Teens who engage in 'sexting' should not be prosecuted as sex offenders

To suggest that a juvenile who sends a sexually explicit selfie is a victim of his own act of child pornography is absurd, but that's exactly what a trial court in Spokane County has done. When he was 17, E.G. sent a text message with a photograph of his erect penis to a young adult woman he knew through his mother. The woman reported the incident to police, and the prosecutor chose to charge E.G. with the felony sex offense of dealing in depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct - a law typically used to prosecute child pornographers. That's right: E.G. was named as both the perpetrator and the victim of the crime of child pornography. He was convicted and required to register as a sex offender after the trial court rejected a motion to dismiss for insufficient evidence. [...]

Criminal justice officials are beginning to recognize that child pornography laws are not meant to address teen sexting. The president of the National District Attorneys Association has publicly urged prosecutors to use their discretion to avoid criminal charges in many such cases. Courts are also finding that sexting should not be handled through child pornography prosecutions. And 20 states - but not Washington - have enacted new laws that provide a range of charging and sentencing alternatives to prosecutors that avoid the sledgehammer impact of a felony child pornography charge and conviction in sexting cases. It's time for Washington's courts to appreciate what a five-year-old scene from "Girls" implies: Sending a sexually explicit selfie may be immature or unwise, but it's only human to behave that way sometimes.

source: Article 'Teens Who Engage in 'Sexting' Should Not Be Prosecuted as Sex Offenders' by Amy Roe (Senior Writer, ACLU of Washington); www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/teens-who-engage-sexting-should-not-be-prosecuted-sex-offenders; American Civil Liberties Union; 19 April 2017