Hmmm, I wonder how many cases like this are pursued because the investigators themselves are getting their jollies off on looking at the pictures? And then have to justify it?

All parties, including the parents if they gave permission/condoms, should be found guilty, given community service sentences, and have their records expunged after the service is completed.

Oh the horror of having a law, breaking that law, and being found guilty of what you did.

Their community service should be explaining to school kids and the PTA what they did wrong and to state "Don't do this. Wait until she is 16."

Good teaching moment that will need to be repeated yearly by other "criminals".

We bombard children with sexual imagery and wonder why they have an interest in sex. "Daring" television programs defy conventions like "the family hour," striving to push limits as far as they can be pushed. We honor these programs with awards and accolades, and then we wonder why teenagers can't wait.

And then we have parents who fail to limit their children's media consumption, watching sexually explicit movie scenes in R-rated movies alongside their 11 year olds and wondering why Johnny couldn't keep it in his pants or Jenny has a child at 15.

There is a category of adults who don't recognize that their precious snowflakes are sexual beings with normal urges and desires; who refuse to accept that children to grow up and that maybe dumping them into a sexual stew before they're ready to process the images and messages is asking for disaster.

We equate love with sex and then tell love-starved teenagers to simply abstain from sex. Or we provide them with condoms and birth control and set them loose to have sex without considering how they'll deal with the psychological complications that casual sex brings.

Free Love was the battle cry of the '60s hippies and today's progressive parents are simply carrying on that legacy. Love may be free, but sex rarely is. Our children are paying the price for our Panglossian stupidity, whether by having children at too young an age or being stuck on a sex registry for doing what the movies and tv told them was a normal expression of love in an adult relationship.

Part of this could be alleviated by removing the mandatory sentencing guidelines and letting judges try each case on its merits. By setting the age limit and mandating any activity with "Kim" at that age is forced sex, the law is forcing the judge to consider this as child sexual abuse. The law does not allow him to view the perpetrator as a child himself and find a solution which recognizes that both parties in this case are human beings and not monsters.

Finally, what the hell did "Kim's" parents think she was going to do with condoms and birth control? Clear up her acne and make balloon animals?

I suspect that a not-so-minor part of the problem is that, as I've mentioned, when you're a teen, EITHER sex or abstinence can make you delusional. That is, having sex muddles the brain (especially in girls) and makes you vulnerable to emotional manipulation and can even make you think you've found a suitable person to marry when you haven't. But...abstinence can do the same things, which can lead to teen marriage because one or both parties are sick of waiting to have sex and think they've found true love just because the lust is mutual for the first time in their lives. This is said to be a common occurrence in Mormon communities - and evangelical communities. Obviously, that is a likely path to divorce before age 25 - often after having a child or two.

So, finding a balance between sex and abstinence would seem to be in order.

(I have to say, though, that I have the impression that in this century, teen girls get labeled as prudes if they don't at least provide blow jobs or sexting - but boys are not under much pressure, if any, to reciprocate sexually. Whatever happened to the 1990s, when even forcing people to TALK about sex was recognized as harassment, never mind making DEMANDS for sex?)

Well, forgive me, but we're talking about a 15-year-old girl here.

Doesn't really matter how old her boyfriend is/ was, although the older he is, the skeevier it is.

Because the fact remains - she's 15.

Leaving aside all the issues about whether the charges are excessive, or whether/how much the police should be involved, or what his or her parents thought, or did -

She's 15 years old.

Is it really being suggested that this kind of relationship with a 15-year-old girl is to be considered normal, acceptable, and not subject to any sanction at all, whether criminal or social?

Really?

Most 15-year-old girls can't make up their minds about which shoes to wear, never mind embarking on relationships this serious - and dangerous. As we see in the instant case, where she's 'dating' one boy, but sending these kinds of images to another boy, but now she regrets doing that, 'coz she never thought that he would send them to all his friends, but he did, and now the first boy is all angry with her, and stuff. And it's, like, totally bumming her out.

The immaturity and poor decision-making of teens is nothing new. Which is why we have laws that address things like the age of consent, and inappropriate behaviors involving children who are not yet mature enough to make such choices and deal with the consequences.

I agree, the response does seem to be awfully heavy-handed. Conan the Grammarian makes very good points about how this may be driven by foolish and ill-considered lawmakers - we used to let judges handle this sort of thing. But that doesn't change the underlying point.

But if you don't agree - if you think that this relationship was just fine, and perfectly normal - let me ask you this - just how young would the boy and girl have to be in order for you to say that such a relationship is not OK?

