Should obscene teen texting be considered child pornography?
April 30, 2009 Last spring, four Alabama middle school students were arrested in Daphne for exchanging nude photos of themselves. The students “were charged with possession of material harmful to minors, a misdemeanor,” the Mobile Press-Register reported. Later that year, Montgomery police say another 12-year-old boy was arrested for similar charges. Throughout the past year, similar stories have continued to rise to the forefront of local cases in Indiana, New Jersey, Vermont and Ohio — to name a few. But the ever-increasing “bad decision making” is garnering more legal attention than anticipated and prosecutors’ use of stringent child-pornography and sex-offender laws has ignited a debate. In New Jersey, a 14-year-old girl was charged with child pornography and distribution of child pornography after posting 30 nude portraits of herself on MySpace. “Do we really want to tag this 14-year-old girl as a sex offender for the next 30 years?” asked Bill Albert, spokesman for the National C
