Sexting Laws
Massachusetts still has outdated laws on “sexting”, where a teen can be charged with felony distribution of child pornography. That’s the story of one Falmouth dad who went through it with his son, and now there is a book about their experience that reads as a cautionary tale against the out of proportion criminal penalties a child can face.As recounted in the Cape Cod Times, the story involves the father’s 13 year old son along with several other boys being charged with a felony sex offense for distributing a partial nude image of a female classmate to several classmates. The image was originally sent voluntarily by the girl.
Eventually the charges were dropped by a juvenile court judge, but not until after an extensive ordeal where the father worried whether or not his son could be labeled a sex offender for life.
Sexting laws reform is a hot topic across the nation. Recent efforts to change state sex offender laws to account for juvenile behavior that most people agree doesn’t amount to predatory sex offenses or child pornography distribution has had mixed results. Arizona recently passed a law for just that purpose, and Texas has a new bipartisan effort to do the same.
It’s a positive trend, but there is still a long way to go before the statutes in Massachusetts and in every state catch up to the reality of teens using technology with raging hormones. The law never considered normal adolescent, if foolish sexual exploration could be interpreted as predatory sex offenses.
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