Sick "Justice"
Who here was a mini Socrates in their teens -- a fountain of wisdom with a smattering of teen acne?
Yeah, me, neither.
This is a time when kids make seriously stupid mistakes. (Their brains aren't even fully formed and won't be till they're in their mid 20s.)
I'm of the mind that mistakes can be turned into learning experiences -- but something's changed. Kids used to get grounded or suspended; they've have their mom and dad come pick them up at school and sit with the principal or other administrator before taking their kid home to do, you know, the parenting thing.
Something terrible has happened. Today's teen mistakes, which often happen due to these incredibly powerful electronic binkies we all walk around with, are turned into justice system fodder.
Basically, we're turning teen mistakes and even teen victims into criminals. Mark Joseph Stern writes at Slate of yet another case of a minor, a 16-year-old girl, being prosecuted for child porn after she sent a brief cellphone video of herself performing oral sex on a man. (This is legal in Maryland, where the age of consent is 16.)
She sent the video as part of a game in which the friends attempted to "one-up" each other with "silly photos and videos." A few months later, S.K. had a falling-out with one recipient of the video, a 17-year-old boy known as K.S. He began to mock S.K., allegedly writing that she was a "slut" on classroom blackboards. He then reported the video to the school resource officer, Eugene Caballero.After Caballero saw the minutelong video, he met with S.K. By that point, the clip had been passed around school; a mutual friend alleged that K.S. shared it with the broader student body. At the meeting, S.K. cried, expressing her distress that the video had been shared widely. She believed Caballero was meeting with her to help stop the clip's distribution. Caballero encouraged S.K. to provide a written statement admitting that she was in the video and had sent it to two friends.
What Caballero did not tell S.K. was that she was considered not a victim but a criminal suspect. Instead of trying to halt the video's dissemination, the officer passed along S.K.'s statement to the state prosecutor. Maryland then charged S.K. with illegally distributing child pornography and displaying an obscene item to a minor. She was found guilty by a juvenile court, which found her delinquent as a distributor of child pornography. The court sentenced S.K. to supervised probation and placed her on electronic monitoring. Her punishment required her to report to a probation officer periodically, allow him to visit her home, obtain permission before leaving the state, submit to weekly drug urinalysis, and complete an anger management course. (Because she was a minor, she did not have to register as a sex offender.)
S.K. completed these requirements but appealed her delinquency finding, arguing that Maryland law does not allow the subject of child pornography to be the perpetrator as well. The Court of Appeals rejected that argument by a 6-1 vote. Writing for the majority, Judge Joseph M. Getty expressed some discomfort with the outcome but declined to "read into the statute an exemption for minors." The law, he wrote, punishes all individuals who distribute pornographic images of children, including children who share images of themselves. Legislation to change that, Getty wrote, "ought to be considered by the General Assembly in the future."
In the lone dissent, Judge Michele D. Hotten--who is emerging as the court's great defender of justice--accused the majority of reaching an absurd result by misreading the statute. The law at issue, Hotten wrote, is genuinely ambiguous: It states that a "person may not" distribute material that "depicts a minor engaged as a subject in ... sexual conduct." Can the "person" who distributes this criminal material also be the "minor" who is "engaged as a subject" in it? In other words, does the law's text allow the criminal and the victim to be the same individual?
Hotten found the text to be unclear. And under the court's own precedent, "[w]hen a statute can be interpreted in more than one way, the job of this Court is to resolve that ambiguity in light of the legislative intent." Here, Hotten found ample evidence that Maryland "sought to protect children from exploitation and abuse as opposed to enacting laws that criminalized consensual sexual activity among minors." (Italics in the original.) The General Assembly has repeatedly indicated that its legal regime is designed to aid victims of child pornography, not to penalize minors who film lawful, consensual sex acts. "Reading the statute in a contrary fashion," Hotten wrote, "subverts legislative intent."
...Until the General Assembly fixes the problem, In re: S.K. will make it more difficult for minors to shield themselves against exploitation. Underage individuals who film and share consensual sex acts with partners or friends will have little recourse if those images are shared more widely to embarrass them. Maryland has a revenge porn ban, but the Court of Appeals just created a loophole, opening up teenage victims of revenge porn to child pornography charges. Like North Carolina, Minnesota, and other states, Maryland has turned teenage sexters into sex offenders. A handful of states, such as Washington, New Mexico and Colorado, have reformed their laws to repeal penalties for teen sexters. Maryland lawmakers must follow suit and amend their statute to ensure that more minors like S.K. aren't victimized by a law ostensibly designed to protect them.
