WA- Is sending racy 'sexts' flirting, or is it porn?

2-5-2009 Washington:

Though youth is fleeting, images sent on a cell phone or posted online may not be, especially if they're naughty.

Teenagers' habit of distributing nude self-portraits electronically -- often called "sexting" if it's done by cell phone -- has parents and school administrators worried. Nationally, some prosecutors have begun charging teens who send and receive such images with child pornography and other serious felonies.

But is that the best way to handle it?

In some cases, the photos are sent to harass other teens or to get attention. Other times, they're viewed as a high-tech way to flirt. Either way, law enforcement officials want it to stop, even if it means threatening to add "sex offender" to a juvenile's confidential record.

With an estimated 90 percent to 95 percent of secondary school kids carrying cell phones, sexting -- as well as cyberbullying -- has exploded, said Mike Donlin, who helped implement a new cyberbullying curriculum in Seattle Public Schools.

And it can have ongoing consequences for the victim, he said: "You're going to be humiliated hundreds of thousands of times. It's totally devastating."

Two Bothell High School cheerleaders discovered that late last summer, after nude photos they'd taken of themselves began circulating among the student body via text message, without their consent.

In addition to the personal embarrassment, the girls were suspended from the cheerleading squad after school officials received copies of the photos from an unnamed source.

Their parents sued the Northshore School District, alleging among other charges that administrators had needlessly shared the photos with other school staff members and failed to promptly report the matter to police as possible child pornography.

The district has denied the allegations, and last month filed counterclaims against the families for filing "a frivolous lawsuit over a matter which would have died down and disappeared" if the girls had accepted the consequences of their actions, according to court documents.

The two lawsuits recently were moved from King County Superior Court to U.S. District Court, and the judge has ordered the two sides to try mediation. Court trials wouldn't occur until March 2010 at the earliest.

In Seattle Public Schools, school officials are encouraged to call parents or contact police if they learn of such activity, but situations are handled on a case-by-case basis.

"If something's disrupting the educational environment, whether it's disrupting it for one person or for the whole school ... we have the obligation to intervene," Donlin said.

The fact that child pornography charges have been filed in some other cases nationwide is stirring debate.

This month at Greensburg-Salem High School in Greensburg, Pa., three high school girls who sent seminude photos and four male students who received them were all hit with child pornography charges.

Junior Jamie Bennish said she's not sure the boys in her school's case should've been charged.

"They did not necessarily choose to receive the pictures" she said. "As for the girls ... any charges they receive they have brought upon themselves."

But Dante Bertani, chief public defender in Westmoreland County, Pa., where the students went to court, called the felony charges "horrendous."

"It should be an issue between the school, the parents and the kids -- and primarily the parents and the kids," Bertani said. "It's not something that should be going through the criminal system."

Parents are also often at a loss.

Some companies, such as WebSafety Inc., have developed software that parents can use to monitor certain activity on cell phones and computers. They can, for instance, detect X-rated texting terms, said Mike Adler, the company's chief executive.

Photos are trickier, though, and often require a parent to manually check a child's phone.

And that's OK to do, said Dr. Terri Randall, an adolescent psychiatrist in Philadelphia.

"It could be part of the contract of having a cell phone, that you really don't get 100 percent privacy," Randall said. Other patients tell Randall how sexting and texting explicit messages caused relationship problems, especially after a breakup, when photos might be distributed out of spite.

So she reminds her young patients: "That person may not always feel the same way about you. And you may not feel the same way about that person either."

But is it porn? That's questionable, she and others say.

Certainly, technology makes it easier to do and say things we might not do in person, said Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher with the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"But ultimately," she said, "I think this is merely another case of technology extending an activity or action that young people have engaged in for years, if not beyond that."

..News Source.. by P-I STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES