
If no other facts come to light, I’ll have to say that if I were on the jury, she’d walk. This case is clearly not what the child porn laws were intended to address.
No, I don’t like the idea of teens putting pornographic pictures of themselves on the internet, but this ain’t the way to handle it. IMHO.
Well first, it’s not the job of the jury to decide what the intent of the law is. It’s the job of the jury to review the evidence presented to it in accordance with the judge’s instruction.
Second, how can you say that the intent of child porn laws isn’t to stop children from distributing sexually oriented pictures of themselves? Why, if stopping the distribution of such pictures is what the law is supposed to do, would there be a pass if it’s the subject who’s doing the distributing?
Change the scenario a bit. What if she had a 15-year-old boyfriend who, with her knowledge and participation, took the pictures? Should he be prosecuted and she not?
This is along the lines of what I was thinking, as well. What if she were 16 and her boyfriend were 14, and he took the pictures. Who would be at fault then? The younger kid?
This is one of the craziest cases I’ve ever heard of.
If they don’t prosecute her, doesn’t that create a kiddy porn loophole? It’s okay, or at least less bad, if the minor takes pictures of themselves? Do we need a new age to draw that line? 15 year olds can take dirty pictures of themselves and share them, what about 11 year olds? 8 year olds? Anyone old enough to hold a camera? We’d need a line, and it’d be as arbitrary as 18.
What if the 15 year old is putting these less bad pictures on a pay site? Is it still okay? What if her parents run the site, and they’re using the profits to remodel the kitchen? What if some unrelated stranger runs the site, and collects less bad pictures from ‘willing’ 15 year olds he meets in chatrooms?
It does seem wrong to be bringing down laws meant to catch dirty old men abusing children, on the head of a 15 year old who chose to make and distribute these pictures…but she’s not supposed to be legally able to make that choice. If the results of this case make it clear that her “choice” in considered somewhat valid, (and this is a serious question, if anyone has any solid legal answers) what then?
Hee-hee-hee, goodness that’s childish and in poor taste and very funny!
Seriously, that part of this whole thing that makes my head spin, is that if you’re going to charge this girl as an adult, then wouldn’t the charge have to be for distributing ADULT porn, rather than kiddie porn? And if you’re going to charge her as a juvenile, wouldn’t that make her guilty of distributing CHILD porn? Yes, yes, I recognize the fact that legally you can charge someone who’s over 18 with an adult crime when they can’t even buy a pack of cigs from the drug store, let alone make and distribute their own nuddie photos. But does that seem hypocritical to anyone other than me?
What about jury nullification? Not being a smart ass, but I have heard a little about it and wonder if this is the type of situation where it might apply.
Taking pictures of an underage girl and posting them online is illegal. It doesn’t particularly matter WHO posted the pictures, it’s illegal. Many of you are suppositioning that she was coerced by someone into taking these pictures. What if she weren’t? In the next breath, there are arguments that she is simply exploring her sexuality, natural given her recent admission into the oh so wonderful world of puberty.
Perhaps the laws they are choosing to charge her with at this time are not the best, but I disagree that we should jump to conclusions as to her motives at this time, at any rate.
What the fuck? I’ll admit, up front right now, I had those ideas when I was 16, only I didn’t have the big baddy Internet to post the photos on, I had to take polaroids and give them to the 17 tyear old guy I was after at the time. Oh bad, bad, bad evil me for what I did to that poor innocent victim. Except that there never was a victim in any of it. Nobody forced me to do it, nobody harmed me by doing it, and I certainly suffered no damage because of it. It had the desired effect - got the guy’s attention.
Then I guess you’d find it really, really unfortunate that the statute of limitations is probably up on Traci Lords?
I can’t say it’s the happiest thing since Disney World, but my fucking god, let their parents discourage it. It’s more absurd than I can even express to be wanting the book thrown at a sexually mature teenager who passed out some nudie pics of herself of her own free will. It’s almost as absurd as putting sunscreen on bats.
The illegality of child porn certainly did not stop Traci Lords from concealing her age and having quite the career.
What if the recipients were teenage guys between 15 and 17 who have a rather legitimate and non-pedophilic reason to want to see a 15 year old girl naked?
So can sex, but it’s not illegal for people under 18 to have sex with each other, and in most places, it’s not illegal for two 15 year olds to have sex with each other. Nobody ever got AIDS or pregnant from looking at a photograph.
I would add that it’s also the job of the jury to inject some common sense into the situation. At least that’s what I would do if I were selected to serve on that jury.
