There’s not a ton to add to Radley’s post about the case of two teenagers (16 and 17) convicted on child porn charges for e-mailing each other nude photos of themselves. It would be funny if it weren’t so grotesque. The real apex of stupidity comes in this bit from the majority opinion upholding the conviction, however:
Further, if these pictures are ultimately released, future damage may be done to these minors’ careers or personal lives. These children are not mature enough to make rational decisions concerning all the possible negative implications of producing these videos.
It seems here that there’s an additional hypocrisy above and beyond the obvious madness of putting a permanent blot on these kids’ legal records to “protect” them from the hypothetical harms that might accrue if some naked pics ever got circulated. Because if the rationale is that they aren’t mature enough to responsibly make the decision to produce such images, how can they be that they’re mature enough to be held criminally responsible for them? Depending on your assessment of their maturity, it seems like either what they did shouldn’t be criminal, or if it should, it shouldn’t be possible to punish them for it.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Brian Moore // Feb 13, 2007 at 10:56 am
What is wrong with people? If you find it wrong that kids do it, take them aside quietly and tell them “look, please don’t do this.” Any negative consequences are only made worse by prosecution and publication. Now WE all know about it; and we didn’t before.
2 Dylan // Feb 24, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Since both were under 18, I don’t understand how this can be a crime. The courts really need to settle on an age for adulthood, not an age of adulthood that is most convenient for them when they want to punish kids. This whole report was appalling. Even more so for the fact that they did not post them to the web, they emailed them to each other, solely for each other’s viewing. Of course, kids don’t possess a right to privacy, but they were absolutely under the assumption that it would remain between the two of them. To turn it into a court case is extremely traumatic and labeling them sex offenders for life, you might as well just end their futures all together.