Aurora lawmakers are right on in taking the lead on changing so-called teen “sexting” laws that wrongly turn foolish adolescents into felons.
Despite being faced with the facts of how dangerous and fallacious federal and state child pornography laws are, it’s only after a stunning event last year involving more 100 Cañon City High School students that state lawmakers would even agree that something has got to change.
The problem is a government that did something horrible while trying to do something important. While creating laws to protect children and teenagers from malevolent child sex assaults, they actually created innocent victims of bad government: the children themselves. These right-meaning and wrongly written laws hand out what are essentially life sentences to teenagers that never committed any type of crime.
State and federal laws make it an automatic felony to possess or transmit photos of provocatively nude minors. Period. It means that when stupid boys and girls “sext” naked selfies to their pals, girlfriends, boyfriends, or even themselves, they commit felonies. If convicted — and many are — they then must also register as sex offenders. It’s easy to see how countless lives have been irrevocably damaged or ruined because of these misguided laws.
Last December, the nation was shocked when it learned that more than 100 students at Canon City High School were being investigated for felony sexting crimes. In reality, the school pretty much illustrated a nationwide problem of teenagers casually and regularly texting, Snapchatting or otherwise “sharing” images of their buttocks, genitals or full provocative nudes.
These kids may be naive and unthinking, but they’re not criminals in any sense of the word. What is criminal is pushing these errant children and teenagers into the criminal justice system for nothing more than rampant, tawdry behavior.
We realize the issue is complicated, and it’s important to protect teens and younger children from real sex offenders and criminals. It would be just as inadvisable to create loopholes in the law for real sex offenders as it is to wrongfully create victims of bad government.
But the state must err on the side of protecting the innocent, and in this case, the innocent are teenagers with questionable sexual mores and decision-making skills.
Not only are these charges almost never warranted, they unfairly infringe on free speech laws. Two 17-year-olds sending each other nude selfies commit felonies. Two 18-year-olds doing the same thing commit no crime at all.
Aurora is seeking a temporary solution by essentially offering city prosecutors and judges flexibility in determining whether nude images were mutually consensual “sexting” images, or whether there really was a victim.
It’s a good idea for now. But ultimately, sexting is not a crime and should not be made one, no matter how unsavory it may be. Sending a nude selfie to someone who never wanted it and doesn’t like it is harassment, and there are laws protecting them from such behavior. State law needs to reflect that reality, and that these are issues of privacy and free speech.
At the same time, the law must allow for police to find and apprehend adults who prey on teens and children, using them to accommodate mentally ill and dangerous pedophiles.
Flexibility for prosecutors and courts is a start, but righting this wrong criminalization is paramount and must include a way to right the wrongs of those previously unfairly and mistakenly drawn into the criminal justice system because of using poor judgment and being victimized by bad government.