A 15 year-old boy was convicted and ordered to sign the sex offenders register for swapping nude photos with a girl the same age as him.
The unnamed youngster got chatting to two girls – aged 15 and 17, while visiting the Future Farmers of America conference in 2012.
Both girls believed they were in a relationship with the boy. The youngster, from Colorado, sent both a photo of his erect penis and asked them to send a naked selfie in return.
After initially resisting, both girls sent the nude photo of themselves, Reason magazine reported.
The snaps he’d received were discovered when the boy was later arrested on an unrelated charge.
He was then charged and convicted with sexual exploitation of a child, ordered to spend two years on probation – and 20 years on the sex offenders’ register.
The boy’s initial court hearing convicted him after ruling that the girls’ initial reluctance to send nudes in return ‘suggested a sexual coyness.’
It also reasoned that the boy’s repeated requests for nude photos, after sending his own X-rated snap, showed that he wanted the pictures for ‘overt sexual gratification.’
That is necessary to prove the charges against him, and is also likely to explain why neither girl was charged with any crime.
The boy appealed his conviction, but last week Colorado’s Supreme Court upheld it.
They did so despite a 2018 change to the law aimed at preventing teens being charged with ‘sexual exploitation of a child’ for sharing nude photos.
Justice Monica M Marquez explained: ‘Our holding today may strike some as unfair, especially given the recent changes in the law addressing juvenile sexting behavior.
‘However, we must apply the law in effect at the time.’
Communicatons Professor Amy Hasinoff, from the University of Colorado at Denver helped draft the revised law, and condemned the upheld appeal.
She told The Washington Post: ‘Asking a few times for a photo doesn’t rise to the level of what should be on the sex offender registry. ‘Just because you have a 15-year-old asking another 15-year-old for photos doesn’t mean you’re a threat to children for the next 20 years.’
A 2018 survey found that one in four teenagers polled had received a sext, with one in seven respondents admitting sending one themselves.
So, a 15-year old boy has been forced to spend two years on probation and will have his name on the sex offender registry for the next 20 years (essentially, his life has been destroyed before it really even began) for voluntarily exchanging nude photos with another 15-year old girl. He appealed his conviction to the Colorado Supreme Court but they upheld it. So, are we still living in a patriarchy?
Obviously, I find this to be abhorrent. Of course, the girl he exchanged them with was charged with nothing. This is yet another example of the institutional bias of our courts against men and young boys. It's clear drastic changes need to happen in this country if we are to correct this sort of bias.
Thoughts?
