TheAgitator.com
15 Y.O. Girl Arrested, Jailed for Nude Cell Phone Photos of Herself
Friday, October 10th, 2008What a stupid waste of resources.
The judge has some discretion, here, but by the letter of the law, she could be forced to register as a sex offender for 20 years.
” Licking Valley High School ”
Where to begin with this one….
I cannot believe her lawyer let her plea to that crap. The prosecutors should have some good sense here.
this could easily be taken out of context…
“Licking County Prosecutor Ken Oswalt,”
“NEWARK — A 15-year-old girl is accused of distributing nude photos of herself to other minors, and one state legislator is…”
So could this.
Wait wait wait… so they’re prosecuting her for child pornography for taking pictures of HERSELF and sending them to her friends? And they’re thinking of charging the people she sent the pictures to as well? And on top of that, they’ll probably make her register as a sex offender?
The fucked-up-ed-ness of this just blows my mind…
“The fucked-up-ed-ness of this just blows my mind…”
Ive gotten pretty used to it by now. Not only have i gotten used to it, ive come to expect it. Nowadays, if a judge or a prosecutor were to stand up and say that this really isnt the proper use of this charge and this law wasnt meant for this circumstance… that would be odd in the usa. We just dont do logical things like that in this country any longer. We used to, but not any more. What the hell happened?
What’s next, are we going to charge a suicide victim with murder 1 post-mortem?
It became impolite and worse–judgmental–to call people who don’t know any better “idiots” who are unqualified for their job as a judge or prosecutor, and to call the ones who do know better, but don’t care “evil” men and women who twist the law to advance their own career. All of the competing ideas of what “the good” really is and what justice means also don’t help. Such is the lot of people who care about justice and law and order in a postmodern society.
Don’t always trust the words of a statute, and also don’t trust that the prosecutors will know what they are talking about. They get media face time for ignoring that stuff.
It turns out that this statute has been limited by judicial interpretation (since otherwise it could be a 1st Amendment violation). State v. Young, 37 Ohio St.3d 249, 525 N.E.2d 1363 (Ohio 1988) requires that to be illegal “such nudity constitutes a lewd exhibition or involves a graphic focus on the genitals.”
There’s not a lot of info here, but it sure sounds like just clowning around, so I’m not sure you can really call it a lewd exhibition.
Also, from a previous story, one of the suspect pictures showed her topless. In Ohio, topless for women is illegal, so she could have walked topless down a public street, but anybody taking a picture of her would (without the limiting construction) be a sex criminal.
The idea that in a country that alleges to have the protected rights that we have a person of any age could be arrested for taking a photograph of THEMSELVES is rediculous. Sharing that picture with others of the same age makes no difference.
Child Porn laws are their to protect children from being abused or exploited by adults. That did not happen here. If there was an adult that convinced this girl to take pics of herself than that adult should be arrested, but not the girl.
Furthermore, out of curiosity, would this girl have been arrested if she had gotten naked in person in front of these other kids? Actually had sex with them?
This is why the sex offender registry no longer has any meaning whatsoever. There is nothing our country’s legislators can’t make absolutely worthless and ineffective.
Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules? THINK OF THE CHILDREN!
LOL, should have proof read that first sentence. No more morning benders for me, lol.
Ahcuah
That is an interesting point about Ohio. The idea that a you can have a legal activity, but a photo of that legal activity is somehow illegal is moronic on a huge scale.
Similar to the prostitution laws. The idea that it is illegal to sell something that is perfectly legal to give away for free is also idiotic.
My fellow slaves, the State owns you.
” … Any use, rebroadcast or retransmission of the pictures, descriptions, or accounts of your person without the express written permission of the State is strictly prohibited.”
Poor girl. Some people can go a lifetime without having their myth of self-ownership blasted to pieces.
she swears she was 18!!!1!!!
What if I told the girl that I’d buy the pictures that she took of herself?
What we have here is one of the great “Catch-22s” of our legal system.
The law considers a person under the age of 18 incapable of making descisions concerning their own well being. This is why we USED to have a juvinile justice system. Now a person under the age of 18 is still incapable of making these types of descisions, but can be held LEGALLY responsible for those descisions.
This is the same BS that brings you the 21 drinking age, but allows 16 year olds to be charged with DUI.
Oops, I need to correct a typo:
In Ohio, topless for women is legal, so she could have walked topless down a public street, but anybody taking a picture of her would (without the limiting construction) be a sex criminal.