I don’t think the punishments for child porn laws, such as registering as a sex offender are appropriate in this case. Posting pictures of a child is a very different thing from someone in their mid-teens posting pictures of herself. At least it seems very different to me. There are plenty of fifteen year-olds, and this is probably one of them, that haven’t been children for quite some time.
I think they should both be warned, perhaps made to do some community service or something. Certainly not treated the same as professional child pornographers.
OK, the first thing, which has already been pointed out once, everyone needs to stop assuming that this girl is being charged as an adult. There’s nothing in any of the sources posted so far indicating it.
No, no it’s really not. It’s not up to the jury to decide whether the law is right or the prosecutor charged appropriately or anything other than did the prosecutor prove each of the elements of the charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
In the eyes of the law she’s a child. I haven’t seen that were she convicted of these charges that she would be required to register as a sex offender. Can you site a source for the contention?
Can you show me in the statutes under which she is charged where the charges make a distinction between “professional” and non-professional child pornographers.
By Otto: “Can you show me in the statutes under which she is charged where the charges make a distinction between “professional” and non-professional child pornographers.”
No, the statutes probably don’t distinguish. That’s why, if I were on her jury and the choice was to convict her as a child pornographer or acquit, I’d vote for acquital. (That would be the old common sense thing, ya’ know.)
By Otto: “In the eyes of the law she’s a child. I haven’t seen that were she convicted of these charges that she would be required to register as a sex offender. Can you site a source for the contention?”
Only the statement made by someone above, that convicted child pornographers must register. For the purpose of this discussion, I’m assuming she would receive all the bells and whistles that an offended legal system could bring to bear.
Otto: Do you honestly believe that this person should receive the same measure of punishment as someone that posts pictures of very young children? I don’t.
Now, as work is the curse of the posting class, I must bid all a good evening. I’ll check in tomorrow morning.
What about this scenerio? She’s chatting online with a cop, whose job it is to track down pedophiles, and she feeds him a story such that the cop doesn’t know that she’s a 15 year old girl, but thinks that she’s a pedo, and she then sends the cop pictures of herself naked? Who’s to blame then? The girl or the cop?
This case is a bit silly, IMHO, since had the internet been around when I was a teen, I know that my girlfriend and I would have been emailing naughty pictures of one another back and forth. Hell, when I was just barely an adult and the girls I was dating were just under the age of consent, we’d have been sending each other pictures without thinking about it. I guess that makes myself, and a good number of the folks (who’d have done the same things) I know, criminals.
This is the most ridiculous criminal charge I’ve ever heard. In the top ten, at any rate.
If she had tried to kill herself, would any of you want to charge her with attempted murder? Because that’s what you’re doing here- applying a law clearly intended to protect children from others in such a way as to criminalize the child’s own conduct.
I’ll pop in this thread again and ask if anyone has any more facts about this case or if people are just going to keep making stuff up then criticize the criminal justice system for allegedly doing what the poster just made up.
See, I think the problem here is that you’re assigning a single meaning to the phrase “child pornographer.” There are degrees and shades of meaning. Just like there are degrees and shades of meaning to words like “killer” and “thief.” Is she a “child pornographer” in the same way that someone kidnapping children in Denmark and forcing them to pose is a “child pornographer”? No, of course not, which is why juries don’t convict people of being labels. They convict (or acquit) them of charges.
I haven’t said a word about punishment before this. But the answer is no, I don’t think she’s deserving of the same punishment but she is guilty of the same crime. Juries in most criminal cases don’t decide punishment and aren’t supposed to be considering punishment in making their decision. Based on the information available to me right now, I don’t think jail time is necessarily appropriate but probation for as long as the juvenile court system has any control over her along with a restriction on owning or using a computer while on probation is. Maybe a fine.
Well, on the first page was a link to a USAToday.com report on the case that said:
I don’t see that as the OP making up that the girl was being charged with the stuff we’ve been arguing about in this thread. Unless, of course, USAToday is making stuff up also?
I’m not talking about the actual charge. It’s clear she’s been charged. What’s not clear is whether she’s been charged as an adult or child, what the underlying facts are aside from knowing she sent pictures to other users, what the prosecution intends to do, and what penalties they seek.
This blurb of a story made the papers because it’s sensational. But the story doesn’t tell us much even assuming the facts are correct. And trust me, reporters aren’t always aces at legal reporting.
Yet people are decrying the prosecutor, the penalties, all kinds of things we know nothing about.
I’m not saying the prosecutor is correct or incorrect. I’m saying that, without relevant facts, there’s no point in debating whether this is a good idea. Yet a number of people want to assume the worst and base their posts on that assumption.