Comparisons with what you, or I, or others, may have done when we were teens, or what constitutes 'normal' behavior based upon personal anecdote, are dangerous and misleading. The law has to be written to protect all children, including the least-mature and most-vulnerable among them.

llater,

llamas

Age of consent laws are intended mainly to protect children from being sexually exploited by adults. In the past, this kind of case would not have been prosecuted; either the parents would take measures to separate the kids (prohibited them from seeing each other, putting one or both of them in another school, etc.), or there would be a shotgun marriage. What happened here is what's happening in a lot of areas of child rearing: things that ought to be parenting issues are instead becoming legal issues.

It's using law as a substitute for morality. That's dangerous, and you can see why in a case like this: we have the absurd result where one party walks away and the other is effectively given a lifetime sentence (sex offender registry). Note the other thing that's happening here too: a law that was sold as being narrowly tailored towards hard-core criminals is being applied broadly to the general population. How many times have we seen that in the past few decades? Civil forfeiture was originally sold as something that would be used solely to combat drug kingpins. Look at how that came out.

And one can't help but wonder: if the relationship was completely consensual, and the parents approved, who ratted them out?

Once "Kim" sent the pictures to a third party (also a teen?), the whole story was bound to get out to the cops.

llamas, do you paint everyone with the same brush because of their age?

I subscribe to two ideas here: start with Randall Munroe's suggestion, that a relationship is OK if (Y1)/2+7≤(Y2)... then add that the parent is responsible for determining what their child does in the dark. Please note that the "Romeo&Juliet" laws mentioned have a fine place keeping people from being labeled for life as incorrigible criminals, but don't mean parents have trained kids to act decently - even as "decent" does NOT mean "abstaining".

Americans are just flat crazy when anything whatsoever occurs to them about sex. They'll turn up their nose at Playboy, then reach eagerly for the next Cosmopolitan, with its banner headline proclaiming "5 new ways to drive your man crazy in bed!".

The so-called "moral majority" once insisted that premarital sex was forbidden, never noticing what Heinlein did: that it led to countless cases of sexually incompatible people being forced together by accident, leading to increased divorce rates and widespread cheating - and the devaluation of some marriages to financial agreement.

He is being represented by the public defender assigned to him. His family can't afford better legal representation.

I'm sorry, you're screwed, kid. Unless the defender is an ace defense attorney doing some pro bono work for the public defender's office. If so, it may work out for you.

@Radwaste, who wrote:

"llamas, do you paint everyone with the same brush because of their age?"

In the case of girls younger than 16 - Yes. Yes, I do. We have decided as a society that children below a certain age need to be protected, both from being exploited by others and/or from falling victim to their own foolish choices. We have decided that that certain age is 16 years old - we can quibble about whether that is the 'right' number, but I say that (whatever that number is) any child below that age gets treated exactly the same - painted with the same brush, if you will.

Note that I don't use the same brush for those who exploit children under that age - I recognize that there may be a qualitative difference between a 15-year-old girl who has a 16-year-old 'boyfriend' vs a 15-year-old girl who has a 43-year-old 'boyfriend' - but I don't think it should be automatic, as 'Romeo and Juliet' laws tend to do. 'R&J' laws assume that all underage couples fit the Romeo and Juliet stereotype, but of course underage men and women can be exploiters, just as adults can.

In times past, a case like this might have been prosecuted, or it might not - because it might never have come to the attention of the police or the prosecutor. It would certainly not have been prosecuted without somebody actively seeking to have it prosecuted. But now it seems that everyone is busy producing huge volumes of evidence of their activities - graphic, incontrovertible evidence - and then sending it out into the wild, uncontrolled, in ways that can never be taken back and never erased. Instead of someone bringing evidence of private shenanigans to the police in order to seek prosecution, the parties are now broadcasting hi-def full-color 1080P images of their private shenanigans to the entire world, to the point where the police can't help but take notice of it. What did you expect? These folks are performing the digital equivalent of standing outside the police station holding a huge sign saying 'I'm underage, and I took naked pictures of myself and sent them to an underage boy. Oh, did I mention that I have an underage boyfriend and we f**ked last night? Ask me for details!'

The inability of children to make wise decisions about their boundaries in these areas of life is the exact reason why laws about age-of-consent and preventing the exploitation of children are a pretty-good idea, on the whole. When Hollywood actresses in their 20s and 30s can't figure out that it's a stunningly-stupid idea to take digital naked pictures of themselves and send them to others, why do we expect 15-year-old girls to be any smarter?

