14 Year old Sex Offender

A teenager, 14, recently decided to put some pictures of herself on her myspace site. According to news sources, these pictures are incredibly explicit nude photos. I don't believe that a 14 year old girl should be going around and putting nude pictures of herself on the web; regardless, my reason for commenting is due to the knee jerk reaction from the New Jersey government.

I understand that our country is trying to break down on child pornography. Most certainly, the willing and intention exploitation of someone who is more likely to be susceptible to the influence of an older is not permissible. Even given that, though, there have been young lady’s who have posed nonnude in explicit photos who have seldom been target because they kept certain body parts covered up. I would argue, from a physiological point of view, albeit I’m not a psychologist, that the views of the 30 or 40 year old photographer taking those pictures still influenced them. I remember one young lady in particular, who hosts her own website which she openly and notoriously appears nude on now, use to complain on her discussion boards that it was against her first amendment rights not to appear nude, this was when she was 16 and 17. Whether that young lady actually believed that herself or her photographer’s opinion influenced her to that conclusion, is a subject of considerable debate.

Now, we have a young lady, 14, who decided to place notoriously nude photos of herself on her myspace site so her boyfriend could view them. The New Jersey government and Attorney General of New Jersey has decided to charge her with possessing and distributing child pornography; Of course she was in possession, she took them of herself.

I’d like to take a quick second and put this into another frame of reference. This, to me, is synonymous with someone decided to shoot themselves, for the purpose of committing suicide, failing, having to go to the hospital because of self-inflicted injuries, and then the police showing up to arrest them for attempted murder. My first reaction would be; “why did you shoot yourself?” Not, “You’re going to jail for 30-years because you attempted to kill yourself.”

So back to our young 14 year old in New Jersey. With the charge of possessing and distributing child pornography, if a jury finds her guilty (which hopefully there are at least 12 reasonable people in New Jersey), she will be forced to register with the state as a sex offender.

Now wait a second. A 14 year knowing and, seemingly, of her own volition, took pictures of herself, put them on a website she monitors and controls, and will be forced to register as a sex offender? WHAT!? The purpose of the states sex offender registries is to warn neighbors that a sleazebag child molester moved in down the street. While we could debate forever over whether or not the sex registry’s is fair to the individual, in this instance, it isn’t fair at all or reasonable. It’s superfluous and vindictive.

There is a trend occurring among teenagers to take explicit and nude photos of themselves via their cell phones, and other electronic devices, and send them to others. This trend has been codified as “sexting”. It appears that the New Jersey, and eight other state, governments have decided that the best way to discourage sexting is via criminal charges. What they seem to be missing it the why. Normally, for a 40 year old adult who molested and killed a 14 year old girl, I don't care about the why. But in the case of just the 14 year old, I want to know the real why.

On March 19, Laura Ingram had Dr. Drew Pinsky and Dr. S Mark Young on her radio show talking about their book released on 17 March 2009 called The Mirror Effect: How Celebrity Narcissism is Seducing America. One of the things I found fascinating about that interview was when they started talking about America’s youth, they indicated that teenagers are doing things with their myspace, facebook, and twitter sites for the sole purpose of getting their 15 minutes of fame. They said that children are not interested in working for years to get into the spot line. All they have to do is do something stupid, record it, and post it. They discussed how this is a part of a growing trend in American narcissism. This to me is the problem and unfortunately, parading the 14 year old child in front of reporter cameras is actually providing her with what she wanted, attention. It maybe shameful to her parents, but she wanted her 15-minutes of fame.

Currently many states, including Pennsylvania, Connecticut, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin, [and now New Jersey], are attempting to stop sexting by charging these teenagers with crimes. In addition to this 14 year old being forced to register as a sex offender, she could spend 17 years in prison, though the New Jersey Attorney General doesn’t think that the punishment will be that stiff.

I understand the desire to nip this in the bud as soon as possible. But creating an entirely new class of criminals before they’re even able to drive a car is ridiculous. A question that is asked on every job application someone fills out is, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” If we start summarily charging and convicting teenagers for acts of child pornography, this will hurt their chances of locating decent jobs fifteen and twenty years down the road. While, legally, every job states that this will not prohibit a person from acquiring the job, an HR manager who finds out that a perspective employee has a criminal records for child pornography is less likely to hire someone who doesn’t have that background.

This should be a wake up call to parents. Parents need to be more prominent in their children’s lives. There needs to be better online supervision, get a program like B-Safe online. Also, parents need to talk to their children about reality. During the 2008 Christmas season, places like ToysRUs were booming because parents didn’t want their children knowing how bad things really were. So they went out and kept buying like everything was fine. What we should’ve really been doing is explaining to our children about reality. CEOS, board of directors, and etc… are constantly perusing sites like myspace, facebook, and twitter checking up on their current employees. People have been dismissed from employment due to having a scantly clad photo of themselves in a bikini on their facebook or myspace account. That is reality. That is the reality that every single person who works in the corporate world must contend with. It is never too early to provide that lesson to our children.

In addition, there are other mediums we can present that in. I believe our education system should be more inclined to prepare our children for the real world than it currently does. So, instead of ruining these teenagers lives with frivolous criminal charges and wasting tax payers money persecuting them as sex criminals, let’s take that money and use it in our school systems, or other educational medium, to emphasize the consequences of their actions. With AYSO handing out sixth place trophies, parents hovering over their children to protecting them from everything except themselves, and shows like iCarly which emphasize that everyone who isn’t 14 is stupid, children have no clue about the real world is like or how the consequences of their actions will effect them down the road.

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