Girl (14) faces 17 years in jail on Child porn charge for photographing herself nude.

[seabhcan]

Teen Girl Uploads Her Nude Photo in Myspace for her BoyFriend. Gets Caught.

The world has gone mad.

A teenager from New Jersey has been arrested after she uploaded 30 nude photos of herself to her MySpace page, and is now facing child pornography charges. The 14-year-old girl had posted the pictures to a social networking site "because she wanted her boyfriend to see them,"

The girl, who has been released into her mother's custody, faces up to 17 years in jail if convicted of possession and distribution of child pornography.

[BodyofEvidence]

stoopid. the kid and the idiots who charged her

[Thranduil]

Surely if they just want to send a message to other parents and kids warning them they would be better served charging her with some 'offence to public decency' charge instead.

stoopid. the kid and the idiots who charged her

At least the 14 year old has a good excuse for her stupidity. Doing this kind of demeans the seriousness of the crime of child pornography itself.

I wonder if this case is linked in any way to the practice of electing judges, prosecutors and sheriffs in the US, as the article states....

The office investigated and discovered the Clifton resident had posted the “very explicit” photos of herself, sheriff’s spokesman Bill Maer said Thursday.

“We consider this case a wake-up call to parents,” Maer said. The girl posted the photos because “she wanted her boyfriend to see them,” he said.

Having said that i won't say anymore, i do not feel in such a lofty position to criticise other countries on the issue of the rights of the child after this week's revelations about past years in my country.

[FutureTaoiseach]

This is an example of what should not happen. For a start, parents need to be compelled to supervising their underage children's internet-user. Secondly, social-networking sites like Myspace should require adult-verification either for membership, or as a prerequisite for the uploading of images. Thirdly, such sites should be required to moderate uploaded photos and remove offensive material. Fourthly, children in this situation should not be treated as paedophiles. This issue seems to fall into the same kind of category as the question we debated in Ireland recently on the criminalisation of underage peers. What she did was wrong but equally, it would be a tragedy if she was placed on a sex-offenders register and then hounded from pillar to post after her eventual release. She is not a paedophile. She is just a teenager whose parents failed to adequately supervise in terms of her allegedly illegal activities on the internet. Indeed I would argue that Myspace should be prosecuted rather than this girl. It was they that allowed unmoderated images to be uploaded in the first place.

[toxic avenger]

She's clearly a sick paedo and deserves to be hunted down like a dog, LIKE A DOG...

[shutuplaura]

This is nuts. Have people lost all sense of proportion on the child porn thing? I mean its pictures of herself!! Out of interest, can a photo of say a baby getting a bath be considered child porn now. Wasn't there a famous case about something like that a few years ago?

[toxic avenger]

This is nuts. Have people lost all sense of proportion on the child porn thing? I mean its pictures of herself!! Out of interest, can a photo of say a baby getting a bath be considered child porn now. Wasn't there a famous case about something like that a few years ago?

An ITN newsreader, Julia Somerville, was interviewed by police when snooping Boots staff reported photos she had taken of her kid in the bath. Somerville had only recently recovered from treatment for a brain tumour when it happened. Unfortunately the staff were never named and pelted with rotting fruit and veg.

And let's not forget pre-natal scans! Saucy filth I tell you...

[shutuplaura]

An ITN newsreader, Julia Somerville, was interviewed by police when snooping Boots staff reported photos she had taken of her kid in the bath. Somerville had only recently recovered from treatment for a brain tumour when it happened. Unfortunately the staff were never named and pelted with rotting fruit and veg.

And let's not forget pre-natal scans! Saucy filth I tell you...

Thats the one. And Pete Townsend from The Who got wrongfully charged. Crazy. Okay, everyone wants the spread of child pron eliminated but really thats just a hysterical reaction.

[East Coast Elitist]

It's really disturbing to me to see girls acting like porn stars--they are so programmed to please, more vulnerable than boys to the opinions of others, more eager to fulfill the expectations of others. The case in the OP does seem like hysterical overreaction, but there don't seem to be any other laws right now in the U.S. (or other countries--see "32 Victorian teenagers were charged with child pornography offences as a result of "sexting.") to deal with this problem. And it is a problem--these are children, 13, 14 years old.

[shutuplaura]

It's really disturbing to me to see girls acting like porn stars--they are so programmed to please, more vulnerable than boys to the opinions of others, more eager to fulfill the expectations of others. The case in the OP does seem like hysterical overreaction, but there don't seem to be any other laws right now in the U.S. (or other countries--see "32 Victorian teenagers were charged with child pornography offences as a result of "sexting.") to deal with this problem. And it is a problem--these are children, 13, 14 years old.

Why should they be charged with anything. Okay its hardly healthy for a young teenager to distribute nude photos of themselves but is this really any business of the state to police this? If so perhaps they should go after parents or even better the peer to peer websites that facilitate this sort of thing.

And, thinking about it, its actually not so much depraved as foolish - teenagers curious about sex! Hardly a surprise.
The only difference now is that instead of truth or dare or spin the bottle they are engageing in activities that leave a visable trace in the form of images. Unwise but otherwise not much different.