These persecutions have been happening a lot lately. It really is a fucked up situation.
It is necessary to the system though to preserve the myth that anyone under 18 who does anything sexual or even non sexual (if somebody else might think it’s sexual) is being exploited against their will.
Teenagers are not children. Get over it.
Ah, the inevitable results of being ruled by hysteria and sensationalism. The article pretty much glosses over the fact that by making this girl register as a sex offender, they are basically ruining the girl’s life on a technicality.
“she could have walked topless down a public street”
+1 for women walking down streets topless.
In my hometown, a young student was caught “streaking” after he wasn’t able to make his getaway. (He did it during a football game, which in my opinion was quite funny.)
They are talking possible sex offender registration.
http://www.fergusfallsjournal.com/news/2008/oct/06/streak-all-talk-otters-go-6-0/
I wonder how many lawmakers today may have done this same thing back in the 60′s?
“I wonder how many lawmakers today may have done this same thing back in the 60’s?”
In the 60′s? Hell, I know one Mayor who did it in the 80′s. I know because I was doing the same thing in one of the other windows of the Basketball Coach’s station wagon.
“Pilot to bombadier. Target sighted. Do you want to press or hang?”. Bombadier to Pilot. Hang!”. Then the backwindow of the station wagon slid slowly down………………
This is another example of the madness of consensual crimes. If the alleged “victim” of an act agreed to the act, then it shouldn’t be a crime. I understand nuances involved in consent from minors, but since she did this herself, it’s hard to maintain she wasn’t consenting.
I might agree that a 15 year old who sends naughty pictures of herself around might have other issues to deal with, but it absolutely should not be illegal. Furthermore, it sounds like even just having the pictures, even if she didn’t send them to anyone, is also a felony. I really don’t really even care how explicit the pictures were; taking a picture of yourself is something the state should have absolutely zero power to regulate.
And, I agree that her attorney wasn’t doing her any favors by pleading this case. He should have had her up on the stand in a “JURY NULLIFICATION” T-shirt, reading the quotes from the assemblyman who wrote the law saying this was not what the law was intended to punish. If the prosecution objects, the defense should claim it’s relevant to establish that the defendant had no criminal intent or knowledge that her act was even criminal, since the people who wrote the law didn’t think it was, either.
This whole thing sickens me and the fact that the prosecutor who went out of his way to ruin a young girl’s life still walks around a free man is part of the nausea. He should be spit upon wherever he goes.
What the fuck is going on in this world. The most severe punishment that is merited here is that she lose her cell phone privileges for the rest of the school year. Obviously that should be handed out by her parents and not the brownshirts. No doubt she had a public defender.
The cops who arrested her should be fired as well as the prosecutor and D.A, both of which should lose their licenses and the judge should be removed from the bench for even accepting the plea. What. The. Fuck.
LOL!
Who else think it’s time to start inciting violence at such situations? Teach them that they can’t do this.
Of course, you’d instantly be labeled a terrorist against the US and have all branches of military breathing down your neck, but wouldn’t that almost be a point of pride at this point?
“What’s next, are we going to charge a suicide victim with murder 1 post-mortem?”
Well, they didn’t charge Vince Foster, but they did convict him.
I think if i were the girls guardians I would pull everything out of my retirement fund(whatever is left after the past 2 weeks) and use it to file suit against every officer of the state that was involved with this case. Sue them individually for the biggest numbers they can imagine. Write zeros until their hands hurt so that the numbers are so obscenely large that the press will play the story nationally just because of the sensational nature of the suits. Force it onto the national scene to expose these fucks for the fascists they are and sex-offender registries as the farce they always have been.
I may have forgotten all of the common law crimes, but I DO remember a doctrine that said the person who was being charged with a crime could not be in the class of person the crime was intended to protect (that is, the victim). Since the defendant here is also the victim, I wonder whether the plea and conviction are even legal. Does anyone know whether Ohio has abolished all common law defenses?
John,
The problem that she has is that she distributed the pictures. If she had just kept them to herself she would have been protected under the doctrine that you refer to. Once she distributed the pictures she took herself out of the protected class. They can’t charge her for taking the pictures, but they can charge her for distributing them.
Right Jim, but the justification for the exemption to the First Amendment for child porn is the harm to the child (the victim), See, e.g., the “virtual child porn” case from a few years ago (yes, I am too lazy to look it up).
Applying the Supreme Court’s logic to these facts, she would seem to be within the protected class and therefore not subject to punishment.