Kids Prosecuted For Sexting Are Victims Of Abuse -- By The Government Prosecuting Them
Enough with the laws that go after teens who sext each other, deeming them sex offenders...ruining their lives for what's become common teen behavior.

Robby Soave writes at USA Today:

While sending and receiving sexually explicit photographs of underage children is illegal everywhere in the U.S., most states fail to distinguish between truly evil, predatory behavior -- say, a 40-year-old sexting a 13-year-old -- and teens who are basically the same age participating in consensual relationships -- a 17-year-old sexting a 15-year-old, for instance. While some states consider the latter category of crimes to be misdemeanors, Virginia does not distinguish offenders by age. A Virginia teen who sends a nude picture of himself can receive three felony charges for creating, distributing and possessing child pornography. Convicted offenders -- even teen offenders -- are placed on the sex offender registry.

...Perhaps no case underlines the absurdities of these laws better than the witch hunt against a North Carolina 17-year-old boy, Cormega Copening, who exchanged sexts with his girlfriend, 16. Police searched his phone for unrelated reasons, found the pictures and charged him with sexually exploiting minors: his girlfriend, and himself. Indeed, North Carolina's child pornography laws consider teens to be minors until they turn 18. But the age of consent in North Carolina is 16, meaning that sex between them was legal -- just not filming or photographing it. Further complicating the picture, North Carolina is one of two states that sets the age of adulthood -- for sentencing purposes -- at 16. In other words, the state could charge Copening as an adult for exploiting a minor, though he was the minor. He could have been jailed up to 10 years and was fortunate to get off with probation.

Proponents of these laws claim they are necessary to protect kids from sex predators. They also frequently insist that teens shouldn't be sexting anyway, and that there's no harm in keeping the activity illegal. What they don't seem to understand is that sexts are ubiquitous -- more than half of college undergraduates surveyed sent them as minors, according to researchers at Drexel University. Are these kids taking on some risk? Sure. Should their parents and teachers caution them against sexting? Absolutely. But arresting them, expelling them from school, smearing their names in the news media and placing them on the sex offender registry are all punishments vastly disproportionate to the "crime." Funneling teens into the criminal justice system for expressing sexual interest in other teens is simply much more harmful to them than sexting is.