Sexting: Teens vs. prosecutors
A lawsuit filed by three Pennsylvania girls against a prosecutor threatening sexting charges
Overzealous prosecutors "be afraid," said Tracy Clark-Flory in Salon, "be very afraid." Three Pennsylvania girls caught in the nationwide "sexting" crackdown filed a lawsuit, with the help of their moms, against a district attorney threatening to file felony charges unless they complete a 10-hour course on pornography and sexual abuse. Let's hope this suit scares some sense into prosecutors trying to label teens as sexual predators for engaging in ill-advised sexual experimentation.
"This is something that just cannot be dismissed as kids 'doing stupid things,'" said Brent Bozell in Townhall.com. Among teens, "sexting"—using cell phones to send nude or semi-nude pictures of oneself—is quickly spreading out of control, and has even led to suicide. It's clearly a dangerous problem that parents can't eliminate without help from the law.
"You don't have to be a member of the Taliban's Department for the Prevention of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue," said Tony Norman in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "to agree that kids exchanging photos of their naked bodies by cell phone is truly a stupid form of adolescent behavior." But indicting, and permanently scarring, "the very children you're ostensibly trying to protect" makes no sense at all.
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