Incidentally, you gotta love the double standard here. The girl is the one who produced and distributed the child pr*n here - even if it was pictures of herself. And she has been charged with - what? Right. Nothing.

llater,

llamas

It would certainly not have been prosecuted without somebody actively seeking to have it prosecuted.

And that someone was generally the girl's parents. If you want to make the case that they're bad parents and should be prosecuted because they failed miserably in this particular instance, go for it.

I'll also note that in the greater context of 6 or so thousand years of semi-civilization that for the vast majority of that time people a) married for financial and/or physical security, b) married young.

What we've done as a society is to push back the onset of adulthood and the attendant responsibility for one's choices from ~14 to the mid 20s, if not further down the road.

Upon further reflection, the kid has one line of defense left, and this is a Hail Mary: marry the girl, and if possible get her pregnant. Then put her on the stand, and let her say this:

My husband, the father of my child committed no crime against me. Please do not put him in jail, and deny my child a father.

So, finding a balance between sex and abstinence would seem to be in order.

Agreed. But America would flip its wig at any program that told teenagers, sensibly, "You are a mess of hormones right now and not in a great place to make decisions about love and sex. The best thing you can do is jack off (or jill off) whenever you think it's necessary. Learn what feels good to you before you have sex with others."

Americans are just flat crazy when anything whatsoever occurs to them about sex.

Yep.

Sue the state for violating your civil rights, why is he being charged for possession of child porn, but she has not been charged with creating it?

Why haven't her parents been charged as accessories/co-conspirators?

Sexism, which is illegal and actionable.

And I'm sorry but until enough WOMEN have had their lives ruined by these laws it will not change.

And why 15 llamas? Odds are your great grandfather boinked your great grand mother before she was 14.

People have been having sex before 16 for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS

We need to move past this sexist notion that sex is something DONE TO women that they dont ever really want if they would just be honest about it

Plus arent people always saying girls mature FASTER than boys emotionally and physically?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/71-year-old-woman-marries-8426289

Here we have a 71 year old woman who married the 17 year old nephew of her dead son, and everyone doesnt care

People have been having sex before 16 for HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS
________________________________

And since girls and women of all ages tended to die in childbirth in high numbers until the late 19th century or so (when doctors finally started taking germs seriously enough to wash their own hands), it's not surprising that people didn't quite realize until fairly recently that teen pregnancy is just plain dangerous for girls. It also means that, if she gives birth, the baby will likely have a low birth weight, which increases the chance of crib death. (But babies often died anyway before the germ theory was discovered, as well, so again, teen pregnancy was not understood as bad for babies.)

And yet... Why is Judge Myron Gookin still a judge?

@ lujlp -

I don't have any particular commitment to the 16-year-old age limit - I think there's a proper debate to be had about what is the correct age at which we define children as children for these purposes. But I think there needs to be a limit set, and 16 happens to be where it is set in the instant case.

Comparisons with what was normal and accepted a century ago or more, while true, are not really helpful. We do not run much of the rest of society on the principles of 150 years ago, why should those rules apply in this area?

llater,

llamas

We do not run much of the rest of society on the principles of 150 years ago.... ~ llamas at September 15, 2016 3:27 AM

Actually, we run a great deal of society on the traditions of 150 years ago, from which side of the road on which we drive to US common law, which is based on precedent and some of those precedents are over 150 years old (some date from merry olde England). Louisiana's legal system is based on the Napoleonic Code, which was developed well over 150 years ago.

And no, although 15-year-olds were getting boinked 150 years ago, that does not mean they should be getting boinked today. But with birth control, condoms, and a hyper-sexualized media culture, how can we realistically expect otherwise? However, that doesn't mean the law has to support it.

Let's keep in mind the boy in question was 17 years old. He's not any more mature than she is. How is it he, or any other boy, is expected to keep it in his pants when she can send nudie photos all over town?

Charging him in this case follows a convoluted legal logic. The age of consent is 18. Young Austin is a minor and cannot consent to sex, yet he can be charged as an adult for sexual assault.

And, what's worse, Kim's parents reportedly knew their daughter was having sex with Austin. Of course, now that it's public, they're shocked that this boy took advantage of their innocent daughter. So, they'll ruin this kid's life in order to protect their self-delusion that they're good parents.

https://fundly.com/m2/save-austins-future

Im Austins mother. Thank you so much to those that support Austin. He is a great young man. He has a big heart, is thoughtful, respectful, and sensitive. He is in his last year of high school and has hopes for college and a future career. Its so frightening that this may rob him of that. Im a single mother and if I could.drain all my blood to pay for a good lawyer I would but probably I still couldn't afford it. If your able... please help me in getting him a lawyer in the above link.