16-year-old girl charged as her own pornographer
The Maryland Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a 16-year-old girl could be charged as her own pornographer—even if the sex act was consensual and the porn was self-produced.
The girl shared a video of herself performing a sex act on a 16-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy. The video made its way around school and ultimately into the hands of the school resource officer who reported it and prosecutors charged the girl with production of child pornography.
The girl wasn’t incarcerated, but she was put on probation. She appealed her conviction… all the way to the Maryland Supreme Court, where the issue was, “Can a minor legally engaged in consensual sexual activity be his or her own pornographer through the act of sexting?”
The answer, unfortunately, is that under the current law, YES. The court found that state lawmakers did not include exceptions in the law for consensual sex or for self-produced child pornography.
The Court did suggest that the Maryland Legislature get with the times and reality of this not-so-infrequent situation, and carve out that exception.
We NEED to be educating children on the risks and dangers of current child pornography laws and we NEED to be educating the public that not all who are caught in this huge net are the same.
A copy of the decision follows.
Maryland Supreme Court Decision on self produced CP
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An unjust law is no law at all. This type of legislation promotes the adolescent sexual hysteria ubiquitous in this country. Teens (“minors”) are having sex. Adolescents are sexting. Consensual and self-exploration of sexuality by “minors” is not criminal, it is normal part of “growing up.”
Wondering did the fact that there were two other teens involved have any bearing on this girls prosecution
Will this girl be forced to register as a sexual offender? I suppose the court was bound to follow the letter of the law literally. At least at some level they see how utterly ridiculous it is NOT to have an exception for teens who video themselves engaged in intercourse or nude.
Something I always wondered about. Possession of CP. Is there an exception for law enforcement. When they take it as “evidence” they are in possession of it. SO they broke the law.
Yes – there are exceptions
At the federal level, exceptions require official possessors to safeguard the evidence, and specify allowed uses. These include allowing “controlled” deliveries in sting operations. However, law enforcement personnel routinely flaunt generally applicable pornography laws as well as those directed specifically at them.
In federal prison, many of us were absorbed in legal research. My roommate consolidated this research into a 60 page document–including 5 pages of case citations– describing unlawful actions by law enforcement in an historical context. It is not hyperbole to assert that the government is likely the single largest unlawful distributor of child pornography.
After release, I scanned his typewritten pages through OCR software, and cleaned it up in a word processor. This is available in PDF format if anyone is interested.
Veritas.
If you’d like to share it, Ed, we can upload it and add it as a resource.
I’ve always made the same point when hearing how those depicted in CP are “revictimized every time it was seen.”
To me, that’s absurd, like saying when a person driving 45 or 50 mph hits a 15 year old, it will obviously injure or kill the person. But when LE does it, it doesn’t leave a scratch.
It’s a bullsh*t argument made by an attorney in a case long ago, and the judge wanting to show empathy, of course agreed.
Anyone with a brain and some balls can understand that it’s not revictimization. What is revictimization is when the state sends notices to people in the videos which ends up reminding thr ‘victim’ and not letting them live their lives in peace. Those notices are the epitome of harassment for life. One victim sued the state just to make the notices stop.