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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I think it is very telling that the girl wasn't also charged.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is utterly crazy that ANYONE was charged in this case. It is a victimless crime. But reading between the lines there's a certain puritanical undertone to all of it.

In most other Western countries this would not be illegal in this way. But the US is extremely religious and has quite an unhealthy attitude to teenage sex (which ironically results in one of the highest teenage pregnancy rates in the Western world also).

I genuinely wonder how the people who preside over cases like this (e.g. cops, prosecutor, even the judge) sleep at night. They're actually doing more harm to everyone (including society) than the supposed "crime."

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I think it is very telling that the girl wasn't also charged.

This is fairly common, as I first wrote here, in a different context (http://blog.seliger.com/2013/04/24/you-dont-forget-your-firs...):

> As Judith Levine notes in Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex: “One striking pair of contradictory trends: as we raise the age of consent for sex, we lower the age at which a wrongdoing child may be tried and sentenced as an adult criminal. Both, needless to say, are ‘in the best interests’ of the child and society.” We want teenagers to be adults when they commit crimes and “children” when they have sex, which tells you more about our culture than about teenagers.

> And, as Laurie Schaffner points out in a separate essay collection, “[...] in certain jurisdictions, young people may not purchase alcohol until their twenty-first birthday, or may be vulnerable plaintiffs in a statutory rape case at 17 years of age, yet may be sentenced to death for crimes committed at age 15 [....]”

> Laws, including those embodied in Face Forward, reflect race and gender norms: white girls are the primary target of age-of-consent laws, while African American youth are the target of laws around crime and delinquency. The contradictory trends are readily explained by something rather unpleasant in society.

I agree. The sexist double standard in statutory rape convictions where both parties are underage is not only incredibly unjust to young males but insulting to the young women. It sends the message while teenage guys have the ability to make informed and mature decisions about sex, teenage girls who choose to have sex or engage in other sexual behaviors (such as sexting) are just silly little girls who don't know what they're doing and should be protected.

The sjw's keep trying to dull their side of the double edged sword called equality. My jimmies are at maximum rustle everytime I read an article about boys having to pay child support when they are the victims of statutory rape. There is little to no pity for them, I've witnessed it first hand.

The girl's mother filed a complaint, the boy's mother presumably didn't. So it doesn't necessarily say much that the boy was charged but the girl wasn't.

The rest of your comment still stands, though.

He's being tried for "possession of child pornography and manufacturing child pornography." The article says, in plain text, that she did exactly the same thing. It strongly implies that she initiated.

Who reported it is irrelevant, especially since the person reporting was neither of the kids involved. For identical crimes, either both of them should be arrested or neither of them. Anything else is injustice and a failure.

If the boy's mother presses charges they'd implicitly be confirming the allegations.

The whole "pressing charges" thing is mostly overplayed in popular culture. Police departments may certainly have a process for filing a complaint, and prosecutors may certainly prefer to have a cooperative complaining witness, but the putative victim of a crime has no formal role in the criminal justice process. A crime is considered an offense against the state, and the state is the party that decides who and whether to prosecute.

You're right, I should have said "complained."

> In most other Western countries this would not be illegal in this way.

I'm not sure about that. Possession of child pornography is a serious crime in most Western countries, and the courts don't really care about excuses, explanations, or the fact that the crime is victim-less. Actually, in most countries, even non-child porn that looks like child porn is illegal (drawings, computer-generated images, adult actors that look like children, ...).

Actually, in many countries the courts are much more reasonable with regards to interpretation and application of the law. Not just that, but they care about balance between intent of the law, effect and means.

There is no way that say in Germany today the police could get away with trying to induce and photograph a teenage boy's erection for a sexting incident. It is such a fundamental violation of human dignity. I cannot even begin to imagine the press coverage and criminal indictments of the people involved.

In a very recent case here in Uruguay, an adult had consensual sex with a 14-year old minor, got her pregnant, and made her take an abortion pill.

The girl's mother called the police, and it surfaced that the girl had lied about her age and name to the man, so he was found guilty but his sentence was 45 days probation only (no jail time) and an 120 day restraining order.

A search for similar cases in the U.S. surfaces: 10 years jail time, 38 years of jail time, etc..

I'd challenge you to name a single case in a non US country where one of the participants have been charged with possession of child pornography because two kids sexted each other. I've never heard of one.

Except only in the US would this kid face a 5 year mandatory minimum sentence for each image (if it were a federal case). I don't know what he's facing since it's Virginia rather than federal charges.

I don't think the commenter meant possession of child porn is not illegal, I think he/she was referring to two underage children exchanging pictures.

That's a bit scary. Who gets to decide what it looks like?

I'm sure there's many places in the law where discretion is used by someone in authority to determine guilt or innocence, but it still frightens me when I see it.

I don't know about the pictures but they could have legally slept with each other in Austria. I have never heard of sexting cases here unless the pictures were made available to a wider public.

"there's a certain puritanical undertone to all of it" which is ironic since those pure public officials want/need to violate the teenager in order to maintain their pure/innocent perception.

"But the US is extremely religious"

I think you mean "the US is extremely prude"

Yes, as a counter-point, look at Latin America, where they are simultaneously more religious and more relaxed about sexuality.

But it's about the kind of religion. Conservative protestantism has always dominated the religious landscape of the US.

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