Sucks for her personally, but if she were a boy she would be registering as an offender despite being a minor and would actually be in jail
She is at worst being publicly shamed and being extorted for cash
THis is technically a "good thing" its been happening to boys for decades now and most people dont care - sacrifice a girl however and we are one step closer to the madness ending
Take for example these - all of which went on for years until enough women were ground under the mills of 'justice' that society said stop
Life time alimony
Exorbitant child support
Pre nups being invalidated for no reason
Mandatory domestic violence arrests
Convictions for running Satanic day cares replete with magical portals to rape rooms in the underworld
Comming soon - retroactive cancellation of consent, seems a number of men have started filing Title IX complaints against their one night stands and people are finally getting sick of campus kangaroo rape courts
Hopefully the outrage of this girls case will be enough to tip the scales
lujlp at August 31, 2019 7:03 AM
I hate to say I agree with Lujlp but that is the world we live in. Hopefully this will lead to better laws for both genders now that women are being impacted as well.
Ben at August 31, 2019 8:39 AM
This is a time when kids make seriously stupid mistakes. (Their brains aren't even fully formed and won't be till they're in their mid 20s.)
I may be atypical, but I've made mistakes in middle age and as a senior which were stupider and far more costly than anything I did as a teen.
Rex Little at August 31, 2019 8:57 AM
We did a lot better before school administrators became agents of the state.
All the enforcement powers of the police with none of the constitutional protections for the students or the judgement required when dealing with teens.
I would ask for this case to be dismissed based on the fact that the”resource officer” should be required to give a Miranda warning or call in the parents before questioning students about a potentially criminal act.
The entire confession is fruit of the poisonous tree.
Isab at August 31, 2019 9:42 AM
The judges suffer from group-think. You head off down some path and then refuse to turn back even when evidence clearly shows that path is absurd, impossible, or even insane. Sunk Cost fallacy plus pride. I have seen a group come to completely insane decisions, with no basis in reality. Scary stuff if you are on the receiving end.
cc at August 31, 2019 1:44 PM
lujlp beat me to the punch. Yep, if the genders were reversed HE would be on his way to jail marked for life as a "sex offender."
unlike lujlp and Ben, I don't have faith in that this will change much - except ground others up un the "justice" system.
charles at August 31, 2019 2:08 PM
I wondered about that myself, the resource office never told her she was a suspect yet encouraged her to write a "confession."
Conan the Grammarian at August 31, 2019 2:54 PM
"She believed Caballero was meeting with her to help stop the clip's distribution... What Caballero did not tell S.K. was that she was considered not a victim but a criminal suspect. Instead of trying to halt the video's dissemination, the officer passed along S.K.'s statement to the state prosecutor."
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."
One thing I hope the girl and her peers learn from this is never, never, ever trust a cop - nor any other adults in authority who haven't substantially proven themselves worthy of trust.
One thing I learned from years of working with adolescents is how willing adults in authority are to deceive them for the most trivial expedience, or even just schadenfreude. They can't trust anyone who hasn't proven by their actions that they're trustworthy.
I wonder why there were no repercussions for K.S., the 17-year-old vindictive male twit with whom the girl had a "falling out", who "began to mock S.K., allegedly writing that she was a 'slut' on classroom blackboards", and who allegedly distributed the video to "the broader student body", and then ratted her out to the deceptive resource officer.
Ken R at August 31, 2019 6:23 PM
This will be fine, because this girl has rights. Right?
Radwaste at August 31, 2019 9:39 PM
I read the actual Opinion and Dissent. Both make good arguments as to how the statute should be interpreted and yet come to different results. I lean towards the majority's take on the statutory interpretation, as much as the result sucks. What I can't understand is why the Maryland legislature hasn't passed new law to clarify the ambiguity in the existing statute. The child porn laws in MD have been amended several times in the past 40 years and this problem of how to separate the child-victim out from any potential criminal liability has been known for a while. Yet the legislature didn't change the law to address it. Even worse, in very recent years there HAVE been bills submitted to address the exact problem and the legislature has not taken them up.
Also, the school's conduct and the decision of the prosecutor to move forward with these charges is heinous.
RigelDog at September 1, 2019 7:11 AM
"I wonder why there were no repercussions for K.S."
Lots of possible reasons. His parents are friends with people in the administration. Or he is a serial offender so they just ignore everything he does. And anything in between like they just didn't feel like it.
As you note Ken these people are capricious and not to be trusted.
Ben at September 1, 2019 12:48 PM
The child porn laws in MD have been amended several times in the past 40 years and this problem of how to separate the child-victim out from any potential criminal liability has been known for a while. Yet the legislature didn't change the law to address it. Even worse, in very recent years there HAVE been bills submitted to address the exact problem and the legislature has not taken them up.
@RigelDog: This IS Maryland, where the legisl00ture is more concerned about banning styrofoam and letting criminals work as doctors and mental health professionals than they are about protecting children.
mpetrie98 at September 1, 2019 3:32 PM
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