Dropping felony charges is the best option of all available and serves all involved the best.
Thank you.
I think this was nothing more than a case of kids just being kids and not fully recognizing that what they were doing was a crime. Period.
Here is where I differ from, I’m sure, many. Here is my concern: Why wasn’t the 14-year-old who took the photograph of herself and passed it to an ex-boyfriend charged as well?
My thought is if you are going to charge one, you charge all, in for a dime, in for a dollar.
In my world, the young girl doesn’t get a pass. If the three other teens didn’t get a pass, she shouldn’t either. It’s not fair, nor equitable, and sends the wrong message. Is the young girl going to a diversionary program for people who send illegal pornographic pictures of themselves? No, she’s deciding if they want to participate. What she did was just as illegal, even to the point of facilitation, or providing child pornography. Treat her like the other co-defendants, because that’s what she was in this vignette, a co-defendant.
I believe punishment never should have left the realm of parental influence, but once it did, all should have been charged. As prosecutors decided whether to proceed with felony charges, I was concerned about the potential implications, lifelong implications, for these teens. Charging these children with felonies would have had a negative effect on their future.
I believe the 14-year old who snapped the photograph needs counseling, not prosecution. And I definitely believe this is appropriate for the three others involved.
Why? If it were not for the picture being sent in the first place, we would not have had this issue. Parents need to get to the root cause analysis as to why this young girl and the others thought it was appropriate to send photos of this nature.
The youths who were charged said they felt ashamed, but what about the catalyst behind this whole fiasco, the young girl who decided to take the photos, and then chose to send the photo of herself? Shouldn’t there be an apology and some culpability for the originator of the photograph?
Even consideration of felony charges was an overreach. I could not wrap my head around how some instance where the law had not caught up with technology, could have the capacity to affect these children — forever. These kids are only guilty of ugly immaturity, and should not have been charged in the first place.
How do you explain to an employer, college recruiter, or even future potential spouse that you were charged with dealing in depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct? And to have these children considered as sex offenders literally kept me up at night.
Generally we don’t get caught our first time out, be it speeding, sneaking out of the home or taking pictures of ourselves. My concern is that there are other potential cases brewing in cyberspace of this same nature.
We as parents must speak to our children about the implications of choices they make, how and why they make them. I know I’ve talked to my children. Here’s hoping that all readers take this as a teachable moment and address this incident as such.
Lucius Daye, a service-connected disabled veteran, is working on his MBA degree from Syracuse University. A member of The Olympian’s Diversity Panel, he can be reached at lucasdaye@comcast.net.
